Learning to improv: Mission Street takes a comic turn

Something funny is happening near 17^th and Mission streets.

Behind the paper-covered windows of a former Sprint cellphone store, a new comedy training center has opened, offering improv classesfour nights a week and occasionally on weekends. Endgames Improv has been around since 2010 and also holds classes elsewhere in the city and in Oakland, but its lease of 2081 Mission St. is the company’s first large space of its own.

Max McCal, one of the founders of Endgames and now one of its directors, said Endgames used to rent out space at 333 Valencia St. but their lease expired and the new rent was unaffordable.

“This is definitely the biggest move we’ve made,” he said.

The Mission Street location is offering classes in long form improv on Mondays through Thursdays as well as occasional drop-in classes on Saturdays. Endgames also teaches a class at Oakstop in Oakland and has a classroom at Stage Werx Theatre on Valencia Street, where it puts on regular performances.

The lease of the new space follows a year of big growth for the organization, McCal said, noting that among other things Endgames has gone from two nights of shows a week to six.

“I think the word is out on improv – as a form of comedy and performance, as a way to improve your communication abilities and as a philosophy,” he said.

On a Thursday evening last week, the new training center’s first week in operation, a group of more than a dozen students stood in a circle with their instructor and introduced themselves before breaking into an exercise where they pretended to fight with invisible samurai swords, acting out dramatic death scenes.

Although the space still needs work – it will eventually be renovated so that there are three separate classrooms – McCal makes no secret of his happiness with Endgames’ new home.

“Brand new fucking training center,” he told students before that Thursday class got started, “I just get chills when I say that.”