ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: off the clock
SOURCE: CHRIS HENSON
Chicago City Limits will perform in Olin Hall at Roanoke College in Salem on Saturday night. Call 375-2333.
I'm at dinner with my family. The new pastor and his wife are our guests. Mom has made beef stroganoff. I'm 9 years old. I don't speak. The adults are talking about a new piano, donations and the choir.
I'm maybe half-way through a brown-and-serve roll when the conversation slows. Dad points his butter knife at me and says, "Christopher, do that funny voice you were doing this morning." He is chortling already as if he hasn't stopped laughing from the first time he heard it.
"I can't," I say. My face becomes prickly hot.
"Aw, come on," dad says. "It's so funny."
"Really, dad. I'd rather not," I say. "It's not that funny."
"I'll bet it is," says the new pastor. "Come on and do your funny voice. We'd love to hear it."
We go back and forth and I finally do "the voice." It's a sort of Barney Fife thing with a Bronx accent. The pressure's on to revive something that was spontaneous before, something that had been genuinely funny. This time it doesn't work. The leaden laughter is equally contrived.
"Have another brown-and-serve," says mom.
Instead, I go to my room. I miss school the next day. Dad has to write me an excuse. In a roundabout way I am the subject of the next Sunday's sermon on disappointment and dashed expectations. |n n| I'd bet my last dollar that's the exact sort of pressure the theater group Chicago City Limits faces each night that they perform their completely improvised comedy show.
"Actually, it's not like that at all," troupe actor Joe DeGise II said in a telephone interview. "There's no pressure at all. Especially not when all these people have paid real money to see us be funny."
"The audience is on your side," added his colleague Sean Conroy. "Even if you say something that falls flat you can sort of make fun of yourself in that way ... Plus, we're really good."
"Especially Sean," Joe said. "You've got to see this man work ... you've got to."
Chicago City Limits is one of New York's longest running comedy shows ever. The show's touring company, made up of five actors, a musician and a manager, will perform this weekend at Roanoke College.
Saturday night they will step onto the stage at Olin Hall with nothing ... no script, no set, no preconceived notions. And they will improvise an entire comedy show based solely on suggestions from the audience.
"The audience plays a massive role," Joe said. "As a matter of fact, one show I got so tired I just sort of sat down and we pulled up someone from the crowd to cover for me."
"We're very dependent on the audience to get suggestions that get us through the show," Sean said. "We use the stuff that they call out and try to make it into something that makes sense, or is at least funny."
The basic idea is that the audience decides on a premise and important details for a skit. The rest is up to the actors. "The key element is that we're making it up on the spot."
Okay, that's how a skit gets started. But, how do they know when it's finished?
"The lights turn off," Sean said.
Actually, manager Nicole Baker dowses the lights when she feels a skit is finished. "And in that respect she is improvising with us," Joe said.
So, their mayhem has a method. But it's all dependent on seven razor-sharp wits and perfect timing. Are there ever nights when an actor might not feel funny?
"Well," said Sean. "There are certainly nights when I feel that other people aren't funny."
"What's funny is life really," Joe said. "And we're sort of a microscope on life. We project these truths onto the audience until they laugh." That's where spontaneity comes in. "When we try to do something that's overtly comic, it's usually not funny ... it's more ludicrous really."
Joe tells new audiences to expect a unique night out. "It's not stand up," he said, "it's not Saturday Night Live. We create it with the audience. There's a sort of nervous energy, you know, things could screw up at any second."
True, Sean said. "It's like watching people walk on a high wire and waiting for somebody to take a fatal plunge. And fortunately there have been very few fatalities on the road so far.
"There's incredible energy that comes out of doing a show in front of about 900 or 1,000 people," he said. "There's also a nice intimacy when you're in front of 15 people."
"And the challenge is to take 1,000 people and make it that intimate," Joe said. "You know, like a personal experience. It's easy when you've got a good audience ... of any size."
And how long does it take to know you have a good audience?
"Oh," Sean said. "Usually 12 or 13 seconds."
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: "Chicago City Limits" will perform at Olin Hall onby CNBRoanoke College campus Saturday night at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8. Call
375-2333.