It’s 7:30 p.m. on a Friday night in the basement of the First Baptist Church. The Crawlspace Comedy Theatre buzzes with energy. Remodeled in 2019, the space is cozy and unique. Adults bustle around the crowded room as pizza is delivered to tables and Micheal Jacksons’ “Thriller” plays in the background. Dann and Tara Sytsma, both core members of the Crawlspace Eviction troupe, run the ticket booth.
Crawlspace Comedy Theatre is improv’s home in Kalamazoo, and Crawlspace Eviction, the theater’s most popular troupe, has been performing in Kalamazoo since 2003, leading the troupe to teach improv to people of all ages and spark a love of the extraordinary.
Crawlspace is welcoming because of the people and the sense of community that improv works to create through any given troupe. Dann believes that improv has three key categories of impact on individuals: confidence, positivity and empathy.
“Those three things are just extremely huge especially now, post-pandemic, after we went through a period of time when some of those things were really hard,” said Dann. “Personal confidence, positivity and focusing on other people were hard.”
Improv encourages its participants to embrace self-confidence in social situations and look for the bright side, while helping others stay afloat in constantly changing situations. Dann believes that these positive qualities make improv a great outlet for young people, especially at the high school level. It’s a way to encourage those involved to take an active role in whatever situation is at hand, whether that be make believe or something more tangible.

“It’s so formative to have something like improv that can really help with confidence and social situations and personal agency, ” said Dann. “It’s super cool when younger people discover it early on. If you can find ways to apply that to everyday life, that is phenomenal.”
Playwright Tom Blandford, a regular at Crawlspace, loves improv because of its unique nature and ability to impact both the audience and those on stage. His first time watching improv was in a small, black box improv theater located in Chicago. Black box performances are set on an entirely black and empty stage, allowing for near endless flexibility during performances through the power of the audience members’ minds.
“I was not the same person after I left,” Blandford said. “I went in search of a black box theater and found a place that did improv.”
Improv has the unique ability to bridge the gap between the artist and audience. An improv show will never give audiences the same experience, no matter how many times one attends.
“These people are going to experience something once, together,” said Dann, “and no one else outside of these walls is ever going to be able to experience that again.”
Blandford also emphasized the beauty of improv’s non-repeatable nature.
“For an hour and a half, I’m sitting there just having my mind blown,” said Blandford. “You will be walking one way, and you will be walking a different direction after, if it [art] is touching you in that way.”
Crawlspace runs events every Friday and Saturday from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. and teaches improv workshops and classes to adults starting January 5th and kids during summer. For more information about such events, check out the “Events” and “Classes” pages on their website.