Making it up as we go along (or was that something we’re supposed to know?): The Premiere Review
There was heartbreak and rivalry and music and chosen family. There was jealousy and time travel and bird mating dances and the promised jazz. At the carpet, the director had said they'd be bringing back the Ocean Dance.
Per my understanding, improv is a distinct version of what Tumblr folk will remember as LARPing—albeit more widely accepted in the professional stage theatre industry. In improv enacts a self-insert fan-fic… in real time. Improvisers (the idiosyncratic breed of individuals that participate in this practice) hold a reputation of being adorably insufferable, even by theatre kid standards. Think Lin Manuel Miranda but in Marrickville, so not quite as American, performing simultaneously on stage and camera. There were around six actors, different people, like the extended cast of a 2016 high school production of the entirety of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Confusion was the scene. Who was playing the father? Who was playing the son? Or was it a daughter? He was looking for love. Was her French friend overly done? Is there such a thing as an overly done French? She could do the splits. Okay, they're clams. It's Finding Nemo (2003) with clams. Rival clam clans. A Russian clam who forgets he's Russian sometimes? An American clam (the one with the French clam best friend). Ooh—a love triangle. Who cheated on who? They all clasped their hands. There would be no going on until someone spoke to Gary. Get him on the horn! “I lied really hard to get here!”
I can dish out all the details because you'll never see this film.
Beginnings are overrated. Calling this production The Premiere definitely directed one's attention to the little TV standing in one corner, for two roving videographers, also on stage, to blow up different angles in real time.
For the audition, the producer was casually clad. The girl he was interviewing was from the future. She had proof. I think. What would you believe as tangible evidence of time travel? A mysterious invention with a strange and undeniable power. A small, black, all powerful box, capable of summoning funny cat videos at will. She was a shoe-in, if you ask me. Don't ask me why.
Of course he turned her down. The next auditioner was blonde.
“I’m not from the future, but I think what this film needs is….jazz.”
All it took was that sharp American accent and Hollywood earnestness, traits which can only be performed. And she performed. She walked away with the part of a lifetime.
I sat all the way in the back far away from the stage, shuffled in by a man who saw me running up to him and Just Knew. I don't have to tell you very much about the scene or the set-up do I? It's improv! Would you know if I just… made something up? Perhaps you would. Let's play a game, let's see if you can guess. You and me, mad libs, let's go. You know you want to.
There is a cloak of confidence your mind has already draped across your shoulders. You think you got this, you're so sure. Lo! I've uncapped my pen and now I wield a flaming sword. Go on, guard your conviction in the predictability of your world. Did you think your conviction guarded you? Now it is one you're fighting to defend. Let's proceed. Consider: is there really something charming about sitting in a back seat in a small room with black painted walls, right beside those controlling the electrics, waiting for people to trickle into sparsely spaced seats? Facing an empty stage, a group of people who could be anyone, on a cold night out?
What do you think is the accent of a clam?
Pause for emphasis. No, seriously. It's a deeply resonant question, such an important one to have raised, with so many profound implications. I had no time to contemplate them though, because the lights went off then on, and time was a muscle that flexed and unflexed and just like that! The table read had already commenced.
Then: the premiere. The premiere! We'd made the red carpet. Benedict Cumberbatch! They were setting up the Media Wall, preparing for the customary interviews. The poster was unveiled—oh it was beautiful (it really was.) It's called The Magnificent Clam. Or was it mysterious? It certainly was mysterious to me and, going by their somewhat forced laughter, the couple next to me. Everyone else too, for that matter.
Improv gets a bad rap because I think we all know that thing we shouldn't. The thing being that no one knows what's going on. No one. Who really ever does though? Aren't we all just making it up as we go along?
We always know that things can go one way or another, go well or get worse. In life, it all pans out to a big ‘take it as it comes’. We all think we're doing it with sincerity, but it is not revolutionary to suggest that maybe we are all participating in one big performance. Or a movie. Or a play about a movie. Or a movie about a play about a movie. This was getting too convoluted for me. There was a stage! There was a screen! All at once. Another fact of life: everything that ever happens, happens everywhere at once.
If we're all just putting it on for one another, isn't it nice to think that there is a place where everyone knows it's being put on?
By this token, all involved in the great big Act which is improv, can Drop the Act. Watching improv, either everyone is performing or no one is. You have to take your mask off at this masquerade, there are no two ways about it. You either leave your tap-dancing shoes at the door with everyone else, or everyone keeps them on. In which case, get ready to bang it out, seated or on your mark. (Regardless of whether you're all the way in the back, like I was.)
If the daily collision and tension and participation in ‘dynamics’ (what the young ones call ‘socialising’) is a game of Charades, why not make up more interesting fiction? It's the greatest, oldest trick in the book.
Maybe this all sounds bizarrely alluring to you. Some primal part of you is awakening to the suggestion of ensuing hijinks. Maybe you're a proudly self-proclaimed theatre kid who loves anyone with the capacity to speak, especially when they are on a platform with the curtain rising or running up from the wings. I can't turn back time, no matter what they claimed about smartphones in the play. So this exact night will never happen again. Am I a gatekeeper? You should definitely feel bad. You missed seeing ‘Gone with the Wind, but clams.’ Maybe Gone with the Wind (1939) isn't your thing though, and if you start taking your friend group to improv nights, you can be a part of ‘Pitch Perfect 4 with clams’!!
Maybe you think this all sounds cheesy and banal, but life is cheesy and banal, so really what you're doing is flying dangerously close to the sun of reality-denying-conspiracy-theory terrain. Just accept that to be free is to be cringe, and let your inner Disney kid out. If you still think my assessment of The Premiere as a ‘master work’ is wrong… think again. Change your mind. Or don't. Go look for that Tony award worthy improv act. Prove me wrong. Improvise. I did, could you tell?
P.S (Is there a postscript for reviews?) first one logged on letterboxd!!!