Cartoon de Salvo: a sense of entitlement
Thursday, May 1st, 2008Six shows in six days in six different towns in the east Midlands. This leg of the tour has taken us from a 17th-century pirate ship (‘The Last Beginning’), via a country house thriller starring an amnesiac Frenchman (‘The Riding Weekend’) and a bloodbath in the backwoods (‘Appalachian Mountain Tragedy’), to Edwardian London, where a flamboyant escapologist pits himself against a fugitive gunman – and loses.
This last play was called ‘The Torrent’ – presumably because our audience had to struggle through an apocalyptic downpour in Bottesford, Notts, to make it to the theatre. Performing this improvised show provides a crash-course in the science of titles. We are very particular about the way we request our show title from the audience. We ask for ‘a simple title of, for example, a film that has never been made’ – the theory being that this will steer the audience midway between titles that are too prescriptive or convoluted, and those that are too bland.
It doesn’t always work – or at least, not instantly. Audiences have to get the wacky titles out of their system first: ‘Gordon Brown’s Successes,’ or ‘A Midsummer Night’s Bedwetting’ being two recent examples. Then come the local, parochial titles: ‘Murder in Shipton’ or ‘The Road to Oldcotes’ – which is fine, but not really what we want to do with this show. Then, in the front row, a kiddie’s hand will shoot up – and we have to be careful, because if we ask for the tot’s suggestion, it’s cruel to then turn him down. That’s how we ended up performing the sci-fi thriller ‘Jason and the Space Aliens’.
But usually, if we’re patient, the good titles start to flow – by which I mean, titles with a suggestion of dramatic event, tantalising titles, yet titles that leave we three improvisers with plenty still to do. I’m thinking of ‘The Camel’s Hump’ (Fareham, Feb 28) or ‘The Laughing Woman’ (Newcastle, Feb 15), ‘And Then There Were Three’ (Redditch, April 17) or ‘The Stone Man’ (Melmerby, March 15). Our job is then to improvise a new play which justifies the chosen phrase as its title. ‘The camel’s hump’ was a priceless artefact sought in old Arabia by a plucky English explorer. ‘The Milkman’s Revenge’ was the retribution wrought by a soldier who returned from Iraq to discover his fiancée fooling around with a local Lothario.
My moment of shame on the tour came when we devised an ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’-style yarn about a son summoned to the Underworld to bring his late dad back to life. The show had plenty to recommend it: cackling demons, a Riverdancing landscape gardener, and an elderly woman in denial about her husband’s death. All of which we were busy celebrating in the dressing-room afterwards until, with horror, we realised: we had totally forgotten and neglected the title, which was ‘Blossom Time’.
Well-told story? Check. An entertained audience? Check. But (unlike, say, David Mamet with ‘Oleanna’) if we don’t ensure that our title makes sense, we feel entitled to claim qualified success at best.
