It’s 1982 in New Zealand, a time of Olivia New­ton-John, Lazy Susans and brick mobile phones, and the stu­dents of the Khan­dal­lah Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts are grow­ing their skills, mak­ing friends, and per­haps even find­ing love, all while they try to get a pay­ing per­form­ing arts career. How­ev­er, things are not quite that easy in Khan­dal­lah, and agents of chaos are afoot. Will these stu­dents reach their dreams through the swirling morass of blood, sweat, and glit­ter? Well, you’ll just have to watch the show to find out.

So You Think You Khan­dal­lah is an impro­vised soap opera being per­formed over five nights at BATS The­atre. There’s ad-hoc dance num­bers, ques­tion­able duets, and all the soap opera non­sense one could ever want.

The arc of tonight’s show was around friend­ship. Rudolf (Matt Pow­ell), a dance mae­stro but total lon­er, fought to find him­self some mates, two best friends Jas­mine (Tara McEn­tee) and Sheryl (Jen­nifer O’Sul­li­van) fell out and made up again all over cre­ative dif­fer­ences, and naive, but like­able, Quane (Matt Hut­ton) had his friend­ship tak­en advan­tage of by car­pen­ter Alba­tross (Sam Irwin). Child star Pep­per­mint Sparkle (Chris­tine Brooks) decid­ed to push past her past and become a triple threat, and hip-hop dancer Amelia (Dianne Pul­ham) did some pret­ty rad hip-hop moves. Back­stage guru, turned act­ing star (???) Chad (Wire­mu Tuhi­wai) start­ed to find his place in the spot­light.

With live music (by Liam Kel­ly), live direct­ing (by Clare Ker­ri­son and Luke Rim­melzwaan) and impro­vised light­ing (Dar­ryn Woods), this show is total­ly cre­at­ed on the spot and finds itself in some inter­est­ing places. I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the fade to blacks out of nowhere — it real­ly cre­at­ed a true low-bud­get soap feel.

So You Think You Khan­dal­lah is qual­i­ty improv, and feels very gen­uine. There’s moments of gen­uine hilar­i­ty, times when I felt like ‘aww-ing’ at the predica­ments the least for­tu­nate of the char­ac­ters got into, and some pret­ty swell danc­ing besides. It takes a lot of con­fi­dence to stand up and dance and sing on stage (espe­cial­ly when it’s impro­vised), and I think that real­ly fits in with the byline of this show — “You’ve got tal­ent. Now let’s see what we can do with it.” I hope to see some of these char­ac­ters find their for­tunes and ful­fill their dreams over the next few days, and sure­ly that’s what a true soap opera is all about.

With the final moment of this show’s ‘episode’ being, “She’s preg­nant?!” I’m sure that we’re in for some thrills and spills tomor­row.

 

So You Think You Khan­dal­lah is being per­formed at BATS The­atre between now and Sat­ur­day. They recap the pre­vi­ous episode before each new one, so you’re com­plete­ly able to come in and start watch­ing even after not see­ing the pre­ced­ing epis­de. Tick­ets are from BATS’ web­site.