Probably one of the biggest reasons why I love theatre is that you never get the same show twice. It doesn't matter how many times we go see a play, each live show is different. Maybe the actor turned left instead of right. Maybe a prop fell. Maybe someone forgot their line. All those little things make each performance unique.
Well, this is especially true with Impro Theatre's Chekov Unscripted.
Here's how it works:
All the actors read Chekov plays and stories for three months. During that time, they get to know the language and understand the themes and the common tropes and plotlines that appear in his work. They dress up in appropriate garb, and when it comes to showtime, they ask the audience for two prompts, which the entire play will be based on.
Prompt #1 opens the first act, where they ask us to describe something in a field that the characters could be looking at from inside a house through a large window.
Coming back from intermission, all actors stand in a line and discuss who they think they are and who they might be in love with.
Then Prompt #2 opens the second act, where they ask you which 2 or 3 actors you'd like to see on stage first.
I went to see them twice, so I got two very different plays.
Cheese
A group of foreign exchanged students had purchased tickets that night. They looked to be teenagers, and they had actually gotten the date wrong and had wanted to see The Twilight Zone Unscripted. One of them suggested "cheese" as Prompt #1, as what a wonderful choice that was.
This gave the actors the ability to have discussions about the working class and the upper class by looking at the cheesemakers from outside the window. It allowed for wonderful comedic moments, where an artist makes a cheese bird for the woman he's in love with, which she then loses, and it gets eaten by the doctor.
At one point, one of the actors walked across the stage as though he was rolling a big wheel of cheese from one side of the room to the next.
When a student's phone went off in the middle of the performance, the actors all turned to the window, and one said, "Those unruly cheesemakers! They're singing in ringing tones! What gives them the right to sing?"
The students left at intermission, and when the Act II opened, the first line spoken was, "The cheesemakers have all gone!" The artist later stated that he was leaving to follow the cheesemakers - only after having crafted a life-size cheese ostrich.
So yes, this theme was heavily and humorously used throughout a play full of love triangles where love is either unrequited or unfulfilled. After all, love matters don't typically end well in a Chekov story.
The Lake
This play turned out to be a much more somber play of, again, unrequited love, but more than that, of characters who are insecure about their lives, their professions, and how these unfulfilled dreams lead them to sorrow.
At the very end, the play suggests that one of the characters has fallen into the lake, probably intentionally.
Given that the previous play was so funny, I kept expecting her to come back, drenched, saying or doing something comical. But she doesn't. The play ends like a truly Chekovian play, and it speaks wonders of Impro Theatre and how committed they are to the work they're doing, going wherever the story and the audience are leading them to work.
Well, this is especially true with Impro Theatre's Chekov Unscripted.
Here's how it works:
All the actors read Chekov plays and stories for three months. During that time, they get to know the language and understand the themes and the common tropes and plotlines that appear in his work. They dress up in appropriate garb, and when it comes to showtime, they ask the audience for two prompts, which the entire play will be based on.
Prompt #1 opens the first act, where they ask us to describe something in a field that the characters could be looking at from inside a house through a large window.
Coming back from intermission, all actors stand in a line and discuss who they think they are and who they might be in love with.
Then Prompt #2 opens the second act, where they ask you which 2 or 3 actors you'd like to see on stage first.
I went to see them twice, so I got two very different plays.
Cheese
A group of foreign exchanged students had purchased tickets that night. They looked to be teenagers, and they had actually gotten the date wrong and had wanted to see The Twilight Zone Unscripted. One of them suggested "cheese" as Prompt #1, as what a wonderful choice that was.
This gave the actors the ability to have discussions about the working class and the upper class by looking at the cheesemakers from outside the window. It allowed for wonderful comedic moments, where an artist makes a cheese bird for the woman he's in love with, which she then loses, and it gets eaten by the doctor.
At one point, one of the actors walked across the stage as though he was rolling a big wheel of cheese from one side of the room to the next.
When a student's phone went off in the middle of the performance, the actors all turned to the window, and one said, "Those unruly cheesemakers! They're singing in ringing tones! What gives them the right to sing?"
The students left at intermission, and when the Act II opened, the first line spoken was, "The cheesemakers have all gone!" The artist later stated that he was leaving to follow the cheesemakers - only after having crafted a life-size cheese ostrich.
So yes, this theme was heavily and humorously used throughout a play full of love triangles where love is either unrequited or unfulfilled. After all, love matters don't typically end well in a Chekov story.
The Lake
This play turned out to be a much more somber play of, again, unrequited love, but more than that, of characters who are insecure about their lives, their professions, and how these unfulfilled dreams lead them to sorrow.
At the very end, the play suggests that one of the characters has fallen into the lake, probably intentionally.
Given that the previous play was so funny, I kept expecting her to come back, drenched, saying or doing something comical. But she doesn't. The play ends like a truly Chekovian play, and it speaks wonders of Impro Theatre and how committed they are to the work they're doing, going wherever the story and the audience are leading them to work.
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