The Center for Improv Advancement, or the C.I.A as its founders and agents promote it, has been a home base group for local actors to learn and perform the art of comedic improvisation since 2008, and currently, the C.I.A is on the mission to raise enough funds to give Bakersfield its first comedy club or theater.

Residents may have seen the story on the news, but the talented comedians and diverse actors are out for more than just a laugh. According to founder and current C.I.A Director Robert Long, 43, they are primarily trying to set a location to serve, train, and provide a safe haven for local high school students, as well as trying to have a location that will enable the C.I.A to perform shows dedicated to the charity and community outreach.

“There’s a lot of stuff we want to do that’s difficult to do without having a home base to operate out of,” said Long about the idea. “One of the first and foremost things we want to do is create a community, which means we want to be able to offer improv classes and expand what we do to reach as many people as possible.”

The group has aspirations to reach beyond high schools and also offer improvisation classes to students in junior high and elementary schools. They have currently worked with, and provided workshops to Shafter, Independence, East, Frontier, and Bakersfield High School. Among graduated students who have continued to pursue the group are Tyler Plao, 20, and Eric Daines, 21. The high school experience was so profound on Daines that he has continued as a trainer for the C.I.A workshops.

“Being around this group of people, it just made me so happy, so I kept doing it and it became something that I want to do for a career. So it just happened to be one of the best things for me to get into at a young age,” said Plao about his experience. “I think that’s what we want to bring to high school students as well, just something that they can throw their hat into just to see if they like it.”

Long listed several benefits that develop within a person after taking an improv class. For students, it is often a boost in confidence and the ability to find something they love. For others, like Pablo Reyes, 34, a social studies high school teacher, it has provided him with the skill-set to become a better teacher.

“Essentially, you’re on stage all the time and you have to interact with your students and so on. I find myself a better educator because of it,” said Reyes. “It makes them better students. They love coming to my classroom. They look forward to it and it gets them invested to it.”

Long, who is also a high school teacher, has been teaching theater at Highland for over 10 years, and explained that much like Reyes, improvisational acting has given him the ability to think on his feet when engaging his classroom. He believes that a “real teachable moment” is not a part of a lesson plan.

“Kids don’t stay on track for a lesson plan. They’ll hear something they’re interested in and they’ll want to hear more about that, and so they’ll ask questions that aren’t related to what you planned on teaching today,” he explained. “And you have that moment of inquiry, and they have something they want to know. That’s your opportunity to actually teach them something about life that they’re actively engaged in, which is part of something that you weren’t necessarily going to deliver.”

There is however, a difference between the instructors’ performances in their classrooms from those onstage; they need a venue that will allow them to have a better interaction with a show audience. “There’s a certain amount of intimacy that goes on with improv,” said Long.

The C.I.A’s current venues are not always well lit or able to provide ideal sound quality.

“A lot of people don’t understand the dynamics of seeing comedy and improv live is very different from watching it on TV,” he added. “And where as a standup is one person that can talk into a mic, improvisers are doing sketch comedy, so they’re moving they can’t hold a mic. They’re performing, they’re creating characters. It’s a different animal.”

The ability to build this venue would also enable the service organization to dedicate more shows to charity. The C.I.A has worked with teams for Relay for Life, Scary for Charity, and Campout Against Cancer. Ideally, Long says they would designate a month, such as April to a worthy cause.

Long also mentioned a friend of his whose foster child suffers from a meningitis related fever, and addressed the case with hopes of being able to help one day, “We’d like to be able to say we’re doing a show for you to raise the money for your treatment.”

For Long, who moved out of his mother’s house at 17 years old, and became involved with improv a year later, having this club is part of a bigger cause.

“At 18, improv kind of became my spirituality, because there are core rules to it that invlolve always saying yes and trusting what’s going on around you, and those are kind of good rules to live by,” said Long of his 25 years worth of improvisational acting. “So I adopted those and I followed the path that those laid out for me and most of the time it’s led me in a decent direction.”

The idea to build a full-fledged comedy club (or theater) infiltrated the C.I.A sometime in June, and they went live with an Indiegogo fund on Aug. 10. The target amount is set at $50,000, and Long is confident that it is obtainable. He cited that Bakersfield’s population consists of 350,000 people, all they need is for one percent of the population to purchase a $14 perk. This ‘perk’ is two tickets to their show, which normally run at $10 per individual.

“Everybody is pretty much in support of the idea of their being a comedy club (or theater) here. It’s a question of getting them to open their wallets and realize that we need you to buy tickets now so that we can make it happen for you,” Long said. And sarcastically added, “cuz everyone goes, ‘yeah, that’s a great idea,’ but Facebook likes don’t equal ticket sales.”

The Indiegogo fund can be accessed directly from their website, CIAcomedy.com. They are currently looking for angels, or as Long jokingly said, “Secret shadowy background people to sponsor the C.I.A, a shadow board, a star chamber as it were.”

For individuals interested in joining the improv group, the C.I.A’s comedy page can be accessed through Facebook.

Long jokingly added, “There is no life without improv.”