Why is Ricky Wayne so committed to improv? The 36-year-old actor has been risking everything in front of audiences since he was in high school, and all these years later, he’s more devoted to the form than ever. If you’ve had the good luck to see him on the first Sunday evening of each month at American Stage (performing with the superb Gavin Hawk), you know that he’s an amazingly resourceful, at times brilliant performer, who treats each hour-long performance as a test of his intellect, emotional range, and comedic instincts — not to mention his willingness to look ridiculous.
“I’ll never stop doing improv,” Wayne tells me over coffee. “I would go insane if I didn’t keep seeing it, doing it, thinking about it, reading about it. It’s an obsession for me. It’s like therapy, it’s a release… It’s very freeing.”
Wayne’s only been in the Tampa Bay area since 2005. He grew up near San Francisco, and was still in adolescence (and a “class clown”) when he started Jazz Odyssey, an improv group that had nothing to do with jazz. Out of high school, he enrolled as an actor at the American Conservatory Theatre; but before finishing at ACT, he entered the training program at The Groundlings, the premier improv group in the Los Angeles area, feeder of alumni like Will Ferrell, Kathy Griffin, Jon Lovitz and Cheryl Hines to TV and film.
He was with The Groundlings for four and a half years, spending the first two years learning “the ins and outs of improv as an art form,” and the remainder learning to write sketch comedy and perform. But in a highly competitive environment, Wayne failed to make it to the highest level — he was told his material was “too dark” — and the disappointment sent him into “a pretty hefty depression.” He came out of his depression in time to get married “to the wrong person,” have a baby, decide to move to the Tampa area (where he had family), and get divorced.
But he didn’t stop training. He enrolled in Kathy Laughlin’s Performers Studio Workshop in Tampa, studied the Eric Morris technique of acting, and “through that training and getting an agent, I’ve worked more, and booked more, had more opportunities in the Southeast than I did in four and a half years in L.A.” Some of his TV appearances include roles on Burn Notice and The Glades, Army Wives, five Sci-Fi Channel movies (in two of which he was the lead character), several movies of the week, and the film Real Steel with Hugh Jackman.
He accepts the work willingly. “I would love to make a living doing improv,” he says. “It’s just not going to happen. Even in L.A. it doesn’t happen.” Surprisingly, he’s performed only once in “legitimate” Tampa Bay area theater — when he portrayed cellist Carl in Michael Hollinger’s Opus at American Stage in 2010. He played the musician as a temperamental visionary, and was easily one of the best things in a strong show. Though he’s occasionally auditioned for other parts locally, he strangely hasn’t won any.
But there’s lots of demand for him on TV. “I’m a character actor,” he says. “Most of the stuff that I do, I usually play the really outlandish, crazy, sociopathic, psychopathic character.” He estimates that he’s played a murderer on film and video about 18 times and claims that he doesn’t mind, even though he sometimes finds it difficult to return to his normal, law-abiding self. “I have to do a lot of what Eric [Morris] calls ‘instrumentals,’ which is, basically getting yourself to a place where you’re not allowing the character to overtake you.” He finds also that his 6-year-old son is “a great impetus for that — he’s really, really good at getting me back to my reality.” In fact, it’s because of his son that Wayne stays in the Bay area.
Anyway, give him a look. He’s doing a show called The Memory every first Sunday with Gavin Hawk, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you’re missing one of the great joys in local theater. Expect a lightning-fast thinker with a great wealth of material, a pro who combines natural talent with serious training.
And expect to laugh a lot.
This article appears in Feb 23-29, 2012.