T2P2’s Tane Danger: ‘If there was ever a time when we needed each other, it’s now’
Published on MinnPost, 04/03/2020
Where can you go for advice in a crisis? Ask an improviser. No, really. Who is better at making things up on the fly? At solving problems with the tools and materials at hand? Who is most willing to try the untried?
Tane Danger, co-founder of The Theater of Public Policy, aka T2P2, is an improviser. He has performed, taught, and directed improv theater since 2003, when he was a student at Gustavus Adolphus. He started T2P2 in 2011 with Brandon Boat, a fellow Gustie alum.
T2P2 is a hybrid of laughs and serious topics. At each show at the Bryant Lake Bowl, T2P2’s theater home, Danger interviews a newsmaker, policymaker or big thinker on an issue that matters: race, education, the environment, gender equity, health care and public safety, to name just a few. (So far, he has interviewed more than 500 people.) Then the show’s cast of improvisers takes everything that’s been said and turns it into unscripted improv comedy theater.
In 2014, Danger was named a Bush Fellow. He used his fellowship to earn a Master’s of Public Policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, studying how improv theater can inform and improve politics and public policy.
Never have those skills been more useful than they are at this moment, in the thick of our global crisis. In two short weeks, Danger went from hosting a live show at the BLB to hosting a live-streamed show on Zoom. We spoke by phone on Wednesday evening. This interview has been edited and condensed.
MinnPost: Before Friday, March 13, what did your life look like?
Tane Danger: We opened the spring season of T2P2 on Monday, March 9. It was a great show. We talked about the census and had a good crowd. A lot of our season ticket holders and regulars were there. On Tuesday or Wednesday, I did a fun quiz show – a custom quiz show Brandon and I created – for a Head Start organization in Burnsville. On Thursday, I left for Florida, where my family is, for spring break.
Every day while I was there, the world fell apart a little bit more. Over five days, all of our business for March and April disappeared, walked away or indefinitely postponed. My partner, Eric, kept saying, “We’ll always remember this trip.”
MP: And you had just bought a house.
TD: We were supposed to close yesterday or the day before, but thankfully they let us move the closing up a week so we could get in here. Then stay home, basically. People ask, “Wasn’t it crazy to move right now?” It was, but it’s also nice to have something else to think about.
MP: What else did you have lined up? Because you always have a lot of things going on.
TD: I teach a class at the U of M design school called “Improvisation for Design.” While I was on spring break, we got the notice that all classes would go online. I spent a couple days thinking, “How am I going to teach improv online? Something that is so much about being in physical proximity with other people and connecting with other people?” It didn’t fall apart, but it dramatically changed.