No words to describe improv show

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This article was published 10/07/2014 (4109 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This improv show might leave many festival-goers speechless.

Sarah Michaelson — better known around Winnipeg as DJ Mama Cutsworth — has teamed up with two Colombian actors, Daniel Orrantia and Felipe Ortiz, to bring a unique kind of improvised theatre to the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival called Speechless — a long-form performance without the use of actual words.

Michaelson, a 32-year-old West End resident, met Orrantia and Ortiz at a festival in Germany two years ago. She had been invited as a performer, which meant she found herself being passed around making music for a lot of people.

“I met these two guys from Bogotá, Colombia. They are improvising actors, but they’re also circus performers, and their style of performance is really physical and kind of magical — very different than any other style I’d seen,” Michaelson said.

After the festival, she said goodbye to them and they went their separate ways. However, when she went to another festival six months later in Edmonton, Alta., she saw them again.

“We ended up doing a scene together where they were the actors and I was the DJ,” Michaelson said. “It was just five minutes long, but the twist was there was no talking.”

Michaelson provided the music and the actors performed through mime and physical performance.

“Something happened in that scene where the whole audience was just on the edge of their seats. We realized, ‘OK, there’s something really cool here about doing something silently,’” Michaelson said.

The three of them decided to take this project further — and thus, Speechless was born. According to Michaelson, Speechless is a one-hour show, and the genre of the performance is long-form improv.

“It’s a long way of telling a story that unfolds almost more like a play or even a film,” Michaelson said. “It’s one long story with metaphors and themes and character development.”

Although it’s improvised theatre, Michaelson explained that the three of them have a concrete way of starting the show. Usually, Michaelson, Orrantia, and Ortiz find someone that inspires them in the audience and talk to them a for a couple of minutes to learn about them. That information will inspire the show.

“One day in Germany, this woman mentioned that she was pregnant and started telling us how she and her husband met,” Michaelson said. “We take inspiration from that person, and we might write down a few words or quotes that she said on a big chalkboard on the stage — those are the seeds of the start of the story. We thank them for their time and we say, ‘OK, after this, no more words.’”

Michaelson will retreat to her turntables and the actors will go to the side of the stage.

“Then one of us just begins,” Michaelson said.

Rest assured, Michaelson said preparation and practice is essential to the show — but just in a different way.

“We do rehearse, but not in a way of memorizing lines or something like that. What we do is we research a lot of the same things. We read the same books, watch the same movies, and share those inspirations, so that when we are in the same city, our rehearsals are basically talking about how we’re going to approach story ideas,” Michaelson said.

Because Speechless is an improvised show, it’s never the same performance each time.

“We always talk to a new person at the start of the show, find out about them, get inspired by them. And then the show just goes,” Michaelson said, snapping her fingers to describe the show’s immediacy.

Speechless will be showing at the Shaw Performing Arts Centre in the Manitoba Theatre for Young People (2 Forks Market Rd.).

Showtimes are as follows:

• Wed., July 16 at 10 p.m.;
• Fri., July 18 at 9 p.m.;
• Sat., July 19 at 5 p.m.;
• Sun., July 20 at 7 p.m.;
• Tues., July 22 at 4:15 p.m.;
• Wed., July 23 at 8:45 p.m.;
• Fri., July 25 at 1:45 p.m.;
• Sat., July 26 at 5 p.m.

The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival runs from July 16 to 27.

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