Every Wednesday local comedy group Mettlesome performs "Hush Hush," an improv comedy show about secrets, at Fullsteam Brewery in Durham.
While the group has been performing some version of the show for the past year and a half, it has been performing at Fullsteam since January and will continue to perform through the end of April.
"Hush Hush" is centered around audience involvement. Throughout the week, patrons of Fullsteam can write down their secrets and place them in a box on the bar that will be used for the show.
“It’s a special show because there is so much input from the audience," said Mettlesome founder and "Hush Hush" director Ashley Melzer. "We may go through 10 to 15 secrets in a single show, so that’s 10 to 15 moments of reading a piece of paper — and you have no idea what it’s going to be."
The group chooses from a variety of different angles when performing each secret. Members can act out what it would be like if the person shared the secret, put the secret in a new environment or take the secret to its extreme. The intent of the show is to use comedy to explore the complexities of each secret and what its consequences might be.
“It’s really fun to do a show about secrets because we get to shed a light on things we don’t always talk about or that we’re too afraid to talk about,” cast member Jack Reitz said. “One of the goals we have with the show is to honor the secrets instead of make fun of them. A lot of times people keep secret things they’re ashamed of — and instead of making these things feel shameful, we try to celebrate them in fun and unexpected ways.”
This Wednesday's show will be slightly different from others in the series, as the group will celebrate Valentine’s day with "Love at First Pint." The event will feature two onstage dating games, as well as a main event of acting out the audience's bad dates, rather than their secrets.
“I always leave a bad date feeling so extra-single," cast member Amy Allen said. "And secrets also make you feel isolated — but then when you tell the story of a bad date, it makes you feel really connected with other people. When you tell a secret, you begin to feel really connected with other people who have had a similar experience."
Melzer said some of her favorite secrets that were discussed onstage included someone who until recently shoplifted Slim Jims, someone who was deathly afraid of anything gummy and a woman who claimed to have eaten her husband’s ashes.
