Bristol Old Vic’s festival of all things improvised, Bristol Jam, is back for second helpings. Helena Edwards prepares as best she can.

Putting on a festival that consists of lots of people who aren’t sure what they are supposed to be doing seems daunting – foolish, even. But Bristol Old Vic’s artistic director Tom Morris did just that last year with Bristol Jam, the UK’s only fully fledged festival of improvisation, and it was such a success, he’s doing it again. Expect the unexpected, plan the unplanned, think the unthinkable.

The 10-day festival kicks off on Tue 26 Oct and straddles drama, music, comedy, art and loads and loads of made­-up stuff. The whole event is like a chemistry experiment in an Old Vic test tube: although all the components are known, what happens when they combine, what type of reaction occurs, is anyone’s guess. “Last year we just thought that it would be nice for something to happen in Bristol which feels as if it in some way embodies the spirit of the project here,” says Tom. “Essentially, our approach was to trust artists to teach us how to use the theatre through the collaboration they have with audiences. To have a festival of improvised performance in Bristol was not only possible because there were the artists out there: it seemed to fit with Bristol because there is a long tradition of improvised music here anyway, there is an extraordinary body of artists in the city, and it also seemed somehow to connect with the whole project here of trying to see if we could find a different way of running the theatre.”

HIGHLIGHTS

Alongside a 30-hour ‘Improvathon’ (topping last year’s measly 24-hour run), lie re-worked plays, poetry and puppetry, rhyme from New York hip-hop skewering word artists Baba Israel off-the-cuff drawing workshops and a kid-friendly game where you have to perform to win back your left shoe. There’s plenty to look out for…

LIFEGAME

A member of the audience takes to the stage at the beginning of the performance and is prompted to recount parts of their life which are then acted out by members of Improbable Theatre. No two lives are the same, so no two performances are the same: the beauty is that they couldn’t make it up if they tried. It’s both a simple and ridiculously complex concept, but one that has proven immensely successful: it was first performed 12 years ago and has been traipsing round the world since. To date, the biographical subjects have ranged from a cab driver to a nun to the National Theatre’s window cleaner to Joanna Lumley. This is improvising in its truest sense: taking inspiration from the moment and the immediate surroundings and turning it into something poignant. LIFEGAME BRISTOL OLD VIC, WED 27 (7.30PM), THUR 28 (8PM) & SAT 30 OCT (2.40PM) & TUE 2 (7.30PM)& WED 3 NOV (7.30PM), £16/£14/£10/£5 (CONC £2 OFF EXCEPT £5 TICKETS). VENUE READERS CAN GET TWO TICKETS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE IF THEY MENTION VENUE WHEN BOOKING.

SHOWSTOPPER! THE IMPROVISED MUSICAL

Improvised music on a completely different flex: this year the Bristol Jam sees the welcome return of ever-popular Edinburgh fave, ‘Showstopper! The Improvised Musical’. The scaffolding on which this made-up musical rests is provided by the crowd each night, in the form of a title, theme and ideas. The singing ’n’ dancing brickwork is laid by the Showstoppers who create an entirely original musical every night. Ludicrous, perhaps, but it works – as our on-the-spot reviewer gushed on seeing the show at Bath’s Komedia in January: “It’s the curveballs that provide the most fun for cast and audience alike – the blatant buck-passing and attempts not to corpse a crucial reminder of the venture’s delicious fragility. Amidst countless high points, nothing touches the ‘West Side Story’ number set on Barry Island, complete with spoof Jerome Robbins choreography and ‘Gavin and Stacey’ accents. Genius.” SHOWSTOPPER! THE IMPROVISED MUSICAL BRISTOL OLD VIC, FRI 29 OCT, 8PM, £14/£12/£10/£5 (CONC £2 OFF EXCEPT £5 TICKETS).

PHIL KAY IN TWEED

Arguably, proper belly-laugh comedy can only ever be improvised: humour and spontaneity go hand in hand. With Phil Kay’s speed-of-light delivery and often incoherent babblings, there’s no danger of run­-of-the-mill gags – he is a master of improvised, off-the-cuff, spoken and musical humour, and as with all things spontaneous, when it is good, it is very good and when it is bad it... isn’t very good. The Scottish multi-award-winning hirsute humourist is random, hyper, haphazard (during last year’s Jam, he whisked his audience onto the set of another performance taking place at the same time) and illogical: like a funny moth after eight coffees. Most of all, though, he’s impassioned and that’s what makes him worth listening to: he may not be everyone’s cup of tea but he is one special brew. PHIL KAY IN TWEED BRISTOL OLD VIC, SAT 30 OCT, 8PM, £14/£12/£10/£5 (CONC £2 OFF EXCEPT £5 TICKETS).

THE BRISTOL JAM RUNS FROM TUE 26 OCT-SAT 6 NOV AT BRISTOL OLD VIC AND OTHER NEARBY VENUES. FFI ON ALL PERFORMANCES AND FOR TICKETS SEE WWW.BRISTOLOLDVIC.ORG.UK/JAM. FURTHER DETAILS CAN BE FOUND ON THE MUSIC, PERFORMANCE AND COMEDY PAGES. VENUE WILL BE SCRAWLING ON THE OFFICIAL JAM BLOG THROUGHOUT: WWW.BRISTOLOLDVIC.ORG.UK/BLOG
 

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