Last night was the opening night of Paper Street Theatre’s “An Improvised Tennessee Williams.” It was great. Our goal was to create something that felt and tasted like the work of Williams and we did. We had the southern drawl, the grey un-moral characters, the overly poetic language and the rich metaphor and symbolism Tennessee loved so much. I’m very very proud of our cast.

We didn’t just try to recreate Williams though, we also aimed to recreate theatre in general. That was just as difficult to learn, or should I say, it was easy to learn but hard to actually do. When performing improv that looks like theatre, everything has to seem directed, all of your actions have to look rehearsed, there needs to be silence and stillness, props can’t disappear and reappear during scene changes, the fourth wall can’t have any set pieces on it (or you’ll block the actors), not to mentoin that sets are expensive, so you don’t have the luxury of changing locations. All of this, in conjunction with Williams’ very specific style, made last nights show look like a written play.

Here’s what I find most interesting about that. Since it looked and felt like a play, certain attributes of improvisation stood out a little more then they normally do in your standard improv comedy show. For instance, none of the offers last night were blocked, but if one wasn’t perfectly accepted it felt like a block. No one broke character on stage, but even the slightest smile looked like a full breakdown. The story made sense, but the simplest moment of confusion made it feel like the whole story was falling apart.

Why? Is it because we are bad improvisers? Not at all.

Then why? It’s because the audience was buying into the theatre of it. So much so, that after the show some of them asked us how much of it was written, and even after we explained that none of it was, they still left thinking it was written. And so, because they believed it was theatre, when something seemed a little off, or unaccepted, the question wasn’t “why did they make that up?” it was “why would someone have written that and let it get past the second draft?” See the difference?

If you’re not making it up on the spot, the audience’s tolerance of little mistakes goes down. The same goes for if you’re making it look like you’re not making it up on the spot. You need to be aware of that lower tolerance when attempting a theatrically improvised piece. You need to make sure every offer counts and every scene matters, because if it isn’t important to the script, it would have been cut out of play during the editing process.

That said, I think what we did last night was excellent, and a step in the right direction. Bringing improvisation back to a place of theatre. A place where you get more then a laugh, you get a story, perhaps some sadness, and at the very least, a night of entertainment. We have one more show tonight, and I’m looking forward to it more then any other improv show I’ve done this year. Maybe I’ll see you there.

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