Who: Chicago City Limits When: 8 p.m. tomorrow and 7:30 p.m. Saturday Where: The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna
Who: Chicago City Limits When: 8 p.m. tomorrow and 7:30 p.m. Saturday Where: The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna
The improvisational troupe Chicago City Limits brings its audience-participation comedy to the Barns at Wolf Trap this weekend.
(By Austin Cadore)
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If you're going to Wolf Trap for Chicago City Limits, you should have suggestions on the tip of your tongue for what you would like to see happening onstage.
Taking those suggestions will be the touring company of one of the country's most storied improvisational theater troupes.
Although equipped with planned structures (or "games," to use improv parlance) for their sketches, the actors of Chicago City Limits depend on the audience to feed their performances with the meat of who, what, where and when. The more imaginative the audience can be (hint: "in a bathroom" is not considered an imaginative or funny location by improv actors), the more likely it is that something novel and hilarious will happen.
Improvisational theater in its current form was born in Chicago in the 1950s, when actors at the Compass Theater and Second City began performing in public some of the exercises they had used during training. Designed to help the actors with character development and with perfecting their abilities to react spontaneously and realistically to imagined circumstances, these theater games often produced work that was insightful and funny.
Chicago City Limits began in 1977, when actors studying improvisation in a workshop program at the Second City (granddaddy of all of today's improv companies) started a performing group. The troupe moved to New York two years later and performed at Big Apple comedy clubs before opening a theater of its own in 1980. The company has had a continuous run since.
The touring company brings Chicago City Limits-style comedy to audiences across the nation, from college and university stages and regional theaters to national venues such as Wolf Trap and the Smithsonian Institution.
Audiences who might be familiar with improvisation only from dumbed-down versions on network TV programs might be surprised to see that real-deal improvisational theater can be quite different.
The emphasis is less on witty banter, put-downs, one-upmanship and general jokiness. Instead, a more situational type of humor arises from detailed, longer examinations of the imagined circumstances of the games and the actors' characters. Even if some clown in the audience puts them in a bathroom.
-- C. WOODROW IRVIN
The Barns at Wolf Trap is at 1635 Trap Rd., Vienna. Tickets are $22; call 877-965-3872. For more information, go tohttp:/
