On Valentine's Day night in The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, an audience awaited the start of “ImproValentine,” an improvised musical comedy about the joys and sorrows of love.
Performed by the Actors Improv Theater, this 2-hour show celebrated the annual day of love through a spontaneous set of episodes. Each episode’s theme was based on audience suggestions and then applied to a series of comedic sketches.
“Give us something that ends a relationship,” Steve Scott, one of the actors, said to the audience from the stage.
“Death!” an audience member shouted back.
As the crowd reacted with a mix of laughs and murmurs, the group paused, considering the suggestion. Then, they took their places on stage.
Each episode had this same structure: a question for the audience, a shouted reply and a spontaneous performance in return. With an occasional chocolate heart thrown from the stage into the crowd, the actors presented songs, stories and plenty of laughs.
Founded in 1983, the group's motto, “If you laugh, we're doing comedy. If you don't, we're doing drama,” leads their performances. They draw off of the energy in the room and develop the story with one another based on people’s reactions.
“We're not going for the gag, we’re going for the creative, meaningful, engaging relationship between the people that are on stage,” Scott said.
The four actors, Hailey Brown, Greg Hohn, Dana Marks and Steve Scott, built their performance not only off communication with one another, but they also relied on live pianist Glenn Mehrbach. The music, contingent on their dialogue, indicated moments where spontaneous lyricism could begin. Only five of the songs were prepared in advance, and any other time the troupe sang, which occurred in most of the sketches, was improvised.
