Artistic Directors: Nick Byrne and P J Williams
The Street Theatre
Wednesday 16 July to Sunday 20 July, 2014
Review Challenge Heat One by Len Power 16 July 2014
When was the last time you laughed so much that it
hurt? That was my experience on
Wednesday evening when I went along to the first challenge heat of Improvention
2014’s, Canberra Impro Challenge.
Improvention is a festival dedicated to the art of
Improvisation and Impro ACT is Canberra’s Improvised Theatre company which was formed
in 2005 by current Artistic Directors: Nick Byrne and PJ Williams. Impro ACT teaches and performs all types of
improvised theatre, such as that seen on TV’s ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’. The Canberra Impro Challenge is in its tenth
year in 2014.
The
evening presented two heats of ten performers each competing for the chance to
go through to the final challenge of the heats winners being held on Sunday
evening. Performers, individually or in
varying sized groups generally up to about 4, are called to the acting area and
then given themes or situations they must act out completely unscripted. The quality of performance of each item is
then scored by the intensity of applause by audience members. In addition, as the heat progresses, two
judges eliminate performers on the basis of skills displayed. This method of judgement ultimately produces
an individual heat winner.
The
inventiveness, spontaneity and courage of these performers is remarkable. The theme ‘historical replay’ required
performers to perform a domestic scene first normally and then repeat it as if
they were in Ancient Rome, then in the Elizabethan Era and finally in the
American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. A
lecture theme on ‘How Continents Were Made’ produced an eccentric professor
stating that, ‘Barcelona was, of course, the old Yiddish word for the centre of
the earth’. A particularly terrifying
challenge required performers to create and perform a play forwards and then
backwards using the line ‘Hooray, a horse!’
My particular favourite required performers to produce a play with no
laughs at all on the theme, ‘Feather bed factory’. The first line offered in a very serious tone
by one of the performers was ‘Here they are, the new geese…’ Of course, it got the biggest laugh of the night!
Being
involved in improvisation theatre offers training in many skills and not just
for actors. You learn to think on your
feet, develop strong communication and team skills and be more creative and
fearless - all skills which are transferable to everyday life and work. Impro ACT offers improvisation training
courses which are well worth considering.
Even
under the pressure of competition, you could see that the performers were
having great fun on Wednesday night. The
audience quickly joined in with the relaxed and crazy spirit of the evening. There were serious skills on display here by
the talented performers and it was also hilariously funny.
