Improv-In-The-Dark recap

I think it went well. Not just the piece in the dark, but the show as a whole.

Kansas City Improv Legend Trish Berrong had posted something in her blog that I had been thinking a lot about lately and tried to take that to heart for this show. My mind was free from worry and had shifted to having fun and enjoying myself.

Now I'm not going to go into great detail about the first half, but let me just say that the sense of play that I felt we had was similar to what can only be described as the younger troupe days. We started the show with a funeral piece about a dead 16 year old girl of all things. Yes, this was a comedy show. We felt that staring the show with this was kind of a risk, but we believed that we could pull it of because it is a very character driven piece. I think the audience enjoyed it.

Next came a simple round of scenes where the only thing we focused on was editing the scenes with chairs. This is where I really felt that our sense of play was top notch. Frog killings, staring contests, nonsensical teachings, and cancer-ridden bank robberies. Ahhhhhhh, just like the good ol' days.

For the second half, we got a suggestion (which we didn't really use i guess) and turned off the lights, completely. Did a little improv in the dark for about 30 minutes and the quickly brought the lights back up and blinded everyone in the theater. That is the second half in a nutshell. I am not going to talk about the content of the piece because frankly I don't remember that much about it. Not that it was bad, I think it went well. In my mind, however, the whole thing was kind of an experiment. We just wanted to see if we could pull it off and if the audience would enjoy it. There were some odd moments with the sound effects and music, but those were minor. It was Braeden's (our Chief Composer of Audio-Effects Orchestration) first live show and I think he did an exceptional job. He isn't even an improvisers, just a friend who is a talented musician who has seen us perform a lot. The more we do this, the better we'll get and the more solid of a product it can become.

Be sure to check out Improv-in-the-Dark again on April 26th when the Trip Fives do a show with the very talented improv troupe Babel Fish. Don't be afraid.