Celebrate National Poetry Month in April with Free Verse, the poetry-and-improv-comedy show from Madison-based improv team Big Honey. The show will feature three world-class Madison-area poets reading their work to inspire Big Honey's bighearted, sweet-and-sticky comedy, culminating in the writers and performers improvising poems together, inspired by audience suggestions!
You Are Tearing Me Apart Improv! is the show where fascinatingly weird and obscure pieces of cult cinema lore are presented in short, five-minute talks. Our improvisers then use these delightful train wrecks as the launchpad for high-energy, longform comedy sets.
COST:
Pay What You Can (Donations Encouraged) - RSVP not required
WHEN:
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026
Doors at 6:45 PM, Show at 7:00 PM
WHERE:
The Forward Club at 917 E Mifflin St, Gate 6, Madison, WI 53703
Please direct any questions about the show to Amalgam Improv at contact@amalgamimprov.com. To learn more about our upcoming performances, jams, and course, visit our website: www.amalgamimprov.com.
This show is produced by Amalgam Improv.
Great poetry and improv share the same creative backbones: Transcendent surprise! Intense focus! Playful joy! They cut reality with a sharp blade one minute and melt you into bliss the next. Combining them shows that poetry is not esoteric and unknowable; what is profound can also be fun! Part epiphany, part ephemera, improv and poetry weave unexpected connections to unveil revelation and truth. Watch these two art forms brawl and bloom together.
The April 22nd Free Verse features these lyrical geniuses:
Matthew Guenette, author of Doomscroll, Vasectomania, and American Busboy, is a poet-teacher whose work has been described as "vividly rendered,” "gorgeously expansive, and “a gift.”
Chessy Normile is poet-in-residence at Ripon College and author of Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, which The New York Times named in its list of Best Poetry of 2020, saying its mix of “gorgeous strangeness” and “near-silliness” will “trick you into feeling more than you were quite prepared to feel.”
Richard Vargas is a California native and longtime Wisconsinite whose latest book, The Screw City Poems, takes inspiration from his current home, Rockford, IL. Reviewing that work, poet Dan Denton called Richard “a modern day lion of the literary underground, and one of the best working class poets to ever hold a college degree.”
This show is geared for adult ears, though we won’t purposefully be vulgar.
Note: Though it may not happen, expect PG-13 level content to be on the safe side.
*Enter the bar and performance space by Gate 6 and take the door on the right.
This is an indoor show. Seating is first come, first served, so we suggest arriving thirty minutes prior to showtime when doors open to have your pick of seats.
Please direct any questions about the show to Amalgam Improv at contact@amalgamimprov.com or 513-310-7915.