The International Youth Relay hosts the 11th Nice improvisational theater festival on the upcoming 30th & 31st of May. Organized by the C.L.A.J Association (*) in collaboration with the host team Counta Blabla, the festival offers two days of theatrical jousts involving a selection of nine teams from all over France: Nice, Paris, Marseille, Lille, Istres, Les Yvelines, Valence, Arnouville les Gonnesses… and even from Italy with the team from Savona.
A unique and ephemeral show at every scene
Energized by boundless imagination and tremendous generosity in performance, ninety actors take turns on stage to create and enact stories as zany and offbeat as they are beautiful and moving, based on themes announced in the moment.
Improvisation scenes can also be colored by a genre style to be reproduced in the performance: classical as with Molière or Shakespeare, or modern in the style of a Tarantino, an Audiard, a western, a sci-fi movie, a commercial spot, etc.
We improvise, but it’s not just anything
Improvisational theater is governed by rules of play that the referee on stage enforces: within a limited time, two teams of actors compete in a mixed improvisation scene (both teams on stage) or compared (each team presents its scene) based on themes and categories proposed by the referee.
The audience, a crucial element of the game
The audience plays a decisive role in each presented scene as it votes in favor of the team it believes has delivered the best performance; the team accumulating the most points wins the match: applause, cheers, whistles, booing the referee, bad faith, they do everything to influence the outcome of the vote.
A thirty-year Quebec story
In France, while improvisational theater is easily associated with a recent discipline popularized by celebrities such as Jamel Debbouze or Philippe Lelièvre, one must cross the Atlantic and immerse in Quebec culture to find its origins.
Amid the popular fervor surrounding ice hockey in Quebec, Montreal actor Robert Gravel had the ingenious idea of pairing theater with the national sport No. 1 to fill his theaters. In 1977, he created the National Improvisation League of Quebec.
Improvisational theater then reappropriated all elements of hockey: the striped black and white jerseys of the referees or players, a master of ceremonies or even a DJ who animates the musical atmospheres between each scene, making it a family-friendly, popular, and lively show.
