Improv shows are always dif­fer­ent depend­ing on the energy of the per­formers, the prompts they are giv­en, and the energy of the audi­ence. Most of the ones I’ve seen in Wel­ling­ton have been enter­tain­ing. Some are sub­lime and con­tain moments of pure the­at­ric­al geni­us. The kind where the whole audi­ence holds its breathe then exhales in delight at what they are see­ing.

The typ­ic­al expect­a­tion of improv is that it will be funny but there are many vari­ations and struc­tures for play­ers to use. The New Zea­l­and Improv Fest­iv­al will show­case them all.  On from 6–10 Octo­ber, the fest­iv­al will take over BATS Theatre in five frantic days of ori­gin­al theatre. There are 20 shows and 20 work­shops, fea­tur­ing three com­pan­ies from Aus­tralia, two com­pan­ies from Auck­land, one from Nel­son, one from Christ­ch­urch and sev­en from Wel­ling­ton. (The final show is New Zea­l­and VS The World. I’m expect­ing to see sev­er­al of the Wel­ling­ton crew fea­tured in that based on their tal­ent. Plus there are lots of them.)

Show inspir­a­tions range from Wes Ander­son to music­al improv to gene­a­logy to Orange is the new black. There’ll also be a chance to see impro­vis­ors from dif­fer­ent com­pan­ies work togeth­er plus solo per­form­ances.

If you’ve nev­er seen improv live before then this is a nice way to intro­duce your­self to it. If you have seen it, well I ima­gine you’ll already have some tick­ets. Wheth­er there are ask-fors* or not, I prom­ise you’ll see some­thing unique that will nev­er been seen again.

*where the per­formers get a sug­ges­tion or prompt from the audi­ence.