theatre sports

The art of radical improv theatre, but done in a much faster pace.

In theatre sport, the challenge is to make a sensible context from near-random cues from the audience. It is very, very interactive in the oldest form of the word. The audience can give the actors cues, themes, settings, music themes, styles, places, moods, clothes, ethnic background... You get the point. All the actor have is themselves and a few props like a jacket and a newspaper.

I was at a theatre sports show tonight with Harald Eia and Thorbjørn Harr. Some of the techniques they used today were:

• Make the audience yell out moods and the actors have to change to that mood instantly
• Make the audience write down commonly used phrases heard at our university in paper notes in the break and then act and trying to adapt the sentences on the notes to the acting
• Pick out a person from the audience, briefly interview her about a family setting, and then act accordingly to that setting. The member of the audience responded to the acting by standing on the side and give the actors clues to wether they did what she remembered. (She responded by sound effect, a little 'ding' when they did something right and a buzzer when they did something wrong and had to adjust their lines.) I learned a LOT about that girl as the actors tried to act out her winter vacation with her parents