On a Monday night at Hiddingh Campus, however, this is not the case. Throw together a handful of lively and energetic audience members, a few comedians dressed in black, a small licensed bar selling beverages to take into the show, an old piano and a few lights. Place them all into a fairly small, black room. Now TheatreSports is good to go.
Before the show there was a definite buzz brewing amongst the audience members, many of whom were TheatreSports virgins. Ryan, Anne, Sarah, Andrew and Monica were the actors for the evening, with the addition of Megan as MC, Ardene in charge of lighting, and Hanelore on the piano.
The warm up game for the night was It's Your Party. Similar to the game on the popular TV show Whose line is it Anyway?, the host of an imaginary party welcomes his guests, but has no idea who they are. And as if having to guess that your guest is a bingo host (again, predetermined by the audience) wasn't bad enough, this game is played completely in gibberish. It wasn't long before I was in stitches. And I wasn't alone, the whole audience was roaring with laughter.
TheatreSports, in a nutshell, is a series of improvised acting games. Two teams act out the challenges thrown by the MC with details supplied by the audience and no one knows what to expect. This is no joke. Well it is, but for the actors I can imagine it to be a huge mental exercise. During a typical TheatreSports show, game titles - pulled at random from a box - might include Accent Rollercoaster, in which the actors must change their accent in a scene every few seconds in accordance with suggestions from the audience, Scene With A ... , when the audience decides what the main object in the scene is, or Opera, described as a "never-before-seen opera, never to be repeated again", with the title once again decided by audience members. As I have now learnt, Garlic Bread is not a good title for an opera. But the sci-fi Scene With A Cactus yielded some extremely interesting entertainment value.
During the one-hour show the two TheatreSports teams are awarded points by audience members appointed as judges, who are encouraged to be ruthless or generous on a whim. At one stage, one team was declared to be losing by only three points, with a score of 56, compared to the other team's score of 563. Clearly everything was made up on the spot, including the logic. As Ryan assured the audience: "Maths is not an exact science."
What a lovely way to relax on a Monday night. Good entertainment for all ages (they do keep it clean on stage) and done by 9.45pm. I can highly recommend that you make it a regular outing. If the laughing doesn't take the edge off the Monday blues, then there's always the bar.
TheatreSports runs every Monday Night at the Intimate Theatre on the Hiddingh Campus at 8.30pm and every Tuesday night at the Kalk Bay Theatre. Tickets are R50.
Previously published on www.whatsonincapetown.com
