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Lee White (left) and Stephen Sim practice their moves for their upcoming tour. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Euro trip! Winnipeg comedy duo CRUMBS is taking its long-form improv comedy overseas for the 13th time.
   
The amusement abroad began in 2001 after Stephen Sim and Lee White met some generous Germans at the Seattle International Improv Festival the previous year.
   
"They were very impressed with the festival and decided to start their very own international festival in Berlin. They really liked us and invited us to go out to this inaugural festival," says Sim, 39.         "There were a lot of improvisers in Germany and Europe that saw that Berlin show and, the next year, each wanted us to go to their own town — plus the Berlin festival wanted us back, as well.
   
"We went to this festival thinking, ‘Wow, we get to go to Europe,’ and then they invited us back the next year. It was like, ‘Wow, twice?’ — and then more people saw us and they wanted us back a third time. Every single year it was like, ‘Well, that will be the last year,’ but it just kept growing and building, we kept hitting new cities and new countries, and the shows kept getting bigger."
   
Eleven years later, CRUMBS’ European tours are almost a given; the duo is already booked to go back this fall and spring 2013.
   
So how do Sim and White afford these overseas adventures?
   
"The reason why we’re lucky in Europe is not just their love of improv, but that we get to teach as much as we do over there, which pays for most of it," says White, 38. "As you know, the theatre world doesn’t make a lot of money from just butts in seats, so we’re lucky we can travel and teach as well as perform."
   
It may come as a surprise that classes from an English-speaking comedy duo would be so popular in places where English isn’t the official language.
   
"But if it’s not their first language, it’s their second or their third or their fourth," Sim says. "Pretty much everyone over there has a PhD. They’re all university professors or philosophers. The garbage men are highly educated."
   
"The garbage men are concert pianists," adds White.
   
CRUMBS officially began in 1997, but Sim and White have performed comedy together in some shape or form since 1992. One of those shapes/forms was sketch comedy. In fact, for the first couple years, CRUMBS was a sketch-comedy duo that did some improv scenes. The switch happened after Sim ran into some long-form improv while travelling through cities such as Seattle, Vancouver, Chicago, Calgary and Montreal.
   
"It resonated with what we were already kind of doing, some of that longer improv, things we had done in rehearsals and thought, ‘Nobody would want to watch for this for an hour, that’s crazy,’" Sim says.
   
CRUMBS premiered its new long-form format at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in 1999. With long-form improv, the idea is to tell a story, with interrelated characters and themes. For the last six years or so, DJ Hunnicutt (aka Tyler Sneesby) has helped CRUMBS tell its stories, providing an improvised score.
   
"I think Tyler works very well with us because he has a huge knowledge of movies and TV and comedy, whereas many musicians have spent so much time becoming a great jazz improvising pianist or whatever that they have no clue about anything else," White says.
   
White says Sneesby is committed to making the CRUMBS experience "feel like a movie or a play" — and according to the duo, that’s completely the point. "We happen to improvise and yes, there can be funny voices and funny things happening, but it’s not so much about the jokes," Sim says.
   
"We want the characters in the stories to resonate with people. That’s what we want the audience to walk away with."

CRUMBS: BERLIN OR BUST 13
Feb. 18, 8 p.m.,
Gas Station Arts Centre