If you’re doing short-form improv—that is, if you’re playing the kind of games we see on Whose Line Is It Anyway?—and the material you’re generating sucks, you can stop the pain by tossing out a quick joke and ending the scene.

If you’re doing long-form improv—the style of performance that Alistair Cook is bringing to the Vancouver International Improv Festival—you’re taking a much bigger risk. Long-form improvisations last at least 15 minutes and can go on for more than an hour. You’d better not suck.

This is the ninth year that Cook has produced the festival, which runs Tuesday (October 7) to October 11 at the Roundhouse Performance Centre and the New Revue Stage. Interviewed in the living room of his house off Main Street, Cook says, “I don’t want to say that improvisation should be going one way or the other, but we normally showcase long-form because there’s not as much of it in Vancouver.”

Besides filling his duties at the improv festival, which he has run since 2000, Cook is the artistic director of the experimental improv company !nstant Theatre, and he’s a performer with the Vancouver TheatreSports League.

Despite his insistence that he loves all kinds of improvisation, he clearly has a gourmet’s preference for the long-form style. Although it’s often funny, long-form improv is less about quick laughs and more about the development of elements such as plot and character.

The festival will showcase a number of approaches. Rosa Parks Improv, a Vancouver company composed entirely of women, uses a format it calls It’s Probably Love. According to Cook, this troupe starts with a suggestion from the audience, “then they’ll do a collage of six monologues in six different characters, and then that turns into a bunch of scenes. There might be two or three story lines.” A lot of long-form improvisers blend monologues, scenes, and games in a collage style. Others create more linear plots.

The possibilities for playfulness are endless. Scratch, an Edmonton troupe that will perform at this year’s festival, has fun with film and TV conventions. “What they do is kind of like a buddy-cop movie meets Family Guy,” Cook says.

Samurai Davis Jr. and Dim Sum’s Super Mega Happy Fun Time Improv Show from Atlanta is a full-length improvised Japanese game show. Other companies coming to the festival include Toronto’s PROJECTproject and the award-winning troupes 4Track from New York and Crumbs from Winnipeg. (A full schedule is at www.instanttheatre.com/fest/.)

There will be performances in which players from different companies will combine their talents. There will be workshops, too. And through Tickets Tonight, all-access pass allows holders to see 20 shows for $40.

“I’m bringing in some of the greatest improv companies in the world,” Cook asserts. “I hope Vancouver comes.”