Olympia comedy team will return for reunion show

Both friendship and improv come naturally to the Heroes of Improv Comedy, who’ll perform a hometown 10th reunion show Saturday in Olympia.

During a recent video-phone interview, three of the four heroes — brothers Ben and Tim Eisner and DK Reinemer, all of Portland — were riffing and reminiscing, showing their comic chemistry while talking about their long history and the ins and outs of improv.

“I haven’t performed in about a year,” Ben Eisner said. “But it’s like riding a bike … when you can’t see.”

DK Reinemer joke’s overlapped Ben Eisner’s. “When you don’t do it in a while, you’re really rusty,” he said.

Ben Eisner laughed. “Exactly,” he said. “You’re a danger to yourself and others.”

The Eisners and DK Reinemer and his brother Yonk Reinemer of Bellingham have been doing improv since the late ’90s. They helped Ryan Stiles of the long-running improv show “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” and found Bellingham’s The Upfront Theatre, where Yonk still performs and teaches improv.

But their friendship together goes back a lot further than that. The Eisners’ mom, Marty Butzen, and the Reinemers’ mom, Carmela Courtney, worked together as midwives.

“I think I was at Tim’s birth as a little kid,” DK Reinemer said. “We’ve known each other forever.”

“Many people in Olympia approach me and say, ‘Your mom delivered my son or my daughter,’” Ben Eisner said.

And the quartet has plenty of other Olympia connections. Yonk Reinemer graduated from Capital High School in 1994, Ben Eisner from Olympia High School in 1995 and Tim Eisner from Olympia in 1998. DK Reinemer attended both schools on his way to a GED.

DK Reinemer is doing improv and working as marketing director at Curious Comedy in Portland. The Eisners, sons of Olympia author Keith Eisner, now work designing board games. They have their own company, Weird City Games.

“Board game design is like improv,” DK Reinemer said.

“You use improv skills every day,” Ben Eisner said. “We’re improvising this interview.”

If that’s the case, the two sets of brothers were developing the act long before they knew what improv was.

Saturday’s show will include both short form improv of the sort familiar to fans of “Whose Line,” and a long-form piece that begin with an audience suggestion and include some inspiration from the foursome’s lives together.

People keep asking them for more hometown shows, they said, but the impetus to do a show at this particular moment came when a Facebook memory popped up on someone’s timeline. It was a post about their last Olympia show, which was in 2007.

“We want to thank Facebook for putting us back together,” Ben Eisner said.

“They’re sponsoring our show,” DK Reinemer joked.

“It’s a great opportunity to get back to Olympia, and reconnect to our extended circle of friends and people we grew up with,” Tim Eiser added.

This story was originally published December 29, 2017 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Olympia comedy team will return for reunion show."