About the Artist:

The Focus Group is a Bangor-based improv troupe that specializes in a combination of short- and long-form improvisation that relies equally on quick jokes, character development and narrative scene-building.

The group began in the early days of 2009, when a group of friends connected by their shared theatrical pasts decided to go ahead and start an improv troupe despite VERY little actual experience. Despite that lack, the Focus Group would go on to become a mainstay of the area’s artistic and creative communities. The makeup of the group would ebb and flow as new friends entered the fold and old friends moved across the state, the country and even the globe.

The Focus Group’s foundation is long-form improv, a narrative format built around scene and character, but they also take great joy in the fast-paced joke-driven humor of short-form. Bringing the two together is what gives the group its identity.

Over the years, the Focus Group has performed in many different venues and alongside many different troupes. Aside from the monthly shows – first at their early home at Brewer’s Next Generation Theatre, later at their residency at the Bangor Arts Exchange – the group has performed at the Bangor Opera House, Johnson Hall in Gardiner, the Theater at Monmouth, the Portland Media Center and the Portland Improv Festival, as well as other civic and cultural events all over the region. The group also founded and curates the annual ImprovME Festival, bringing troupes from all over the state (and sometimes beyond!) together for two nights of stellar comedic performance.