Hit and Run: Musical Improv has invented 730 musicals and counting

Hit and Run: Musical Improv got its name before it had performed a single show. After the group’s first rehearsal in 2006, founder Stephen Wilder came outside to find his car had been hit.

“My car was parked on the street, and an unknown party had collided with the car, pushed it and wrapped it around a stop sign,” Wilder says. “Ultimately, that was a major event in my life that I had to deal with, but that is also where the name of the group came from. I said, ‘Okay, if this is going to happen, I’m going to use it to benefit the art,’ and that is where the show’s name comes from.”

The accident became Hit and Run: Musical Improv, the company Wilder still directs and regularly performs with two decades later. On Friday, July 17, the group will celebrate its 20th anniversary at RISE Comedy with what Wilder estimates will be its 730th completely improvised musical.

The milestone show will feature 10 performers and two live music directors, a larger ensemble than usual. As always, the audience will supply a title. Everything after that — characters, plot, lyrics and melodies — will be created in the moment.

Wilder first encountered musical improv after moving to Los Angeles in 2004 to pursue what he calls “serious acting.” His instructors encouraged him to watch shows at iO West, the now-closed improv theater where he was studying. The first performance he saw happened to be a half-hour musical invented on the spot.

“When I realized what was going on, it blew my mind,” Wilder says. “I couldn’t believe everything I was seeing was being done on the fly. They had created a half-hour musical from thin air. After seeing that performance, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I didn’t know how, but I wanted to do it.”

He began taking classes and auditioning, but none of the existing groups approached the form the way he wanted. So he posted his own audition notice, despite not yet having a name or a reliable structure.

The early version drew from Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey. Sometimes it held together. Other times, Wilder said, it “crashed and burned.”

A chance discovery in 2008 helped stabilize the form. Wilder found Ken Adams’ book “How to Improvise a Full-Length Play: The Art of Spontaneous Theater,” at a Barnes & Noble and read most of it in the store before buying it. Adams’ approach became the foundation of Hit and Run’s current structure, which gives performers a framework without dictating what happens inside it.

“It has a structure, but the structure of the show allows for a lot of creativity and improvisation,” Wilder says. “It’s unlike any other show that I’ve ever been a part of or ever seen. It allows for a lot of freedom with the performance.”

Although Hit and Run began in Los Angeles in 2006, when Wilder moved to Denver in 2009, he started a Colorado cast while the Los Angeles company continued for about six months. The original cast eventually disbanded, but the Denver ensemble endured in a city where musical improv was still uncommon.

Weekly performances helped the company refine its craft while contributing to the growth of Denver’s broader musical improv scene. Hit and Run now performs at RISE Comedy, a Ballpark District theater that has become a gathering place for local improvisers.

“It never occurred to me at the beginning of this to think about whether it would last,” Wilder says. “The form of the group has changed a lot over the years. Looking back at where I started, I had no idea what I was doing when I launched this boat, but at the same time, that’s how you grow. If I had said, ‘I don’t know how to do this, so I’m not going to do this,’ then none of this would have happened. It was a huge change, a huge risk, to keep this going, but as I look back at what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team and think about what comes next, it makes me so proud.”

Wilder summarizes the philosophy of the group with a lesson he learned from longtime Second City Hollywood musical director Michael Pollock: “Craft liberates genius.” According to Wilder, mastering structure allows performers to stop worrying about mechanics and focus on the present moment.

“When we have a better understanding of the structure and form, that helps with the part of the brain that needs structure, and then you can engage your heart to show your audiences what they came to see,” he says.

The results can be as strange as they are theatrical. Wilder still remembers a performance about 16 years ago when eight cast members spontaneously combined their bodies into a dragon. Other moments are smaller: two performers singing the same unexpected words at once, or an audience member asking afterward how long the group rehearsed material that had never existed before that night.

Hit and Run’s current cast includes 12 performers and a rotating roster of three music directors. The troupe rehearses at least twice a month, not to prepare specific songs or stories in advance, but to sharpen their command of narrative, music and collaboration.

“If we aren’t learning or exploring, then in my opinion, we aren’t improvising,” he says. “If we aren’t learning or exploring, then in my opinion, we aren’t improvising. Improv is a discovery process. There is always something needed to learn and engage with, and if we just do the same thing over and over again, it’s not growth.”

The group is still experimenting with genre, alternate story structures and ways to expand its musical sound. Wilder’s long-running ambition is to stage a completely improvised musical with a full band rather than one or two accompanists. Whatever changes, the mission will remain focused on producing polished theatrical work rather than asking audiences to admire improvisation merely because it is difficult.

“I ain’t done. The group isn’t done. All of us are incredibly passionate about it,” Wilder says. “We want to be a great improv show, but more than that, we want to be a great show that just happens to be improvised.”

Hit and Run’s 20th anniversary show begins at 8 p.m. Friday, July 17, at RISE Comedy in Denver. The company will return at 7 p.m. July 31 during the RISE Comedy Festival, appearing with TV Unscripted. Tickets and additional information are available at hnrimprov.com.