Here’s my quick run-down of the first night of the 11th Annual Del Close Marathon. The DCM is 54+ hours of non-stop improv spread over multiple stages and hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre NY.
One standout early in the night was NYC’s I Eat Pandas, who performed a fully-improvised musical about a small-town girl who moves to the Big Apple and finds work in a pizza shop (and I believe sells all her internal organs for extra cash).
Other favorites included LA’s Last Day of School, who perform scenes based on audience members’ text messages, and NYC’s Oscarbait, who put on an amazing performance of The Movie (an improv form that mimics a feature film, complete with camera shots, special effects, and award-worthy performances) — in this case, a sappy Renée Zellweger romance.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Apples and Oranges (Matt Walsh and Jon Glazer), who did a half-hour, very-meta, semi-monoscene which included frequent timeouts to provide “teachable moments” and improv lessons to the audience. It sounds weird, but was absolutely hilarious, and worked quite well (most definitely because these two guys are such great performers).
And then the real fun begins… you know it’s late when the surreal improv starts to rear its head.
Take for example HeliumProv, who performed a really funny show while sucking down helium balloons.
And you haven’t really seen improv until you watch someone yes-and-ing while vomiting heavy cream out of her nose. (Each performer in Finish Your Milk was required to consume a dairy product on stage whenever they weren’t speaking… and quite a few became violently ill… yet they still pulled off a hilarious show.)
The guys in Edward 40sprov had a great concept (they each had two 40-ounce bottles of beer taped to their hands), but I found the execution lacking.
And the final show of my night was The Chain Gang, who performed with their feet tied together by rope (and included some of my most favorite LA improvisers, so I was quite excited to catch them again).
All in all, a great first night for DCM 2009. But one does need some sleep, so I bailed at 5am (as I have a few apartments to check out in the morning). Then it’s back to Chelsea for a musical improv workshop (!) and 36 or so more hours of the funny…
