Danger Boat Featured on Marketplace

At Danger Boat Productions, we believe in the transformative power of humor and creativity. From laugh-out-loud improv comedy shows to civic engagement projects that bring communities together, we’ve made it our mission to create work that’s as entertaining as it is impactful. Now, our fearless leader, Tane Danger, is sharing the story of our journey on Marketplace’s Odd Jobs segment!

In this fascinating feature, Tane dives into what makes Danger Boat Productions unique. Learn how improv and storytelling can be tools for not just entertainment but also meaningful change. Whether we’re using humor to spark civic discussions or crafting shows that leave audiences smiling, our work stands out because it’s fueled by passion and creativity.

🎧 Ready to tune in? Listen to the Marketplace Odd Jobs segment featuring Tane Danger!

David Brancaccio

On this jobs day, as we financial reporters like to call it, let's check in with odd jobs, odd as in unusual. Now a person who makes money through improvisation.

Tane Danger

My name is Tane Danger, and I'm a professional improviser and host for a living. I always imagine my mother in the grocery store and somebody's like, what is your son doing now? And she's like, how long do you have? The short answer is in a whole bunch of different ways. I think fundamentally what we do is we help people grapple with content that's important, that will affect their lives, and we do it in a way that's fun and they want to be a part of. I went with one of my college improv friends, Brandon Boat, and we started brainstorming an idea for a show where we would take the serious stuff and we would use improv as a way to bring it to life on stage, and that resulted in a show we started doing called The Theater of Public Policy, where we would talk to somebody who is very smart about a particular policy issue or debate. I would interview them on stage and then we would have this team of very talented improvisers who would take all of that as their inspiration for doing entirely unscripted scenes.

We started this thing and we did not have notions that it would be a career or something bigger than that. We thought this would be fun for us, but people really liked it and they were like, oh, this is so cool. I learned something about the long-term healthcare industry or about the Farm Bill, and it was actually really fun and I laughed a lot in it, and so people started coming to the shows quickly. People started asking us, oh, could you come and do this show at our college or could you do it at our conference? And that kind of just snowballed into a thing where within a year or two, Brandon and I were like, oh, this feels like something more and we probably should set up a bank account for this thing because people are paying us to do it. There wasn't sort of a grand plan like this will be our life's work, but it became that kind of our actual parent companies called Danger Boat Productions.

So, Danger Boat has really grown from the Theater of Public Policy as the initial thing to a broader, like we are doing different kinds of shows and workshops and trainings and me hosting things and whatnot. One of the ways that Danger Boat is most often doing work is that folks will have a conference or an event and they'll want us to come in and bring it to life on stage through improv. And so at a lot of these conferences, we'll do a type of show where we attend the conference all day and we do a show that reflects back here's everything that was presented in this conference in a 15, 20, 30 minute improv show.

This is a totally true story. We had an accounting group bring us out for their conference, and the session that was meant to inspire our show was literally an entire presentation about the differences between the 990 tax form and the 990 P tax form. We listened to that and then we did an entire improv show about the differences between these different tax forms and this entire accounting conference gave us a standing ovation at the end of it. Anytime now somebody is like, I don't know what we do is kind of dry. Can you actually do comedy about this? I'm like, let me tell you, yes, we absolutely can.

David Brancaccio

Do you do a strange job that you'd like to share with us? Email Morningreport@marketplace.org for this series we're calling. What's that like? We have listeners who repair race cars, who produce weirdly soothing ASMR for a living. Keep 'em coming. We'll keep producing. I'm David Brancaccio, marketplace Morning Report from APM, American Public Media.

After you’ve listened, we’d love to work with you! What inspires you about Tane’s story? Do you have a cool project that you’d like to work together on? Please reach out to us and let us know.