Improv Olympics

One of the conditions of going to Chicago was seeing some improv. The first choice was IO or Second City and we chose IO. The second choice was an improvised Shakespeare show or long form show featuring two teams, Wonderbat and Revolver. We chose the long the form show. After we ate dinner with Dabney's friend Jana, we met Alison and Josh who got us seats right by the stage. After a bit of a wait the show started.

The first group up was Wonderbat, and the performed an open long form set similar to what we have been doing with Running Gag. They had good energy and they did a really good job of letting scenes develop. They had strong characters and made strong offers. The main part of their set was based on Halloween. Some parts worked better than others but overall I really liked what they did.

After Wonderbat finished both groups got on a stage and did the game A Day in the Life, where they take an audience member ask what they did and perform what was described. I have seen this preformed before but the IO guys did it a little differently. I was the volunteer and after I described the day of going from Memphis to Chicago they asked questions about my life, Memphis, and other information. I talked about Memphis, my life with Dabney, and some other things. Based on the information they gathered they did a series of open scenes based on it. It is in a sense it was kind of like the Wiseguys Storyteller format. Although I did not perform being able to get on stage and being involved with the show was very excited. They did a really excellent job of what I told them, and they worked in specifics of the information.

After A Day in a Life it was Revolver's turn. They performed A Harold which is a long form format that started at Improv Olympics. You perform a series of scenes and and periodically come back to them. I guess it must be an IO thing, they start with a group where they all perform together and develop an idea from there it breaks down into the scenes. They started off where one guy is a robot and a lot of their scenes were based on the root of robots. Of the two groups I preferred Revolver they were a little bit sharper and the performers were a little more polished. They were very comfortable with each other. After Revolver performed both groups came back out and performed a game of Freeze Tag. It was a good game to end things.

I was very excited to see improv in Chicago. I was more encouraged by what I saw than intimidated. I felt like the things I saw there were things I could do with Running Gag. I picked up a couple of things that we can try, and I was encouraged by the idea of Running Gag doing long form over short form Who's Line style.