Reviews

In the years since, I’ve been privileged to watch Impro rehearse and I’ve seen the company perform UnScripted takes on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Stephen Sondheim and John Ford. (They also do Tennessee Williams, Charles Dickens and L.A. noir, among others.) The beloved authors and genres they enrich are both refreshed and irrevocably altered by their touch. It is the most impressive sort of homage—the kind that tells you these improvisers are essentially slumming in some literary neighborhoods (sorry, but Rod Serling never wrote anything as good as Impro’s riffs on his themes).

First off, this isn’t the “39 Steps” you’re thinking of – not quite. Yes, Invisible Frisbee Productions’ inventive comedy riffs on the Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Yes, it’s still four actors playing the roles of the hapless everyman Richard Hannay and the multiple spies he becomes entangled with. But this time, Hannay may be escaping peril in Will’s Pub instead of London. The settings, professions and event the actors’ roles depend on the cues the audience gives to the cast, by way of a “survey” taken before the show.

Kits drive innovation. When a kit sells well, suddenly there are people in every town building newfangled TV sets (remember Heathkit? They’re back!) or aerial Arduino robots (check out DIY Drones). Like seeds in the wind, those kits switch on thousands of new makers, who become a community of innovators, excited and hungry for more advanced kits and products, in an upward spiral.