Yes Norfolk, you do have a comedy scene! And to prove it, the first night of the Norfolk Comedy Festival featured nothing but local acts performing sketch and improv comedy in the comfortable setting of Norfolk’s Generic Theater. Fittingly, the evening’s performers were primarily former and current students of The Pushers, organizers of the festival now in its third year. No one has done more locally to cultivate an improv and sketch comedy scene including performing for nearly a decade and teaching improv and sketch classes for the past three years. I’m sure it must have felt rewarding to the Pushers to see their efforts pay off in such a big way with such a solid show.
Not Quite Nobody
The night began with the current incarnation of the teen short form improv class at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Not Quite Nobody. I had the same thought watching them this year as I did last year: Why don’t these kids have their own local television show yet? They perform a short form style of improv comedy similar to that of the television show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” only they are infinitely more funny and more interesting than the current incarnation of that show.
Their set follows a format very similar to that of the aforementioned show. The cast is guided by their instructors Sean Devereux and Bradford McMurran through various games. The games always incorporate audience suggestions. There is even the all-important bell that the instructors ring to indicate the game has come to an end.
My personal favorite games were the Dating Game and New Choice. In Dating Game, one cast member is led offstage while three others are given identities from audience suggestions. The cast member then returns to the stage and interviews the others in the style of the classic game show with the goal of identifying which characters the other three are playing. The excellent character work of the panel coupled with the audience being in on the joke the entire time, led to some big laughs. In New Choice, two cast members are given identities, a location, and an activity from audience suggestions. They proceed to improvise a scene based on these suggestions. When they feel compelled, the instructors yell out “New Choice” after a line spoken by a cast member forcing them to quickly say something different than whatever they just said. This forced change of direction inevitably draws out creative and funny ideas. There was no shortage of huge laughs throughout this set.
Nerd Alert!
The teens were followed by local improv and sketch group Nerd Alert, making their Norfolk Comedy Festival debut. The reviewer, having performed in this portion of the show and written some of the material, has decided not to review this set himself. He and his group welcome you to review them yourselves through the comment section below. He can say, however, that Nerd Alert were honored to have been invited to participate and had an incredible amount of fun performing.
Made Up Movie
The third act of the night featured a form of long form improv known as the movie performed by a group appropriately named Made Up Movie. The group included Sean Devereux, Bradford McMurran, and Ed Carden of the Pushers as well as some of their students from classes the Pushers have taught at the Muse Writers Center.
In the movie, the group improvises what essentially amounts to a full feature movie complete with characters, multiple settings, interrelated plotlines, and camera tricks including extreme close ups and musical montages. They do so by describing the action and scene throughout as if conveying what was happening in a movie to someone who could not see or hear it. They begin by painting scenes and characters with vivid descriptions that begin to set a tone for the story and possible motivations for the characters. Once that is complete, a cast member describes the look of the screen as the movie title displays and then the action shifts to a scene and rather than having the movie described to them, the audience is now watching the movie themselves. This shift from having the action and scene described by a narrator to the action itself continues and the movie works it way through to (ideally) a solid ending that ties together the various scenes and justifies the title.
I’ve seen probably about a dozen performances of the movie format and it is one of my favorites. It also appears (having never participated in one) to be one of the more difficult to get right. Many things need to go right in order for everything to come together. I’ve seen some so good that I was literally fist pumping as the end scene concluded. However, I’ve seen others get derailed either by unfortunate subject matter or by seemingly conflicting character choices that made the story very difficult to tie together.
Tonight’s improvised movie, a tale of boxers, promoters, Russians, and the role of women in these cultures, walked the line between great and derailed more than perhaps any I’d seen before. “Punch You In The Face” seemed to suffer from too many personal attacks early on in the form of supposedly improvised character attributes. It started to feel a bit like a roast. I also felt that there were some character motivations that seemed more personal than organic to the story.
However, at it’s best, this performance saw some incredible physical choices, creative story telling, and perhaps unprecedented audience participation. The audience responded quite favorably to the trainer/sister of the Russian fighter sitting on his back while he did push-ups, the same Russian fighter chasing mongoose across the stage to train, and the Cinderella-story American boxer taking repeated blows to the head in the climactic fight with the Russian. The audience even joined the action several times without being invited. There were times that it fit the story well such as booing the Russian upon entering the ring, and times where it didn’t make as much sense and forced some creative justification from the cast (“oh, those claps are the spirits of your ancestors”).
Absolute Uncertainty
Closing the show was Norfolk Comedy Festival veterans and local sketch and improv group Absolute Uncertainty performing their brand of sketch comedy that is equal parts endearing, hilarious, and outrageous. To me, Absolute Uncertainty proved tonight that they are masters of the use of the straight man, writing outside the box, and implementing physical humor in their sketches. Sir Humps-a-Lot, perhaps their funniest character, didn’t utter a single word. The clown simply honked his horn and handed cards to the couple whose date he’d crashed in order to get his points across. Their Masterpiece Theater sketch was brilliant, featuring a sincere Shakespearean performance of Itsy Bitsy spider while two “special effects” assistants utilized hokey physical props to invoke such elements as rain and sun. Again, huge laughs with no lines.
But for me, the highlight of Absolute Uncertainty’s set and the night as a whole was the Madrigal performed by Kerry Kruk, Sandy Carden, and Jenn Woods. In this improv game, the three each take a suggestion from the audience (a Facebook status, something your mom told you when you were a kid, and a text you received last night). Then, they sing an improvised operatic song by first repeating the suggested phrases and eventually by merging them and creating new ideas from their combined elements. I’ve seen them perform this game many times and it never gets old. Between their incredible voices, excellent stage presence, and creative comedic minds, it’s always great. Tonight’s performance was met with the loudest applause of the evening.
by Brian Garraty
Brian is an IT guy for a local healthcare organization by day, a part-time single parent by night, and a member of local improv and sketch group Nerd Alert. Find Brian on Twitter (@NULLgarity) and tell him how much you love him. Disclaimer: Brian performed in this year’s festival and is friends with a number of the performers mentioned above.
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