kstruct

After a good year or so of talking about it, we finally got around to knocking up a website for Impro Theatre ACT. To be honest, I’m a little surprised we got the impro.com.au domain name.

There’s certainly some work to do on it content wise, and hopefully a bit more polishing of the colours and the html code itself, but all in all I rather like the design (not too much of a shock, since I did most of the underlying html work).

Sometime soon there should be a way to sign up to the mailing list to hear about upcoming shows etc. In the short term, I’m sure everyone’s looking forward to Impro Retro, on the 24th of September - 7:30 pm at the Street Theatre.

With a title that long, you know it’s got to be good.

7:30pm, Sunday the 30th of July at The Street Theatre.

There are some really great players in the teams coming from Sydney and Melbourne as well teams from the south and central coast, so it will certainly be worth the $20 ($15 concession).

Impro time again!

This next show, A Midautumn Nights Improv, is to be based around the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which should prove interesting, given that I’ve not seen the original in many years. Luckily, most of the work of keeping track of the story will be down to our host (who some may remember from the last show as ‘the biggest man in the world’).

As I understand it, the show won’t be too Shakespearian. It’s more a story of games being based on events from the play, and players being given characterisations based on the actual characters, which should be a bit of a change from the usual.

Anyway, Sunday the 28th of May, 7:30 at The Street Theatre. $15 or $12 concession, bookings on 6247 1223. We’ll actually get ourselves together and put up a website sometime, but for now it looks like future shows and classes will be announced over at communities online.

I have to say, I was pretty happy with the last impro show - more so than I have been for the last few at least. The audience was small-ish, certainly down from last time, but seemed to have a lot more energy.

Chris did a great job as MC, and kept everything moving along quickly, which meant we got through a lot of games (always good). Unfortunately Dave and I were knocked out prior to the final round (we though we were making a good comeback after intermission but as it turned out, I don’t think anyone scored less than a four (out of five) in the entire second half.

Overall though, the highlight for me was being part of an alphabet scene which, while less than perfect, didn’t fall flat on it’s face.

Technorati Tags: canberra, theatre, impro

No flyer this time, but we’ve got another impro show on Sunday the 23rd of April - 7:30 pm at the Street Theatre. Note that we’re back to 7:30 (the last show was 8:30) and that this is the second last Sunday of the month rather than the last. $15 or $12 concession.

The show itself has a playing card theme (hence the title full house), with the players in pairs being randomly shuffled into teams of four for each round. We’ll also have a bunch of great new players debuting from the latest stage one class, so it should be a fun show.

Technorati Tags: canberra, theatre, entertainment, impro

It’s been quietly pointed out to me that the ensemble cast in ‘Thank God You’re Here‘ are very really talented improvisers, including World, NSW and Cranston cup champions. I stand by what I said about the format, but I’ll take back what I said about them having a script, because apparently they don’t (hopefully my assumption that they did can be take as a compliment). The suspicion is that they are just a number of given ‘plot points’ which they’re aiming to hit, and orders to make the guests struggle a little rather than trying to save them.

It’s a bit of a pity these guys can’t just play the scene out - I was blown away by most of the scenes in last years Cranston cup (apparently to the point where I don’t recognise any of the players), so I’d love to see that in a weekly show. That said, apparently they did make a pilot with practised improvisers playing the guest parts and they made the scenes look too smooth.

Anyway, I guess we’ll see how it all develops over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: impro, australia, tv

Given the number of impro related posts here, I’d be kinda remise not to comment on ‘Thank God You’re Here‘, Channel Ten’s new improvisation show which premiered tonight.

The format’s a little unusual compared to the usual Impro/Theatre Sports format in that only one person, the guest performer, is actually improvising, while the three other people in the scene seem to have what mounts to a script. In a way this makes there scene feel like endowments, except that the guest performer, having been put in costume, doesn’t really have anything left to guess. The format seems to fall pretty easily into the following form:

1. Scripted ‘question’ from one of the normal performers.
2. Guest performer is forced to respond with some sort of offer.
3. Offer is more of less dropped as the rest of the performers return to their script.
4. Repeat until buzzed off.

There were certainly some funny moments, but having all but one of the performers following a script ensured that nothing the guest performer did could really force the scene to develop in any meaningful way. Take, for example, the Roman scene, where the guest performer had clearly identified the pregnant woman as his wife, but the script bulldozed her back to being his sister regardless.

That said, this form does mean the guest performers a free to use lots of gags rather than working to develop the scene. I have to wonder if there’s big enough pool of quality stand-up comic/improviser half breeds to keep the show going for the long haul, but I guess we’ll see.

Hopefully over time they will allow a bit more development into the scenes, but I guess it’s difficult given that there’s a whole set already laid out to keep everything in line.

Anyway, I don’t want to sound too down on the whole thing, because it really was funny and I’ll certainly be watching it again. I do wish I could just switch off and not notice all the blocks and dropped offers though. It’s like watching a movie adaptation of a well known novel and picking on all the tiny differences even though you don’t want to.

Technorati Tags: impro, australia, tv

We seem to be getting organised with the advertising a little earlier this time, so here’s the flyer for the next Impro Theatre ACT show.

Sunday the 26th, 8:30 pm at The Street Theatre.

Note that this is an hour later than past shows, and apparently they’ll be taking EFTPOS and credit cards instead of just cash at the door. If you’re feeling very enthusiastic, you can even book ahead on 6247 1223.

The show will be following (roughly) the story of the beauty and the beast, which is apparently playing that day (and whose set we’ll be hijacking). I’ve no idea how exactly the whole ‘following the story’ thing is going to work, but it should be amusing regardless.

Technorati Tags: impro, canberra, theatre

7:30 pm, Sunday the 26th of February at The Street Theatre. Hopefully the flyer will answer any other questions there might be…

Technorati Tags: canberra, theatre, impro, summer

The Aussie Icons Impro Theatre ACT show, in spite of being quite a bit smaller than our past ones, seemed to go really well.

I ended up doing a ‘couch potato’ / Norm from ‘Life. Be in it” costume with a beer bottle and a remote control as props, which didn’t involve me buying too much great or going to too much trouble, but worked quite well. It’s quite amusing to see what other improvisers do back stage when you point a remote at them and press a button.

Given that we only had eight performers, the show felt like it tuned over much faster with everyone playing every second game on average. There were lots of good ones, and a few that seemed to crash but were quickly forgotten. The highlights were probably some of the really good musical scenes, which seemed to work especially well in the smaller theatre.

All in all, it was a very nice show to be a part of. Congratulations to all the performers, and many thanks to the audience. I’m already looking forward to the next one, which should be back in the main theatre on the 26th of February.

Technorati Tags: canberra, impro, theatre, impro theatre