PREVIOUS SHOWS
|
STARTLING ADVENTURES
With Guests Roddy Maude Roxby and David Brett February 2019 King Charles Church Hall in Tunbridge Wells, has been a regular venue for our shows but this time we created an horse shoe seating arrangement for the audience and played on the floor. Both halves were Life Game formats, David Brett was our first celebrity guest. David is now a fully fledged member of Claqueur. His celebrity status is as a founder member of The Flying Pickets and arranger of the number one Christmas Hit 'Only You'. Previously he was an actor, notably with the political theatre group, 7:84. Roddy Maude Roxby was our second half guest. Roddy was an original member of Theatre Machine and played a large part along with Keith Johnstone of formulating, improvisation games, rules, and exercises around narrative, status which helped form the British Impro scene. Roddy is an artist, mask maker and actor and had featured in films including Aristocats, Plenty, Shadow Lands. This was really our first outing with a full evening of The Life Game and developed on the success of Ad Hoc around the Rock |
|
|
AD HOC AROUND THE ROCK
With Celebrity Guest Louise Jameson March 2018 Sunnyside Hall, Rusthall Based on Keith Johnstone's Life Game, Ad Hoc Around the Rock introduced some new games around the theme of film and theatre, including Shakespeare Speak, Temperamental Director and Actor’s Nightmare. The second half was a chat show format with our local celebrity Louise Jameson, best known for Dr Who, Bergerac, Tenko, East Enders, and Doc Martin. Louise talked about her her private and public life in-dispersed with improvised comic scenes around her stories. A really receptive audience, started with them passing a giant ball over their heads and enthusiastically shouting out suggested words to incorporate into a conducted story when the music stopped. It was an evening of ‘discovery’ in that it really felt like a community event, partly because it was a fund raising mission, we raised a thousand pounds for a local cause, but also the very local audience and guest. I would like more of our shows to have this ‘community feel. It was a real shared experience. |
|
|
THE RABBLE BABBLE TWINS
Groombridge Village Hall and King Charles Church Hall, Tunbridge Wells September 2017 We were delighted to have our German friends from Restrisiko Theatre from Wiesbaden visit us for the weekend. We had two days of workshopping together with two shows, one in Groombridge and the other in Tunbridge Wells. This was a reciprocal visit, we had visited Wiesbaden earlier as part of the two town's twinning associations. This was vey much during the building of of the Brexit campaign and whilst the evening inevitably brought up the subject, so did Claqueurs dismay at the prospect and out determination to keep out European connection. Any assertion that German's have no sense of humour was allayed. Restrisiko delighted us with fast Fairy Tale and a group of non-German speaking English players did a hilarious scene with with Restrisiko players speaking German. The great thing about Impro is that the rules and games are international, not everything depends on spoken language so we can work with any group across the world. We have played now with German, Polish and Belgian groups, and are keen to maintain those relationships and build others TIGHTROPE
SEPTEMBER 16th 2018 Rusthall Festival Sunnyside Hall Tightrope was the beginning of a new era as the Claqueur Impro Team begins performing shows both collectively and in specialist groups. The first half of Tightrope featured Claque's Pair of Four featuring Scott, John, Chris and Dan doing Armondo, a improvisation format that generates comedy. The audience was asked for a single word suggestion to inspire the monologist who shared ideas, real memories and stories based on the word. It was then left to the players to riff ideas around the monologue and create a series of short sketches. The second half featured the full company playing improvisation other games based on audience suggestions including Split Scene when two stories are created side by side, Conducted story with its fast swapping of story tellers developing a single story and Dumb show – a kind of Chinese whispers in pantomime form; it deliberately creates lots of misunderstand and very funny. We had a good house, and are building a good regular core of supporters. It’s time now that we start performing in smaller groups and we now have thirteen players. This will give the platers a greater opportunity to play the styles they feel most comfortable with. They are a generous crew and lovely to watch and to work with. THIS IS YOUR RIDICULOUS LIFE
DECEMBER 14TH 2018 King Charles Church Hall, Tunbridge Wells, Our Christmas Show 2018 was based on audiences stories of family Christmases, funny or horrific, which were played out with comic twists. We never force audience participation but if they had a tale to tell they were free to come and share their story. We also asked for suggestions such as "the worst or most inappropriate christmas presents they had given or received, we also played some seasonal scenes based on popular impro formats and games such as Lines of dialogue pulled from a hat that we incorporated into scenes. Games, rules and formats are great for helping players produce comic scenes, they are also the building blocks for learning how to work collaboratively. In time as players get to know each other, and with more experience we can learn to depend on rules less and less. This is the journey we are on. The audience were treated to mulled wine and mince pies. OTHER SHOWS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|