Full-length about improv

[warren]

Not a casting notice, just asking "anybody interested?

Warren Steele
512-221-6210
pilothead3@yahoo.com

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Synopsis of THE MADPERSON OF SARASOTA, by G. Warren Steele
Professor Peacock and 8 members of his college Improv Class have volunteered to run a rummage sale to benefit one of Mrs. Peacock's supremely unimportant charities. They are busily holding this event in an old garage or empty storefront or somewhere equally grubby when in the door walks a woman pushing a shopping cart whom they presume to be a more-than-slightly-addled street person. She pleads with them to rescue her husband who she claims has fallen overboard off a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the students recognizes an opportunity to create a long-form narrative improv right there on the spot, and in the random staging manner of such performances, he involves the rest of the class - and even their somewhat obtuse instructor - by inviting the woman to fill out an application to have her husband rescued.
The articles of the rummage sale provide props and costumes for the improv. Some of the items in the play are clearly indicators of the rapid technological pace of our society, either by their obsolescence or their place on the cutting edge (as exemplified by the students' personal smartphone usage throughout).
The improv, following the lead of the absurdist comedy from which the play is adapted ("Was He Anyone?", by N.F. Simpson), chronicles the 4-year struggle of the woman to get her husband out of the water. There are shipboard scenes, tv newscast scenes, scenes depicting the meeting of the Executive Committee of the non-profit organization, "Rescue America", but the adaptation takes the original into contemporary theatrical territory by fleshing out the characters of the students who portray the cardboard personalities that inhabit the absurd episodes of the rescue effort.
Some of the written scenes are preceded by short improv scenes or exercises in which the players ask for suggestions from the audience. These scenes/exercises need have nothing to do with the written material.