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Foothills Theatre's "Saturday Night Live"Welcome to Improv Woosta The punchier you are, the better the show. Welcome to Improv Woosta, Foothills Theatre's improvisational comedy group that can be caught every Friday night at 10:30 p.m. Improv Woosta is a creative, funny show that can cap off dinner, or jump start a later night out. It's Worcester's answer to Saturday Night Live. Here's a short take of what we saw on a recent visit to the wacky world of Improv Woosta... Imagine saying "if you know what I mean" after every sentence, like in this scene which takes place at a circus. Two men are standing apart eyeing each other. One skulks over to the other, who seems to be carrying a bunch of balloons, but we can't say for sure until the actors start talking. "I'd like a balloon...if you know what I mean." "I only have red ones left...if you know what I mean." "That works, if you know what I mean. I like red ones...if you know what I mean." "I'll get this one for you ...if you now what I mean. It's a little different from the other, if you know what I mean." Everything they say sounds like a drug deal or a pick-up line when of course they're just talking about balloons. Or are they? Improv Woosta is the brainchild of Colleen Kelley, artistic director of the group. Kelley is a veteran of Foothills' Theatre School. Her background in marketing and comedy theatre productions propelled her to lobby heavily for a new item on the Foothills playbill. "I wanted to add to the culture of Worcester," Kelley says. " And I wanted something fun...." Improvisational comedy seemed like the perfect addition. Now it's a chaser to the Friday night Foothills productions, just a sip of quirky fun that leaves audiences thirsty for more. Kelley set up auditions this past April, and fifty-five actors showed up. The Foothills rehearsal space was turned into a 3/4 theatre in the round. It's informal and intimate; the audience is sitting within spitting distance of the actors. Improv Woosta has eleven members in its resident cast who rotate into the show from week to week to create a six person show. The group currently has five women and seven men, ranging in age from seventeen to early forties. Kelley usually hosts the show, announcing each improv exercise and soliciting suggestions from the audience for plot-lines like locations, story titles, and occupations. The show uses a format similar to that used in the TV show "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" Kelley chooses different "short-form comedy games," for each show from a repertoire of about sixty. On "Cable TV", two actors were a talk show host and the show's guest sitting in chairs side by side. The audience suggested a topic, and the pair chatted on. With British accents, one pair delved into the secrets of watching paint dry. Another pair discussed dressing one's cat. Keep in mind that each scene is maybe two minutes long. And there are some very funny, two minute blasts. During the "Cable TV" spot, the host's timing and instincts were good; scenes were always stopped before falling flat. Wicked silly fun was the norm, but I would have liked a bit more hilarity and clever humor. One of the cast members never varied her already dull persona from skit to skit. Luckily I knew she would be replaced by a more dynamic actor. Two of the actors got away with using the same character styles for every skit because they were inherently very funny and their characters worked in every scene. My favorite game sequence was "Foreign Movie." Two actors pretended to be characters in a foreign language movie, and two other cast members were the "translators." The "movie characters" had a dramatic dialogue using "a foreign language" - gibberish that they were creating at that moment. "I don't know how the submarine got there! It must have come home from work with me!", were the opening translated lines of "The Submarine In My Closet" - title courtesy of the audience. The scene ended with the female actor hugging her male partner and cooing in gibberish sounding like a mixture of Yiddish and Chinese "You'll always be my skipper!" to which the male answered in a Swedish farmland kind of tone "And you'll always be my little Gilligan!" During the course of the hour show, thirteen comedy games were performed. The show is different every week because the mix of actors, the improv games and the audience changes every week. Improv Woosta is well worth the seven dollar ticket...if you know what I mean! |