Submitted photo Barking Dog, Screaming Puppets: It's not the new action movie from Ang Lee, it's the where and what for improv fans right here in Bethesda. Pictured are puppets Dan Larson, Mike Young, Shira Katz, Lauren Fisher, Heather Caskey, Wendy Donigian and Tony Liberato.

The Screaming Puppets are not really screaming. They aren't actually puppets, either. And usually, it has to be a Thursday evening if you want to see them in action. Tonight, they are, well, rehearsing.

"I try to stay away from the word 'rehearse,'" says Dan Larson, at 39, the self-described oldest puppet. "We workshop."

Sometimes they workshop in Larson's basement, over in Ellicott City, these seven practitioners of improvisational comedy the script-free performance genre in which actors create their own dialogue and action, making it up as they go along. When they're not performing improv games like "first line, last line," "gibberish switch" and "helping hands," the Puppets work at a handful of professions, from massage therapist to intellectual property lawyer. And some of them don't have any qualms about admitting that even improvisers need to practice.

"Like any sports team, we practice skills so that we're ready for anything," explains Lauren Fisher, 34, an attorney for America Online who lives in Tysons Corner. For Fisher, doing improv is a wonderful release from her job protecting AOL's intellectual property rights.

"In improv, the answer is always yes, and you don't think before you speak," she observes. "It's the opposite of being a lawyer."

Not that she and her fellow puppets do anything unethical -- not even close.

"We are a family show and we don't resort to toilet humor," she says proudly. "It's too easy to get the cheap laugh."

Shira Katz, 27, agrees.

"Life itself is funny," she observes. "If you just go for the joke, you lose the respect of the audience."

Gibberish

The upstairs room at the Barking Dog is a wonderful space, all tin ceilings and cozy sofas with a big stained-glass skylight in the middle from which a disco mirror-ball hangs over a small wooden dance floor. From this platform the Screaming Puppets launch their particular brand of comedy.

Wendy Donigian, a 27-year-old actress from Baltimore[ is trying to explain to Mike Young, 35, about the four-headed love child she has just given birth to and the hit man she's planning to send to Peru. Moments before she was moving from English to gibberish as an archer whose intense rivalry with Larson was reaching homicidal proportions.

"People find it pretty impressive," she admits later, adding that a colleague was a little intimidated after asking that archetypal Monday-morning question, 'So, what'd you do this weekend?'

"I told him I'd performed with my improv comedy group," she reports with a wry grin. "And he said '[My weekend] can't really compete with that.'"

Out on the dance floor with her fellow puppets, Donigian is no shrinking violet, although she does seem the least talkative when the group sits down to discuss who they are and what they do. Still, being the quietest Screaming Puppet doesn't make you an introvert.

"I come across as being more extroverted than I am," admits Katz, a certified massage therapist. "When everybody is onstage together, it's easy for us to appear comfortable."

That sense of comfort comes from knowing each other well. Three and a half years ago in an Ellicott City Barnes & Noble, Larson had his a-ha moment and decided to start an improvisational troupe of his own.

"It's an outlet," he says. "We can all act like kids; it's the coolest thing in the world."

Cool and very much in fashion, thanks to shows like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" But improvisational comedy isn't new. Enthusiasts trace the art form back to the 16th century, when the Commedia Dell'Arte -- travelling troupes of spontaneous comedic performers -- was all the rage in Europe. In this century, Viola Spolin pioneered the idea of theater games and introducing creativity through spontaneity. And Keith Johnstone, professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and co-founder of Loose Moose Theatre, brought improv into the 21st century with his scholarly writings, studies the his creation of an international movement called Theatresports.

On the spot

What the Screaming Puppets do is known as "spot" improv: the performers take their cue from audience suggestions and create short scenes, preferably funny ones.

"Sometimes, the audience really knows what to do; they're trying to stump us," says Fisher. "Other times, we'll have an audience that's completely unfamiliar with what we're trying to do."

Either way, though, the interaction between performer and observer is what ultimately makes improv work.

"The energy we give out is a direct result of what we get from the audience," Larson says. "If you're having fun up, there the audience will have fun."

The Puppets are having fun, there's no doubt about that. Young, a computer programmer for the U.S. Postal Service, points out that the best shows are the ones where the Puppets extend their obvious camaraderie out to the audience and make them part of the show.

"I love working with these guys," he says. "We're all comfortable with each other onstage and we try to include the audience.

"We've actually gotten a good relationship with some audience members."

That's when it really jumps, he says: when improv savvy folks show up and take things to a higher level.

Fisher says the Barking Dog is the perfect place to come for a night of comedy, complete with good food, attentive service and the seemingly inexhaustible supply of ideas springing forth from the heads of the Screaming Puppets.

"There's a world of 200 or more improv games," she insists. "We get them from books, from friends of friends, we make them up."

"Dubbed," "The Doo-wop Song,' even 'The Worst Game Ever.' Multiply each puppet by a couple of hundred games and there seem to be enough permutations to last a thousand Thursdays without the same story popping up twice.

"We all have our own story," Katz observes. "I think it's neat to get together and share in the beauty and fun of improv.

"Ultimately people go to the theater to see a good story," she adds. "If we can tell a good story, scripted or unscripted, people are going to be satisfied."

The Screaming Puppets perform improvisational comedy at 8 p.m. Thursdays at The Barking Dog, 4723 Elm St., Bethesda. Admission is $5. Call 301-654-0022.