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Improvising Your Weekend (In the Dark): "Bat Friday" at ColdTowne
No, it's not a SNICK flashback, it's "Bat Fridays," a block of comedy featuring several ColdTowne troupes tackling the improv format known as "The Bat."
For more information, we turned to ColdTowne's Michael Jastroch, who provided a brief description of the format, questioned his use of the word "Spooktacular," and talked about The Mansion of Terror, the local haunted house that's sponsoring "Bat Fridays."
For the uninitiated, what is "The Bat?"
The Bat is a Harold in the dark.
The Harold is the form of improv created by The Committee in San Francisco in the 1960s and developed by the late, great improv comedy guru Del Close. The dark has been around since well before God created the universe and all the life forms we see around us today. So there's a lot of history there.
I'd equate it to a radio play, where the people performing use soundscapes in the dark to communicate information to the audience that they would otherwise communicate visually. For example, when you can see the players, it's possible to tell when the fat guy knocks over a chair. In the dark, we have to communicate that information with sound effects and, in the case of the fat guy, our special, patented fat guy voice. Fat guys knocking over chairs is the secret to good comedy.
Why did you guys decide to do a whole month of "The Bat?"
The International Commision on Fair Joke Practices, ICOFJP, inspected our theater and found out we weren't doing anything remotely Halloween oriented. It was either do a "Bat" or a $30 fine. Also, we like to stretch ourselves and play around on stage, and that means taking some risks and experimenting with new things once in a while. And making sound effects are fun.
So it's a different troupe each week?
A different ColdTowne Theater house troupe will perform a "Bat" each week, culminating in a Halloween-night "spooktacular" (don't print that), wherein The Faculty (members of improv groups The Frank Mills and ColdTowne, the teachers at the ColdTowne Improv and Sketch Comedy Conservatory) will perform a "Bat."
How'd you get hooked up with the Mansion of Terror folks? Does their sponsorship mean the shows are going to have a touch of horror?
It's up to each individual troupe how scary they want their show to be. I have no doubt that some of the troupes will be incorporating horror elements. The Mansion of Terror was a friend of a friend kind of thing, since ColdTowne knows everybody in America. We're always looking to cross promote, and the fun fact is that 3/5 of ColdTowne are Halloween and/or Horror movie nerds.
