Improv Review ...Because Improv is Art, Dammit

The Annoyance Theater’s offering at the Chicago Improv Festival was improvised performance art, a fast paced mélange of scenes interspersed with interesting theatrical staging. The best way to describe their work is “Theater of Idea” – less concerned with a linear narrative, or even a non-linear narrative, the troupe played with snippets of scenes, and would often turn the scenes around to view them at different angles.

The opening involved the members of the troupe evenly walking out onto the stage with the precision of a marching band while trading off single lines of their likes and dislikes. This then broke into a short series of scenes centered on the theme of bourgeois given by the audience. But the scenes didn’t ever try to connect to one another, in fact, often someone would enter a scene merely to tear one actor out of his current scene to pull him into a new reality. For example, two players were performing a domestic scene, arguing about an interior decorator, a third actor entered and repeated the husband’s last line, stating “I want my cups.” The first actor repeats the line back, varying the emphasis, and the intruding actor repeated it, again varying the cadence. The two began a series of this repeating line, and the wife character chipped in saying “I’ll get your cups” and exits. This cued the husband character to say to the newcomer “I’ll get your cups, now you get off my father.” And the combination of the wife’s exit and the change of line indicated a new scene had developed about the disposition of the father’s ashes. Not your standard Harold wipe.

This method, with variations, allowed the players to wait for inspiration, rather than work with the first suggestion. On a couple occasions, an offstage player would come out of the wings, met by another player, and repeat the last line from the scene being played, to which the other player would respond. They would be joined by other members of the ensemble doing the same thing until someone thought their idea merited a scene.

The goal of the piece did not seem to be to produce laughs, in fact, for the most part, the laughter was nervous laughter, as the dialogue onstage sometimes shocked, for example, “What would you do for five dollars?” “I’d shit in your cunt.” These shock lines did not come off as a way to titillate the audience; rather, the purpose seemed to be to simply shock, to shock the audience and the players out of complacent, standard, stick to the road theater.

If there was a drawback to the piece, it was the ephemeral nature of the content. Scenes and interactions weren’t particularly memorable, what sticks in the mind is the images of the groups choreography, the unnatural cadence of their speech, and fact that we saw some theater one doesn’t see every day. But I believe that was the point.

Click here to read our interview with Mick Napier.

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