Meow House Theatre

Last night I went to a show at ImprovAsylum, which is the “other” improv place in Boston. It was … interesting. I thought I had been to a show there before, years ago, but I didn’t recognize the place so either I wasn’t there or they moved or I’m just forgetting.

It was a lot different from what I am used to seeing and participating in. I guess it would more be classified as short-form; they were primarily scenes, not games, but there was no Harold or any other long-form element to it that I could see, and there was a live pianist accompanying them throughout the scenes (even the scenes where they didn’t sing at all). They also performed sketch (something that is pre-scripted, like what they do on SNL) every few scenes. There were a couple of scenes that were longer than other and I guess had references back to previous themes but nothing was longer than perhaps 6 minutes. Can’t do a Harold in 6 minutes. It wasn’t bad or anything; just not what I’m used to. I have heard that the IA teaching style is formatted after The Second City’s and I’m wondering if their performance style is also modeled after SC. I haven’t been to SC so I really can’t say; I’ve seen brief individual performances but not an entire mainstage show. I guess I had thought a full evening at SC would be more Harold, but now that I read the Wikipedia article on it:

“Second City revues feature a mix of semi-improvised and scripted scenes with new material developed during unscripted improv sessions after the second act where scenes are created based on audience suggestions. A Second City innovation is the inclusion of live, improvised music during the performance,”

it doesn’t appear that way at all. I never gave it much thought, I suppose. It sounds like the Del/Charna improvOlympic collaboration is more the style I’m used to and which I prefer. Now I understand why some iO and Annoyance people have recalled looking down their noses at SC, saying “that’s not real improv.” (Not that that stopped some of them from joining Second City and having great success there.)

It was also shockingly expensive. Twenty dollars a ticket—on a Thursday night! I don’t pay anywhere near that in New York, with professional full-time actors who appear regularly in movies and on TV and whose names are recognized all over the improv world and beyond. AND it was sweltering hot in there. Not in the actual performance area, but there’s an anteroom where you wait until they open the theatre doors, and it was easily over 85 degrees. Considering they had far more than 100 people in the audience, at $20 each, on a Thursday no less, I think they should be able to afford air-conditioning. Maybe it was a one-time thing.

It was quite a long show—90 minutes, although including an inexplicably long (nearly 15 minutes) intermission—so this might be why they feel justified in charging $20. (Although you could get 90 minutes at UCB for $10; even just $5 if you hit the timing right, when they’re doing a free set.)

I also didn’t discover until near the end of the show that I had an assigned seat listed on my ticket. The box-office person should have mentioned this; further and most puzzling, the seat they assigned me was right next to someone else (with many seats empty otherwise) and directly behind a large support pole. I would not have been able to see a damn thing. What the fuck? What a bizarre way to do it.

And lastly, not that this has anything to do with the show itself, but I sent them an email five days ago with some questions about classes—in other words, “IA, I might be interested in giving you hundreds of dollars”—and nobody has bothered to respond to me yet. That kinda pisses me off. Perhaps that has colored my less-than-100% experience with the show.

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