[Disclaimer: I am an Artistic Co-Director of the New Zealand Improv Festival, but was not involved in the planning or presentation of this show.]

Have you ever seen two chickens trying to communicate the concept of a zookeeper? This is what happens in ‘Roast Chicken: Who Killed That Guy?’, just one of many delightful scenes in the first instalment of Fresh Produce, the graduation show of the week-long New Zealand Improv Festival Youth Programme under the leadership of Guanny Liu-Prosee.

MC and director Liz Butler (New York) greets the audience as we enter The Stage at BATS, holding a basket of vegetables and wearing a vibrant green kiwifruit shirt in homage to what will turn out to be an extremely thorough reskinning of a short-form improv show as a trip across the road to New World.

When she and muso Jamie Burgess (Melbourne) welcome the eight performers of ‘Family Size’ to the stage, it is almost impossible to believe she’s been working with them for only a matter of hours. The opening is slick, polished and just a bit artsy, setting the stage for a tight 50-minute show of high-calibre improvisation.

The scenes presented range from a visual soundscape of the supermarket in the throes of a zombie apocalypse, through old improv favourites like ‘Word At A Time Story’ and ‘New Choice’ (cunningly renamed ‘Fresh Choice’ for this evening) to games I’d never seen before like Employee Of The Month.

At every turn, the performers are bold, clever and hilarious, but what impresses me most is the level of support on display. Whenever a performer makes an offer, the other players immediately latch on and ride the idea to a satisfying conclusion — or into absurdity and chaos, which is often the same thing.

To have achieved this level of connection and support in just five days — remember, they were strangers on Monday — is a truly inspiring feat, and the performers are to be commended for their bravery and vulnerability. It is hard to single out individual moments when a show is this engaging, but a highlight for me is during a scene about a failing piñata business when, after a series of dramatic monologues from her scene partners, Holley actually mounts the stairs of the BATS auditorium to deliver her impassioned speech directly to individual audience members, mere inches from our faces, and sending operator Em Maguire lunging for the house lights. It’s a moment of pure theatre, devoid of any hint of nerves or doubts, and I bloody love it.

Credit must be given to the roster of local and international teachers who have worked with this group throughout the week, but above all to the performers themselves for their fearless commitment to the show and to one another.

As I leave the theatre, I overhear one performer describing a particularly fraught moment in one of the scenes: “…and I was like, yeah, I’ve never had a brain.” If that isn’t a sign that these rising stars have unlocked the true secret of improvisation, I don’t know what is.

Fresh Produce
Performed by Holley Jacobson, Tyra Tuiavii, Heath Dunnet, Imogen Hillary, Devon Millward, Jack Williams, Will McLean and Michelle Espejo.
Directed by Liz Butler
Music by Jamie Burgess
Operated by Emma Maguire.

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