160 Characters
Vanilla Productions @ The Umbrella Revolution
8:30pm, Mon 13 Mar 2006
As the audience is seated – we’re cheekily reminded to keep our phones on – a mobile number is presented; we’re asked to forward SMS messages from our Inboxes to the number. It’s explicitly stated that we’re not to write new messages, just share messages we’ve been sent or have written.
The mobile phone attached to the provided number starts beeping like a very rapidly beepy thing. Its Inbox fills up… and we’re off.
The six people in Vanilla Productions take turns selecting interesting messages from the phone, using them as inspiration for a spot of improvisational comedic theatre. They’re all competent at improv, some of the twists they subject each other too were brilliantly off the wall, and it was a pleasant old laugh – especially when the team tried their hand at Kiwi accents.
This turned out a little different to what I was expecting; I guess the idea I’d created was that the action would be interactively controlled by the audience. Alas, things were a little more static than that; essentially, this just boiled down to a bit of TheatreSports with a hook to bring in the audience.
Not a shitty show but, having experienced it, not one I’d rush off to again.