Arts festival includes improv workshops
Arts in the Park is known for presenting free summer performances since 2000 in La Porte.
Now the nonprofit organization presents Fall Fox Fest, a new fundraising event on Oct. 16 at Fox Memorial Park to support the 2022 Summer Concert Series.
“Fox Park is part of that wonderful aspect of La Porte, which is all the wonderful nature that is interweaved through the town,” said Gregg Fraley, facilitator of improv workshops at Arts in the Park’s Fall Fox Fest.
“People who don’t know La Porte don’t understand that it really is a unique town when it comes to natural surroundings. Fox Park is part of that beautiful lake and woods so that’s a great setting for an arts festival.”
The fest includes craft vendors such as HotSpot Cafe, Loving Leaves, Pink Zebra, Region Press and Salt of the Earth Sisters along the park’s hillside, and health and fitness organizations such as Boys & Girls Club, Healthy Communities of LaPorte County and Rhythm n’ Beets: Wellness Spot & Therapy.
There are also arts and crafts; food trucks and concessions; pumpkin painting; solo instrumental musicians performing; children’s activities such as outdoor games, sidewalk chalk and face painting; and a silent auction including craft vendor items and tickets to community events.
Weaving demonstrations by Christine Predd, portraiture by caricature artist Dave Russell and exhibits by local artists are featured in Fox Memorial Park’s Dennis F. Smith Amphitheater.
“I love what they’re doing,” Fraley, of Three Oaks, Michigan, said about Fall Fox Fest.
“I think it’s very adventurous. It’s punching above La Porte’s weight. They’re doing something you’d expect in a bigger city so my hat’s off to them. It’s very ambitious and adventurous and I love it.”
Admission is free to the festival but the cost is $40 for the 10 a.m.12:30 p.m. youth improv workshop for ages 10-18 or the 1:30-4 p.m. adult workshop for ages older than 18. Both sessions are led by Fraley, who took improv courses at the Players Workshop of the Second City and iO Theater in Chicago.
Some scholarships are available for the workshops by contacting Arts in the Park.
“If you want to take this course or have any interest at all, you don’t have to be particularly funny or clever or smart to do well with improv. You can be great if you’re a great listener, and anybody who’s interested in exploring performance of any kind can benefit from improv,” Fraley said.
“The workshop will consist mostly of improv games and also what they call scene work so basically two or more people create a scene or some sort of situation from scratch. It’s the basis for all sketch comedy.
“There’s a little bit of pure instruction like how to be open to suggestions that other people are giving you and basically how to think on your feet without thinking too much.”
Fraley, who is a visiting innovation scholar at University of Notre Dame, where he helps the Engineering, Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence Master Program, added that improv not only offers “pure imaginative fun” but can benefit one’s life and work overall.
“Improvisation can teach you a lot about how to behave every day. How you listen to other people and how you respond to other people is inherently an improv skill,” said Fraley, who hosts “Stories From Graceland Pond” from 9:30-11:30 p.m. EDT Tuesdays on WRHC-FM 106.7.
“When you learn how to be a little bit more open and how to be a better listener and how to go with the flow of any situation, you can actually become a better collaborator, a better listener, a more interesting person and you might be funny.”
Fraley, who did stand-up comedy in the 1980s and has done improv shows at the Revival in Chicago, is an entrepreneur who has started several companies including Gregg Fraley Innovation, which he launched in the early 2000s, and the author of the 2007 book “Jack’s Notebook.”
“It’s a business novel about creative problem-solving. It teaches the framework for creative thinking and it’s easy to read. It’s a story but it teaches something kind of profound,” Fraley said.
He is also the founder of the Hairy Buffalo improv group in New Buffalo.
“Improv is doing art,” Fraley said.
“It’s full-bodied, hands-on, all-out self-expression.”