This year has been a fantastic adventure for the Improv Club!
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| The Bellingham Trip Team! |
It
began with a field trip to the Upfront Theatre in Bellingham Washington
where we watched "Hellingham" (an improvised murder mystery) and had a
workshop delivered to us by the Upfront Theatre's Artistic Director,
Billy Tierney. All the students who participated thoroughly enjoyed
their time on this trip and we came back a better team!
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| Alan Penty (Victoria), Sara Šoukal (Slovenia) and Jonathan Argue (Victoria) |
Through connections fostered by one of our dedicated
improv coaches, Jonathan Argue, we twinned our club with a similar
improv club at a school in Ljubljana, Slovenia called "Gimnazija Vič"
(which translates to "High School Vic"). We exchanged videos we
created about our respective schools and issued each other challenges.
Our Slovenian friends became tied up with their studies and will be
finishing publishing their challenges over the summer.
We participated in the Canadian Improv Games (CIG) regular
season and this year we made a submission to the CIG Online Wildcard
competition. While we did not end up going to Ottawa this year, the
students enjoyed working together towards a common goal and meeting /
playing with other students during the CIG Island Finals.
In the spirit of providing students for more
opportunities to perform, we produced three improv jams which we opened
up to any local Victoria school with an improv team who wished to
participate. We had students from Esquimalt and Pacific Christian
attend and fun was had by all who joined us on stage!
Once the CIG's had finished, we pushed forward
and had a great time producing our own improvised murder mystery that
was modelled (with permission) after the Upfront Theatre's version. It
ran for two nights at the Intrepid Theatre Club and we have plans to
re-mount it in October 2013.
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| Artist: Chris Lynch |
Our big news is that we have been invited to attend the
Berlin Improv Festival in Berlin, Germany in March 2014! This is the
very first time this has happened at the Berlin Imrpov Festival and
would not have been possible without the connection we have with the
producers of the event, a group named "Die Gorillas", and Jonathan Argue
(past Managing Director of the Impromaniacs Theatre Company). We will
be there from March 21 to 31. During that time, participating students
will have 4 days of workshops lead by two instructors (not from the US
or Canada) with a performance at the end. In addition, each student
will get a festival pass so they can see the festival shows in the
evening, which will feature improv performers from around the world! We
will also have 3 or 4 days time for sightseeing and experiencing Berlin
in general. As of the writing of this newsletter, we have a total of
13 students (including Vic High recent graduates and one student from
Esquimalt High) participating in the trip. Even more exciting is the
chance that some students from our sister club at Gimnazija Vič will also be at the Berlin Improv Festival!
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