Will Luera wants to improve Sarasota's improv scene

Will Luera was about to take the plunge. His hands crossed on his chest and eyes closed, Luera prepared to lean back and let his friends catch him. But, unlike most trust falls, this one wasn’t planned — and it was happening in front of a live audience in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Just as Luera began his descent backwards, his improv castmates walked offstage into the wings. He hit the bottom of the stage, and the audience’s eruption of laughter catapulted into the rafters. Mission accomplished.

Born in Chicago and living the last 22 years in Boston (two hotbeds of the American comedy scene), Luera, 40, moved with wife, Maria, and two young daughters to Sarasota last fall to become the director of improvisation at Florida Studio Theatre. 

Luera oversees FST’s improv troupe, classes and weekly performances, and hopes to expand its performance repertoire. This includes not only the weekly Saturday night shows but also the 7th annual Sarasota Improv Festival (July 9 to July 11), which features 21 improv companies from around the country.

Luera, however, isn’t satisfied with being the FST improv figurehead. He wants to lead the Sarasota improv scene into innovative and experimental forms of improv comedy outside of theater games à la “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

“In my opinion, if you want to nurture a community and build an audience, you have to start to offer a variety of short-form, game-based improv and long-form improv,” says Luera.

His first few weeks on the job, Luera spent time observing and participating in FST Improv’s weekly shows to get to know the company regulars and their style of play.

“The one thing I knew I didn’t want to do was to come here and insult the culture of FST Improv and FST and the community of Sarasota,” says Luera. “I recognized that I’m the new guy here and I just wanted to learn what this place is about.”

Eight months later, Luera says the company is halfway through converting its repertoire to include long- and free-form improv, both of which rely on a basic plot as a starting point for the actors. For example, rather than play off audience suggestions like in short form, in long form the actors have a story line, but it’s up to them to fill in the events, songs and dialogue as they go. 

The ensemble’s first venture into long form is the musical improv show “When X Meets Y,” a parody of the romantic-comedy musical. 

Luera’s long-term goals for FST Improv include creating a season as deep as the FST’s popular Mainstage and Cabaret offerings and producing six to seven different shows at any given time during the season.

Luera’s love of exploration and storytelling run deep. Growing up in Chicago, he was equally at home in front of his chemistry set or making short comic videos with his brothers that riffed on popular movies at the time, such as “Back to the Future.”

“If you look at my improv playing style to this day 25 years later, I still do a lot of that, where I like to explore the world and what else is going on in the world of any given scene,” says Luera.

Luera moved in 1992 to Boston to attend Boston College. The computer science and physics double major craved a more playful outlet and thought about auditioning for a show.

“I was afraid that I wouldn’t know how to handle the memorization of monologues and preparation as an actor,” says Luera. “But one day I saw a flier for auditions that didn’t require a monologue or any prep for actors. I just showed up and auditioned.”

That audition was for the Committee of Creative Enactments, one of Boston College’s improv comedy troupes.

Luera became one of the many zany zealots who inhabits Boston’s revered comedy scene. Luera became a member of the most prolific and popular improv troupe: ImprovBoston. He constantly took classes around town and saw there was a gap in the comedic offerings. In 1999, Luera left the safety of ImprovBoston to start his self-financed company, Blue Screen, which focused on long-form improv.

“The first long shows I did, we’d have four or five people in the audience,” says Luera. “But you go to Boston now 15 years later and 80% of the shows are long form.”

“This is easily the most diverse cast I’ve ever worked with ... We have nearly every perspective represented. I’ve never had that before.”

– Will Luera, director of improv at Florida Studio Theatre

And though Sarasota’s improv and comedy scene isn’t as advanced as Boston or Chicago, the improv veteran is confident in improv’s future in the local theatrical community because of his resources: the company. Whereas the college towns of Cambridge, Mass., and Boston, are inhabited by what Luera calls an army of “skinny jeans and plaid shirts,” Sarasota’s theater community is diverse.

“This is easily the most diverse cast I’ve ever worked with,” says Luera. “I’m Latino. We have two black performers. One performer is half Latina and half Middle Eastern. We have age diversity with 20- and 50-year-olds in the troupe. We have a split between straight and gay, conservative and super liberal. We have nearly every perspective represented. I’ve never had that before.”

Armed with that diversity and perspective, Luera hopes to not only elevate the improv art form in Sarasota but to also seek the truth of life through humor.

“The biggest misconception and trap is that people think improv needs to be funny, like joke funny,” says Luera. “The humor of improv comes from empathy and recognition. It comes from the truth of the scene. I do want improv to be seen as theater because it is theater.”