British freestyle rapper headlines return of Sarasota Improv Festival at FST
Comic improviser Will Naameh is the first to admit that he looks like the least likely person to be performing rapid-fire freestyle rapping improvisations. A Brit now living and working in Edinburgh, he has gained popularity in Europe on the comedy and improv circuits as his rap persona MC Hammersmith will be the headlining act during the return of the Sarasota Improv Festival.
His performances at 4 and 9 p.m. July 22 at Florida Studio Theatre mark his American improv festival debut, and comes at the close of the first Sarasota Improv Festival since 2019, due to COVID. The three-day event will feature 29 different acts from 80 artists, plus a day of 16 workshops, including one about freestyle rapping.
Naameh said he relishes meeting audiences who don’t know him or what he does.
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“The way I portray myself when I walk up there, and no one has any idea who I am, I seem to radiate an impression that I’m an accountant, some middle manager who just walked into the room,” he said in a Zoom interview from his home in Scotland. “They’re expecting a comedian and we get a substitute teacher instead. I lower the stakes, make them think I can’t freestyle. This is not the typical face, the look, or the type you get in freestyle.”
He introduced MC Hammersmith in 2016 as part of his work with other musical improv groups and solo shows. By February 2020 it became a full-time job, at last for the short time before COVID made that a challenge. He started teaching freestyle rap to kids on Zoom.
Like every other form of improv, what he does requires hours of practice, to hone the ease and comfort that makes it possible to take an idea and run it to the end of a scene by himself.
“Any freestyle rapper will actually practice. It just takes years and years of developing a beat, trying to make it right,” he said in a Zoom chat. “I’ve memorized 15,000 words from my rhyming dictionary. If you can’t pull a rhyme out of thin air, you’re in trouble.”
He said he practices about 30 minutes a day unless he’s doing a show. “That counts as practice.”
In his head, he said, the process of freestyling is simple: “barely. I try to stay a half line ahead of myself, thinking of a target line and setting it up.” Unlike some other improv music and sketch groups, he records his performances to remember what he’s created, at least the good stuff, some of which has been collected on an album.
In his shows, he’ll do a couple of short hip-hop routines. “Everyone holds up an object and I jump to the crowd and rhyme with every object I touch. Maybe 75% of that is improvised because probably a quarter of it is things that people have held up before. There have been so many times people have held up a train ticket.”
He came to MC Hammersmith while working on other musical improv shows and appearing in “Spontaneous Sherlock,” an improvised Sherlock Holmes show that followed the popular TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch and “Elementary” with Jude Law.
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As that mania died down, there was “Spontaneous Potter” and the show “Harry Potter and the Chambers of Victoria’s Secrets.” Clearly, it was an unofficial off-shoot of the popular book and film franchise.
He has built a fan base from rapping clips posted on YouTube or his own Website. “I’m not a face on national TV, not a household name, far from it, but I have a keen loyal following of nerds who for some reason part with their money to see me live.”
Whenever he travels, Naameh said he seeks out improv festivals because “it’s such a welcoming community. I know I’ll be connected to people who I’ve either already met or are friends of friends. Improv is so ‘yes and...’ and so collaborative, people are so willing to include you in some kind of creative event. At a festival, everyone is an improviser, supporting each other.”
In Sarasota, he will be sharing the stage with some of “my closest friends,” including performers with North Coast (“I love them to bits”) and the stars of “HERE! (The Improvised) Musical,” made up of Tara DeFrancisco and Rance Rizzutto who “were two of my original improv teachers. I see them once every few years and get to do shows with people I used to really look up to. That’s wonderful for someone who lives in a small improv community.”
Sarasota Improv Festival
MC Hammersmith performs at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. July 22 at Florida Studio Theatre, 1265 First St., Sarasota. Tickets are $25. The festival runs July 20-22. Single tickets for most shows are $10. Passes for one, two or three days are available for $20-$79. Workshops will be held July 22. Tickets are $35 for two-hour sessions. For more details: 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: British freestyle rapper MC Hammersmith headlines Sarasota Improv Fest
