This week was full of sold out shows, house-full audiences and unforgettable moments.
We started the week with our good ol' Whimsical Wednesday
Wednesday, 5th August
This week, we had our good ol’ trusty Whimsical Wednesday, back on our roster. Which got me thinking - should we do more of these? The overwhelming response to “Make Friends With The Stage” had us thinking about retiring “Whimsical Wednesdays” (gasp!). But this week countered that thought with a resounding “NO”. This week, we embraced the absurd with giving gifts - partner A hands an imaginary box to partner B, accompanied with a syllable. For example, A says to B while handing them the said box “Hey B, here’s a STO….”, to which B also says the syllable along with A and then completes the word, for example “A STO-RM DRAIN”. A offers an idea, B adds their own idea to this to co-create hilarious and heartening outcomes. People were given dirt-free televisions, thousand splendid nuns, Tweedle Dums, bakery items, capable parents and many more absurd gifts. A fun game that forces you to be “present” and listen to your partner closely, this is one of the favourite games to tune out the mental chatter and tune into the here and now. We told stories, fixed each others’ problems in strange ways and did 3 line scenes. Hard to imagine/understand this? Honestly, it’s like explaining a magic trick - you HAVE to experience it to really get it. Come for our next jam and see for yourself!
Then, we had our Regular The Silliest Show Tonight
Friday, 7th August
Another Friday, another silly time. This show was extra special because we had to bring in extra chairs as we exceeded maximum capacity! Our full house audience made this show an absolute blast. I do not exaggerate when I say the room could not contain their energy! At one point, in a game where they were meant to yell out to improvisers to “Die!”, this audience chanted “Live! Live!” and raised up the crowd favourite. The room briefly felt like a gladiatorial arena 😆
Their wonderful suggestions helped us create stories like the love story of Boo the dinosaur and Drooleshwari the fish (prompting the “Live!” chants), the deep history between two competing brokers in SG Palya, the philosophical musings and friendship of a pencil and an eraser, and so many more. We closed out the night with an improvised song about an audience member’s life (Aeishna, Aeishna, Aeishna, she’s a software developer! 🎶)
Next up, we started our internal Storytelling Intensives
Saturday, 8th August and Sunday 9th August
Some of us got together to learn storytelling and some formats from Bala. Day 1 was a theory class!! Yep, you heard that right. The entire day was spent mostly sitting on a chair and making notes and discussions as Bala broke down the different elements of a narrative and laid them out in a framework that we could use to analyse and create stories of our own!
A very insightful discussion followed as we took up a couple of different structural formulae - Freytag's Pyramid and the "W", and applied them to first analysing popular media, and then to tell and analyse our own stories.
It all came to life in day 2 however, as we then used these formulae to create chaos on stage! We did exercises to tell an insightful story to our partner and then, based on these rich stories, worked on the first of our learning formats which was Armando. We had two very quick rounds of Armando which was such a blast, taking characters, plot, expressions, colors out of the story and giving it our own spin while respecting the storyteller's story. Bala also shared about her experience of doing Armando with different troupes. We ended up having a more in-depth discussion at one of our favourite places, Ondu Plate. Come to one of our Friday or Sunday shows, we might do an Armando!
Last up, we had a very fun time at Powerpoint roulette
Sunday, 9th August
Yet another full house (🥳) as we returned with one of our very favourite formats - PowerPoint Roulette. Improvisers present slides they’ve never seen before, in a style they are assigned on the spot based on where they land on the Roulette Wheel. These are no ordinary, corporate slide decks, mind you. Each slide is chosen by our devious slide creators from a carefully curated collection of memes, funny photos and nonsensical diagrams. Some silliness we featured this time:
Improvisers must then present these with full-throated conviction while our judges decide how well they succeeded.
This week brought yet more wacky and wonderful presentations. We saw everything from a eulogy to a retirement speech, a new hire orientation for a company that was almost like “family” (followed closely by a lawsuit against this company for overworking their ~employees~ “family”) and even a quarterly report from Ramu Kaka, who runs a chole bhature stall.
Some brave members of our wonderful audience joined in on the fun. Surbhi took us on a travel vlog through the Maldives (where a friend was lost!). Monisha and Aditya, a mother-son pair, took the stage where Monisha pitched her son to the audience for marriage. These rich and hilarious presentations inspired our improvisers to then do a toast for Aditya’s wedding (clearly the pitch was successful!) and a breaking news segment that covered the missing vlogger crisis in the Maldives.
Come check out the events next week so you can be in on all the fun! :)