Howard Semones started his performance career at the age of three singing The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" in front of a jukebox for strangers in a bus station and has since performed in such exotic places as Iceland and South Carolina. Eventually Howard moved to Denver where he began explorations into improv comedy and appeared in three plays, "The Food Chain," "10 Naked Men" and "Shopping and F*cking." Recently he made his film debut in the award-winning short film, En Filmen Experimentalen and appeared as Storefront Zombie #2 in If You Can't Eat 'Em… He currently directs and performs with the local Denver improv troupe, Monkey's Uncle.How were you first introduced to improv comedy?
In 1998 or 99, a gentleman came into my part-time job with flyers for improv classes I'd been told many times to do stand-up, but all my humor came from bouncing off others so decided to take the class. Turns out it was one of those acceptance-into-a-cult moments sans the white sneakers, Flavor-Aid and Snuggie robe. The robe I refused because it was bedazzled.
Who were some of your comedic heroes growing up?
Mostly stand-up comedians like Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, Elaine Boosler, Phil Hartman and Lois "Sorority Girls From Hell" Bromfield. Basically any comedian with big hair and loud pastel shirts. As for writers, you can't go wrong with early Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers.
When and how did Monkey's Uncle form?
After begging my improv instructor to form a group, we finally held auditions for Monkey's Uncle's birthing group, LaughLines. When that didn't pan out we narrowed the group to the five strongest players and had our first real gig in 2001 at Jazz@Jack's when they were still on Platte. That first show was a long mess. Afterwards the director stepped down and left me to pick up the pieces. Thankfully, we had Matt Wallington who had been in the community for close to a decade and helped Matt Krupa, Mike Sjerven and I avoid many of the rookie mistakes. We had even more help refining the group when Larry Epstein brought his years of experience in. We finally added some female energy a few years ago with the addition of Shari Myers.
What have been some of the highlights of your improv career with Monkey's Uncle?
Making very close friendships with five very talented people is the main one. Our superhero opening (including costumes) turned out to be a huge success. And one year we found ourselves performing for a nurses' convention at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the IMAX theater in front of the screen performing for 200 - 300 extremely responsive people. That was us soaking in awesome sauce.
What is it about improvisation that you enjoy the most?
Working up the audience to the point where the show has to stop because the audience can't stop laughing is the best, but really enjoy the fact that no one -- including the performer talking -- knows what's next.
How has the improv scene in Denver changed since you started performing?
It's grown ginormous. I've seen medium-form grow out of groups needing to make themselves unique. The positive of that is there is a type of improv and style of humor for nearly any audience.
You occasionally team up with other improv troupes like Rodents of Unusual Size for shows like When Animals Improv. How are those shows different than other Monkey's Uncle performances?
Groups like Rodents help us strengthen our performance. They tend towards cleaner show and we just let our audience take us where they demand, so it's always challenging to keep a scene clean but funny as well. It also gives us fresh perspective and helps us form ideas that make Monkey shows better. Plus there is always the more people on stage, the bigger the potential audience. That's why we're in talks with The Denver Wigs, which has hundreds of players, to do a combo show. A witty name escapes us currently. Simian Toupee? We'll work on it.
