It\u2019s Sunday afternoon and Chris Hannay is sitting at the end of a bar. No, he\u2019s not drowning his sorrows over the outlook of an Ottawa winter or his career prospects (he\u2019s a journalist). Hannay, the co-founder of Experimental Farm Theatre, is in the upstairs lounge of LIVE on Elgin instructing a cluster of students in an improv exercise called \u201cspinning plates.\u201d<\/p>\n
One member of the class is a server in a diner while the others are the metaphorical spinning plates, acting as customers with increasingly ridiculous demands. Hannay, wearing a brown hoodie and glasses, gives helpful hints and instruction to keep his pupils moving the sketch along. He doesn\u2019t want any of the plates to tip over.<\/p>\n
Last year, Hannay and his partner, Dani Alon, moved to Ottawa for work. It was a return for Hannay, who went to school at Carleton University but had been living in Toronto for the past five years. The pair cut their teeth in Toronto theatre houses Second City and the now-defunct Impatient Theatre Company. When they came to the nation\u2019s capital, they came with a mission: to help revive Ottawa\u2019s dormant improv scene.<\/p>\n