The performers of 'Off Book' are improvising an entire musical at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix

There are a lot of opportunities to see different kinds of musicals in metro Phoenix. But most, if not all, of those shows have been rehearsed. And written down.

That, however, is not the case for "Off Book: The Improvised Musical."

The musical features writers and actors Jess McKenna and Zach Reino. They’ll be performing Friday night at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix.

McKenna and Reino joined The Show to describe what "Off Book" is all about.

Full conversation

JESS MCKENNA: First, "Off Book" is an improvised musical where Zach and I create a brand new, never to be seen before or again musical on the spot. All the lyrics, characters, melodies and storylines are completely invented. And, yeah, I mean, hopefully it's a story that vaguely makes sense, but it'll be funny and will sometimes have harmonies.

Can you believe? [LAUGHS] And, yeah, it's just. It's something we've been doing as a pair for, like, a decade now. Zach, anything additional?

ZACH REINO: The only thing — that was perfect — the only thing that I would add is that tonally, it is pretty, like chaotic and joyful and often surprisingly heartfelt. That's sort of our vibe.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so surprisingly heartfelt. That's interesting because I have seen some improv. Not a ton, but heartfelt is not usually a word that would be used to describe it.

REINO: Yeah, I think that is specifically because we are narrative, right? Like, we are telling a story from front to back. And then the way that we make that work is by giving it emotional stakes. And just because Jessica and I are who we are, those emotional stakes tend to be about, like, people fulfilling their dreams.

Sometimes those people are a bear or a swarm of bees or a pirate captain or whatever. I mean, we've done over — we have recorded over 350 of these. So ... the hero can be anyone. But, yeah, I think that is something that sort of distinguishes us from a lot of improv in that, like, there is also a story to it. And hopefully that story is meaningful if we do the magic trick correctly.

BRODIE: So, Jess, obviously, you guys have done improv for a long time. You're veterans of it. You know what you're doing. Is there a way to prepare for a particular show, though?

MCKENNA: There really is no preparation other than the hours spent getting to this point. I think, like, even when you're a newer improviser, you might meet up with your team and warm up for a few minutes. I mean, there really isn't any preparation. I mean, there's — now that Zach and I have toured more, there's like.

Like, physical preparation. Like, we try to make sure we lay down after we get to the city, or make sure we're drinking tea and make sure, like, our voices are in good condition. And so really, I would say maybe we use more of, like, a traditional way a actor would, would prepare for a play or a musical. You know, try to, like, stretch it out, make sure your voice is ready.

But on the improv side of things, no. In fact, I think, like, the more just relaxed and open you are, the easier it is to be, like, the conduit for what is about to happen. Really, the only other thing I think about is maybe, like, if we're doing a few shows in a run, I just remind myself, like, what I did last night and try to make sure I stay away from that.

So if we did a show the night before where we used a lot of Greek mythology tropes, I'm gonna stay away from that. Or we know we just did two shows last week, and one was about a couple camping in the woods. So it's like, OK, maybe something that's not based in, like, a marital relationship, and let's see if we can get a different setting.

But we're getting a word from the audience or a handful of words, and we're using an organic conversation between the two of us to sort of find just the starting point. And really, it's usually the pianist who calls that. So we get a word from the audience or a few words, and then we talk about either the words independently or what they make us think of as a collective.

So, if someone said, like, "banana." Which, please don't say banana.

REINO: Everyone loves to suggest tropical fruit. It's the No. 1 improv suggestion.

MCKENNA: Banana and pineapple are the two most common words you hear, which is great. Like, 15 years ago, when improv was newer, it was always, like, gynecologists. So I'm glad we've, like, evolved as a people, but it is still just like what tropical snack I'm thinking of.

BRODIE: Well, so, Zach, Jessica mentioned that, you know, you sort of talk it through a little bit once you get your, you know, once you get your prompts from the audience. Is there a point at which, like, you guys have been doing this and work together long enough where you both kind of know, "OK, we've got it. We know what we're going to do."

REINO: Well, by got it, I would say that we know what area of what we're talking about we think is funny. And, like, what mine is deep enough to dig into for 45 minutes, and the show eventually will sort of, like, take on its own space.

Like, the last show that we did started on a cruise ship, and, like, we were talking about, like, cruises and whatever. But it was, like, ended with, like, a "Lion King" rewrite. [LAUGHS]

So, like, you start where you start and you go where you go. And, like, there's no way that we could have known in that conversation that that's where we're heading. Really, what we're looking for is like, is this funny to us? But, yeah, then the things that we have sort of to fall back on are just, you know, classic story structure. Which is something that, as writers, we have studied.

But I will also say that because we have now done so many of these that more often than not, we're not using that anymore. It's just sort of in our muscle memory that it's like, OK, now we need to introduce chaos. Now we need to make that chaos worse. Now we need to start repairing it.

But that can look like anything.

BRODIE: But you're also, at the same time, like, you have to come up with music here, right? Like, I know you have a piano player and in some cases a drummer and maybe other instruments. But at the end of the day, you're not just coming up with dialogue. You're not just coming up with, you know, sort of classic improv games or jokes or anything.

You also have to put it to music. And, as you said, harmonize from time to time. Like, I — it's kind of incomprehensible how you are able to do that.

REINO: I think I'll thank you, first of all, wow, so nice of you to say. I think that so much of it is muscle memory. Like, we were both theater kids and musical theater kids, then went off to do comedy. So music was just something that we have always loved and have always done, and we're missing for a part of our lives.

And so we are helped by the band. I mean, anyone can do this. Like, if you are listening to the radio, you can sing along. You can sing things that aren't what the melody of the song is. A lot of the times the band is giving us an incredible platform to jump off of.

But it's like anything else. It's like that's muscle memory. We don't actively — or at least I don't. I won't speak for Jessica. Although I suspect it's the same. We're not really doing math about like what the melody should be or what third or fourth I need to hit in this chord to make a harmony work. It's just sort of intuitive, and that comes from spending a lot of time doing it.

MCKENNA: Yeah. And also there's two of us. So, you know, usually one of us is starting the song. And we're not singing in unison from like word one. So I can sort of hear what Zach is laying down and like, "OK, great. That's the genre we're living in."

And so I'm hearing his choice and I'm yes, and-ing it. And I'm probably trying to, depending on the character, I'm probably prepping the chorus in my head. And in a given show, if we have, I don't know, seven to 10 songs, that math is going to look different song by song. And so in the collective show, we will have had both a song that we were really the lead of, a pure duet, a group song that we're playing multiple characters, we're just popping around.

I mean, we ended up with this song not to keep talking about this cruise ship, "Lion King" show because it's really hard to talk about improv shows that have not happened, that you weren't —

REINO: Like talking about your dream dreams, but worse.

MCKENNA: Yeah, exactly. It's terrible and you shouldn't do it. But I will say I just innocuously threw out like a detail that I knew about ... the food chain of the African plains. And Zach, just as a person/improviser, just kept asking me questions about it. So while we know in our bones, the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, structure of a song that we can rely on and always go back to.

And 80% of the music in an "Off Book" show is going to follow that structure. There are still rules are made to be broken. That song ended up being like a 5-minute, I don't even know, like, recitative patter type song where I was just explaining more and more about the African plains.

And it had, like, no chorus. Almost nothing repeated about it because Zach just kept asking me more questions. And I just kept, like, going. And there were comedic games we returned to, because we're still, like, "Funny first. Funny first." If the structure of the song goes to the side, that's fine. Because we're still coming from, like, a comedic training where the funniest show is the best show.