Performing in the Green Show on Wednesday, June 24 (Shakespeare UnScripted); Thursday, June 25 (Broadway Musical UnScripted); Friday, June 26 (Shakespeare UnScripted with SOU Theatre Class); Sunday, June 28 (Shakespeare UnScripted)
This is their sixth season in the OSF Green Show.
Spontaneous plays inspired by the world's great writers.
Shakespeare UnScripted has been performed by Impro Theatre since 1999.
Originally directed by Brian Lohmann and Dan O’Connor at the Globe Playhouse in Los Angeles, this show has received standing ovations at festivals in Chicago, New York and Austin. Cast members were part of the critically acclaimed run Unexpected Shaxpeare, which was granted a season slot at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 2006. The current company of fourteen has been working together since October 2006 and is a mix of veteran improvisers with at least 20 years of experience, and younger players trained in our school. We have had critically acclaimed runs at the Odyssey Theater in Santa Monica and in 2014 at the Carrie Hamilton theater upstairs at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Impro Theatre is an award-winning repertory theatre company specializing in improvisation. Many members of the company began work together in the late 1980’s as members of Theatresports. A shared passion for spontaneously creating plays led them away from improv comedy and towards a deeper exploration of devising actor generated plays. Impro continues to wrestle with what it means to publicly create narrative as a collective in real time. Company members are all working professionals who have appeared in feature films (
Hail Caesar,
Peggy Sue got Married,
A Mighty Wind,
He Was a Quiet Man,
Multiplicity,
Reno 911,
Finding Amanda,
Kung Fu Panda,
Spiderman III,
West Bank Story,
Thanks), directed, produced, hosted and acted in television shows (
Sons and Daughters,
World Cup Comedy,
Fargo,
The Tick,
Seinfeld,
The Practice,
ER,
Gilmore Girls,
Becker,
Black-ish,
Fargo,
Castle,
LIFEGAME,
Curb Your Enthusiasm) and worked in regional theatre and Off-Broadway. They share a commitment to developing the spontaneous nature of live theatre and pushing the boundaries of group improvisation. Recent runs include the Broad Stage, The Falcon Theater, South Coast Rep, The Odyssey and the Carrie Hamilton at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Shakespeare UnScripted is rehearsed using techniques for improvising classical texts, including many that Brian Lohmann has taught at A.C.T., The Old Globe and to OSF company members since 1992. This method is currently being assembled into a book titled
Shakespeare Through Improvisation, the aim of which is to aid students of Shakespeare in sharing their own individual voices through Shakespearean craft, and to promote deeper understanding of, and connection to, his plays. We hope audiences will leave our shows feeling that they can play with language more freely in their day to day lives, and that our work will inspire them to see Shakespeare as an avenue for creative exploration.
Impro Theatre on Community:
Our company members cut their teeth teaching improvisation in the 1990s to anyone who wanted to learn. We believe improvisation is a “populist” art form, one that allows anyone to create theatre, no matter what their experience or educational background is. In Los Angeles, our shows are frequented by students from the Asian American community, as many of our members teach classes run by Cold Tofu at Maryknoll cultural center in Little Tokyo and Room to Improv an Asian American company in the San Fernando Valley. We also reach out to the student communities at Pepperdine University, UC Irvine, and at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. We see ourselves as being a link in the tradition that celebrates the spontaneous nature of great theatre; a tradition that extends back through classical commedia dell’arte and reaches forward to contemporary experimental performance. We often invite our audiences to stay for talk backs and believe that, since they are creating the show in their heads right along with us, we have a unique relationship as collaborators on what ever the show they saw turned out to be.
www.improtheatre.com