Jukebox Stories

Tara and I went to see Impact Theatre’s Jukebox Stories last Friday night at La Val’s in Berkeley. The show left us both tingling with an inspired feeling that only a good night of theater can induce. We immediately began asking ourselves “how do we improvise this?”

The show has no fourth wall. Prince Gomalvilas tells stories and Brandon Patton sings songs. While certain pieces are performed each night, the others change every performance based on requests and random audience input. In many ways the show felt more like a concert than a play, but that’s not surprising given that one of Prince’s inspirations for creating the show came from a Green Day concert, which he describes as one of the most amazing theatrical experiences he’s ever seen.

While none of the show is specifically improvised, it’s not overly scripted either. They interact with each other and the audience naturally, and Prince takes no care to hide the fact that he reads most of the monologues off cheat sheets. They play trivia games with the audience and effortlessly shape the show around the feedback they’re getting from the crowd. Perhaps more importantly, they look like they’re having a great time. By the end of the evening (which flew by) I felt as though I had just hung out with them in their home for a couple hours.

In many ways, they’ve taken key elements from improv and applied them to theater:
Look like you’re having a good time.
Interact with the audience.
Listen to the audience and tailor the show to their tastes.

The trick with improvising this format is that for these two performers each monologue or song is an old friend they get to relax comfortably into performing whichever one is chosen. It’s hard to improvise a monologue or song as if it were an old friend. It’s not impossible, but the improvisor needs to be exceedingly comfortable and confident in their ability to sing a song or tell a story on the spot.

But Jukebox Stories felt more personal than your average improv show, largely because the stories and songs were more personal and revealing. To really improvise this format, we would have to tell real stories about our lives, in which case is it really improvised?

As it’s not exactly scripted either, it would fall under our jurisdiction as the Un-Scripted Theater Company, but I’m left feeling this is probably the direction live theater should be exploring: combining scripted theater with improv and song. Maybe the question isn’t “how do we improvise this?” but rather “how do we do this type of show ourselves?”

Jukebox Stories runs through March 22nd. Visit www.impacttheatre.com for ticket info.

Our own production, Three, opens this weekend!