Live Nude Improv - Coming To the Hideout in July and August
Posted: April 21st, 2011, 11:54 am
We're auditioning next week for the Hideout's summer prime time show, and it's going to be a bit experimental so I thought a bit of description would be helpful:
In brief: Live Nude Improv is a playful, vulnerable exploration of modern theater in which the audience is fully incorporated into the storytelling. The show is a "rehearsal for a new play" and everyone (audience and improvisers) is in the cast. There will be some degree of nakedness.
At length: The jumping off point for Live Nude Improv was Dionyses in 69 at the Off Center last year, in which the Rude Mechs recreated a production of The Bacchae originally staged in New York in 1968 that was as much hippie happening as theater show. The audience was seated on scaffolding and on the ground around a central performance space and invited to participate throughout the performance (cuddle piles, dance parties, being pulled out of the audience and propositioned by Theseus king of Thebes, etc.). The riskiness of the audience interaction was fascinating; there are stories from the 1968 run of audience members kidnapping the main character and essentially ending the play. And the nakedness was a powerful tool for heightening the intensity of the story and making everything feel more real (and it certainly didn't hurt their attendance). It inspired a lot of interesting questions about the nature of theater and the relationship with the audience, questions that I think we're well-equipped to explore as improvisers and storytellers.
This show will be almost nothing like Dionysus in 69, but we are stealing the following things:
* audience seating in the round
* heavy, risky audience interaction throughout, with a real sense that anything can happen at any time
* nakedness as a heightening technique (for comedy and vulnerability)
Having committed to these theatrical choices, we need an improvised framework on which to hang them, and the likeliest candidate is the The Play Format that Well Hung Jury/Available Cupholders pioneered. In that format we see a director and three or four actors going through the process of putting together a production of a play; the first act is a table read in which we discover the basics of the play, meet the actors and their characters and get a sense of the group dynamic, the second act is an on-book run through later in the rehearsal process, and the third act is opening night. It's fantastically playful and presents storytelling on two levels (the play itself and the interactions of the actors as they work through it).
Things we're stealing from The Play Format:
* show within a show (dual levels of storytelling)
* a "scripted text" that is improvised by the group
For our purposes the conceit is that EVERYONE (audience and improvisers) is in the cast and this is a 90-minute workshop to get the play up on its feet. As audience members arrive and pick up their tickets, we congratulate them on having been cast and the improvisers filter amongst them gently pretending that we're all here to rehearse this play, treating them all as actors. Everyone filters upstairs and sits on the risers which have been arranged in the round. The director enters and gets things rolling with a few low-pressure warm-up games and exercises to loosen everyone up, and then we start discovering the play through improvised games, interactions and scene work. Everyone has "memorized the script" already but no parts have been cast yet, so anyone can play any role theoretically.
To ensure that we're able to incorporate the audience as fully as possible and keep the story on track and playful, we'll be bringing in elements of Gorilla Theater, a Keith Johnstone format in which the actors take turns making games and scenes happen, trying to produce the kind of theater that they're excited about. The director and improvisers (and maybe even brave audience members) will use games, scenes and anything else that seems likely to explore the story and characters in our "play." Early in the show you might set up a speak in one voice to explore the psyche of one of the main characters. You might do a dubbing scene or a character switch scene or even Pan Left, Pan Right to get the early exposition out quickly. And then later in the show hopefully it would settle into a smoother narrative flow.
That's my thinking on the format at this point. Obviously we'll make discoveries over the course of the rehearsal process, but the essence of the show will at all times be walking that dangerous line between playful improv and more compelling, grounded storytelling.
In brief: Live Nude Improv is a playful, vulnerable exploration of modern theater in which the audience is fully incorporated into the storytelling. The show is a "rehearsal for a new play" and everyone (audience and improvisers) is in the cast. There will be some degree of nakedness.
At length: The jumping off point for Live Nude Improv was Dionyses in 69 at the Off Center last year, in which the Rude Mechs recreated a production of The Bacchae originally staged in New York in 1968 that was as much hippie happening as theater show. The audience was seated on scaffolding and on the ground around a central performance space and invited to participate throughout the performance (cuddle piles, dance parties, being pulled out of the audience and propositioned by Theseus king of Thebes, etc.). The riskiness of the audience interaction was fascinating; there are stories from the 1968 run of audience members kidnapping the main character and essentially ending the play. And the nakedness was a powerful tool for heightening the intensity of the story and making everything feel more real (and it certainly didn't hurt their attendance). It inspired a lot of interesting questions about the nature of theater and the relationship with the audience, questions that I think we're well-equipped to explore as improvisers and storytellers.
This show will be almost nothing like Dionysus in 69, but we are stealing the following things:
* audience seating in the round
* heavy, risky audience interaction throughout, with a real sense that anything can happen at any time
* nakedness as a heightening technique (for comedy and vulnerability)
Having committed to these theatrical choices, we need an improvised framework on which to hang them, and the likeliest candidate is the The Play Format that Well Hung Jury/Available Cupholders pioneered. In that format we see a director and three or four actors going through the process of putting together a production of a play; the first act is a table read in which we discover the basics of the play, meet the actors and their characters and get a sense of the group dynamic, the second act is an on-book run through later in the rehearsal process, and the third act is opening night. It's fantastically playful and presents storytelling on two levels (the play itself and the interactions of the actors as they work through it).
Things we're stealing from The Play Format:
* show within a show (dual levels of storytelling)
* a "scripted text" that is improvised by the group
For our purposes the conceit is that EVERYONE (audience and improvisers) is in the cast and this is a 90-minute workshop to get the play up on its feet. As audience members arrive and pick up their tickets, we congratulate them on having been cast and the improvisers filter amongst them gently pretending that we're all here to rehearse this play, treating them all as actors. Everyone filters upstairs and sits on the risers which have been arranged in the round. The director enters and gets things rolling with a few low-pressure warm-up games and exercises to loosen everyone up, and then we start discovering the play through improvised games, interactions and scene work. Everyone has "memorized the script" already but no parts have been cast yet, so anyone can play any role theoretically.
To ensure that we're able to incorporate the audience as fully as possible and keep the story on track and playful, we'll be bringing in elements of Gorilla Theater, a Keith Johnstone format in which the actors take turns making games and scenes happen, trying to produce the kind of theater that they're excited about. The director and improvisers (and maybe even brave audience members) will use games, scenes and anything else that seems likely to explore the story and characters in our "play." Early in the show you might set up a speak in one voice to explore the psyche of one of the main characters. You might do a dubbing scene or a character switch scene or even Pan Left, Pan Right to get the early exposition out quickly. And then later in the show hopefully it would settle into a smoother narrative flow.
That's my thinking on the format at this point. Obviously we'll make discoveries over the course of the rehearsal process, but the essence of the show will at all times be walking that dangerous line between playful improv and more compelling, grounded storytelling.
