Improv Review ...Because Improv is Art, Dammit

Georgia-Pacific tells you right up front what they are going to do. However, you still get an awkward sense of anticipation when the lights go out. Kind of like being a virgin at The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Georgia-Pacific performs a format they call The Bat, surely due to the “lights out” element of their show. (The performers are in complete darkness along with the audience.) One thought has this show being risky, while another has it as gimmicky. Once the show begins, however, it just proves to be another way intelligent and talented improvisors have found to create a cerebral brand of theater.

In fact, at the top of the show they invite you to “close your eyes, sit back, and take the journey with us.” The journey is Harold-based in structure, but somewhat lighter on its feet for the reliance on sound as opposed to movement or facial expression. The scenes moved quickly, and sound effects and vocal cues were picked up without reserve. Often one got the sense that they were hearing an old-time radio play in which the players have gone mad.

Smartly they used sound-only conventions quite a bit. One series of scenes involved a nasty switchboard operator at a nursery school, and still another concerned the phone mix-ups at a company called Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, & Bob. In addition to the telephone, the group often traveled into the world of radio, both as impetus for some adventure and super-hero scenes, and also to provide a pin in the balloon of modern music’s pretense. These forays allowed the audience to quickly identify with the ways we still listen even in this contemporary world of visual stimulus.

The actor’s loved to create together. (You could tell this even in the dark.) Every offer was important, and every counter-offer was brilliant. In places where the background sound effects were lacking, one got the sense that each actor was busy gearing up for the next scene.

Improvisation is often theater’s way of getting back to a pre-television time where audiences were still willing to allow their imaginations to make half of the trip. As an effort to educate an audience as to what theater is capable of, Georgia-Pacific goes farther than most groups in stripping down, and let my imagination create some very clever pictures indeed.

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