Archive for May, 2008
the runt in the theatre litter
May 30th, 2008 • improvisation
Brian Logan’s claim that improvisation is “finally catching on in Britain” seems to step over a rather substantial history of companies and performers using the form in this country.
At the very least, any company working with forum or playback theatre forms is heavily dependent on the skills and conventions of improvisation. I’m thinking here of companies like Playback Theatre York who’ve been active since the early 90s and Cardboard Citizens who have been using Boal’s forum form to explore homelessness for a similar amount of time.
While there has been a cult of celebrity built around the solo artist (as actor, director or playwright), that cult has not stopped other kinds of work from being popular and successful - even within a London-centric hierarchy that has oftentimes tended to look down on community and theatre-in-education work.
I do agree, though, that improvisation is often treated as “the runt in the theatre litter,” “bracketed with comedy or ghettoised as glib tomfoolery.” Leaving aside the implicit ordering of art that puts good comedy below “proper” theatre, part of the problem is that some reviewers have no idea how to deal with improvisation as a performance form.
It’s really not so many years since The Stage accused Keith Johnstone’s group of faking it - performing scripted work as though it were spontaneous. The patterns of invention and reincorporation onstage weren’t just unfamiliar, but seemingly impossible.
As Logan suggests, that kind of confusion persists due to narrow expectations about what constitutes theatre:
The main problem is that theatre in the UK is still seen as chiefly a literary art form - but improvised plays emerge as if by magic, without any author.
It’s perhaps not that improvisation isn’t popular or hasn’t existed, but that it hasn’t always been recognised when it’s actually taking place.
I also think that the link to Who’s Line Is It Anway has been propagated by lazy reviewers and lazier companies with little regard for how live theatrical improvisation relates (or rather doesn’t relate) to carefully edited televised improvisation. It might be an easy point of reference for audiences, but it’s shorthand that hinders rather than helps. It’s a sales-pitch, and that’s the limit of its usefulness.
You’ll also forgive me for getting all high-priest-of-the-art for a moment to conclude, but knowledge of rehearsal improvisation exercises does not equip anyone for live performance based in improvisation; similarly, the tools amd skills used to devise work using improvisation are not identical to those in improvisation as performance form in its own right.
Yes, they’re strongly related, but one doesn’t guarantee knowledge or ability in the other. In other words, crappy improvisation (like any other kind of crappy performance) results from a lack of respect for the form as a discipline which involves specific skills and effort.
reading (without) comprehension
May 28th, 2008 • comedy, improvisation
A brief twitch before my brain caught up:
If, like me, you’ve been to all previous 10 years of the Chicago Improv Festival, you might have been wondering what happened to the annual April confab of spontaneously funny people. Isn’t it now almost June?Well, this year the writers’ strike got in the way.
That’s the recognition that a number of very talented comedy writers are also talented improvisers (or the other way around, if you like) not the inadvertent admission that improvisers need scripts. : )
I’d be interested to find out if the change of month is a permanent decision or if the festival will switch back next year, fresh strike notwithstanding. Incidentally, where was I in April when the improv festival wasn’t happening? Chicago. Where am I now? Safely back in Scotland. Now that’s timing.
in which idil and stephen demonstrate their wit
May 27th, 2008 • scenes from the web
Idil: the Brechtarians appear in the doctor who Season 5 finale the cliffhanger comes about when they threaten social change
me: joke about alienation about now I think. alien - nation! ha!
Idil: ha!!
me: JOKE
Idil: BRECHTARIANS ENJOY JOKES
me: BUT THEY WILL NOT HESITATE TO DESTROY THE CATHERINE TATE
Sent at 12:24 PM on Tuesday
comedies win prizes
May 26th, 2008 • comedy
Great news: Aeneas Faversham Forever has just been crowned Best Comedy Show at the Brighton Festival Awards. Congratulations to Thom, Dave, Humphrey, Idil and Neil.
Work has me (happily) pinned down in Scotland, so I’ve been an absentee producer for far too many months this year - but the show’s in great shape and that there’s even more to come before the Fringe. Hurrah, etc.
reviews and theatre as live event
May 26th, 2008 • theatre
Andrew Haydon at the Guardian theatre blog raises some interesting questions about the purpose of theatre reviews - drawing a tentative distinction between reviews which judge whether a performance is a success or failure, and reviews which offer a kind of non-partisan analysis.
You could argue that Haydon is talking about almost entirely different modes of writing - produced over different time-scales, subjected to different editorial processes and intended for different audiences for different purposes. We could see two separate genres, one for a mass audience with an explicit and open implication that the review will impact ticket sales, one for a more specific, academic audience with the implication that the review will place the performance in a critical landscape.
However, like all good and seemingly tidy binary systems, the real problems emerge with reviews that don’t fall neatly into either category: neither 3 out of 5, or footnoted to the hilt. In fact, that kind of oppositional thinking is a mistake: there’s no reason why reviews can’t offer an aesthetic judgement and place that judgement in some kind of critical landscape. The question isn’t whether a synthesis is possible, but what it might look like. Read more »
links for 2008-05-22
May 22nd, 2008 • links
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Another collaborative design community, this one based around papercraft. Flash interface, so give it a while to load…
