Improv community rallies around Ybor City’s Countdown festival

New York-based improv duo Justin Peters and Kelly Buttermore launched the Countdown Improv Festival in 2017 from a single theater on the Ybor City campus of what was then Hillsborough Community College. They planned to hold the event in a different city each year. But Countdown never moved on to the next city. 

Instead, Peters and Buttermore put down roots in Ybor. They opened The Commodore improv club with a group of partners, and they poured themselves into Countdown, handling almost every aspect of planning and organizing the country’s largest improv festival. 

Countdown returns to Ybor City August 5th through 9th for what was supposed to be a 10th-anniversary celebration. Then Peters was diagnosed with brain cancer in May. That gut punch initially put this year’s Countdown in limbo. Ultimately, it’s given this year’s event added significance as a celebration of the festival’s founding duo and the community that stepped up in the last few months to keep Countdown going. 

“This festival always seems to have its back up against some kind of wall,” Buttermore says. “Every year, it’s something. But we’d never faced anything like this before. We had to decide, ‘Do we want to do this?’ Because I think everyone would understand if we took this year off. But the reality of the diagnosis is we don’t know where things will be a year from now. And it was incredibly important to Justin, and therefore both of us, that the show must go on. He needed something to look forward to. But it required something we’ve struggled with this whole time. For 16 years, it’s been Justin and me as a partnership against the world. Stuff always originated from the two of us. But the event has gotten so big that we already realized before this happened we have to accept help. And it’s something we’re not very good at. It can be hard to let go of things when you think it’s your vision.” 

Peters and Buttermore stepped back to focus on Peters’ treatment, handing off Countdown to a production team of fellow improv vets they’d already assembled to help with this year’s festival. Countdown also had a budget gap after Gov. Ron DeSantis’ line-item veto eliminated funding for the festival from the state budget. In the past, Peters and Buttermore would have sold event sponsorships to raise money. But there was no way they could focus on that this year. They turned to the community that’s come together around Countdown over the last decade and asked for donations. The community rallied around them. So far, 192 contributions totaling more than $20,800 have been made toward a $27,500 goal. 

Improv vet Chris George, who met Peters and Buttermore in 2015 at an improv festival he ran in San Diego, is part of the production team running this year’s Countdown. 

“People have been fantastic,” he says. “A lot of people have offered up their abilities and time. Most of the things the festival needs done, they’re not mentally taxing, but they are time-consuming.”

George says volunteers have collected performers’ t-shirt sizes for the annual festival shirts, prepared spreadsheets with hotel and tech info, and made name badges. George came to Countdown as a performer in year two and joined the production team in 2023.  While more people have helped organize the event in recent years, George says Countdown has been a two-person operation for most of its existence. 

“They took 85 to 90 percent of the work and just did it themselves,” he says of Peters and Buttermore. 

This year’s Countdown has nearly 140 acts performing in three theaters at Hillsborough College’s Performing Arts Building and at The Commodore. George is a co-producer and performer. In his act, “I Am the Show,” he improvises the dialogue to an audience-picked movie he’s never seen before.  

“I describe it as a mix between bad lip reading and Mystery Science Theater 3000,” George says.

In a new wrinkle this year, a Tampa-based filmmaker shot an original movie for the act. 

Countdown also has an improv workshop for veterans and a Saturday workshop and matinee performance for children and families. Buttermore says she and Peters plan to attend if he’s cleared to travel and strong enough to make the trip.

“This summer has shown us that there is a tremendous community that’s grown around this festival, and around The Commodore, and they are ready to help and want to step up,” Buttermore says. “And there is real value in letting people who love what you’ve created step up and make it happen. It has been remarkable. A fellow producer and performer, Jonathan Pitts, who produced the Chicago Improv Fest and is performing this year, said, ‘This year is going to be Countdown’s Amish barn raising.’ It’s the community’s event this year. It’s up to them to carry it out. It’s been amazing. It required us to let go of what we thought this 10th year would be and let it become what I think it will be: this amazing celebration of this event, for Justin. It’s really overwhelming. I want it to be this joyful celebration. We don’t know what the future holds. But we know we’ve got right now.” 

For more information, go to Countdown Improv Festival