The New Zea­l­and Improv Fest­iv­al is at BATS Theatre all this week. See some of the country’s best prac­ti­tion­ers and com­pan­ies in unscrip­ted theatre that’s devised before your face. That’s right – no scripts, no set plays. Here’s how it works – each show will have a frame for the show the impro­visers will cre­ate.  Some­times it will be a series of games (clas­sic theatres­ports), some­times they’ll ask you for a series of things (name, situ­ation, veget­able etc) and some­times they’ll just dive straight into the story without ask­ing for any­thing. Any music or light­ing is also impro­vised.

There’s an impress­ive line up of 9 dif­fer­ent shows.

Impro­dome – A nightly com­pet­it­ive team show (Tues­day through Sat­urday)

This one time – An open improv per­form­ance (Tues­day through Sat­urday)

Noth­ing but the truth – Deliv­er your ver­dict – guilty or not guilty? (Tues­day only)

…In bed – Deals with love, sex, and rela­tion­ships in a truth­ful, play­ful, and some­times silly way. Fea­tures adult con­tent (but not like that). (Wed­nes­day only)

The Museum of broken rela­tion­ships – Inspired by the detrit­us of romantic rela­tion­ships. (Thursday only)

Grab bag – Any­thing could hap­pen as impro­visers (and excit­able audi­ence mem­bers) throw their names in the GrabBag to be drawn at ran­dom. (Thursday only)

Death comes to us all –  Explores the del­ic­ate bal­ance between life and death (Fri­day only)

Kid­die time! – Takes the ways kids shows enter­tain kids and does it for big­ger kids. (Fri­day only)

The circle of sound and story - An impro­vised per­form­ance of poetry, magic, fun and emo­tion (Sat­urday only)

Take advant­age of these once-in-a-life­time oppor­tun­it­ies* to see act­ors inspire each oth­er on stage with spon­tan­eous storytelling to delight and amaze you. They might even make you cry.

 

*impro­vised remem­ber? It’s dif­fer­ent every night.