Making things up can be very difficult. To get around this, improvisers often look to the people they are sharing the stage with – for leads, for inspiration, for accidental cues that let you trick each other into thinking someone has had an idea. A common refrain is, “What you are looking for is in the eyes of your scene partner.” But what if you take them away? 

Improvising solo is, in the words of our onesie-clad MC Matt Powell, “really hard”.

He is introducing three first-time solo improvisers, their performances developed during the festival. They have varying approaches to being left alone on stage, but they have at least one thing in common: if it’s hard, they don’t let it show.

First up is Wiremu Tuhiwai, with a performance titled ‘As You Wish’. He is a genie, in flamboyant suit and vivid eye makeup, released from his bottle. He is here to grant three wishes – and has us all shout out our ‘surface’ wants, waiting until only the more heartfelt desires remain.

These wishes are granted – Tuhiwai presents their fulfilment, painting the scenes using verbal and physical description, using sounds, acting out character interactions. A wish that “all my family lived in the same country” sees a vanload of happy relatives delivered to a Christchurch workplace. A wish for “a career I like” leads us (after a little further questioning finds the person enjoys ‘anything ecofeminist fantasy’) to the workroom of someone producing popular and inspirational comic books. We are walked down the star-studded red carpet to a ceremony that fulfils a very adamant wish for an academy award.

Then these wishes are revisited, seeing consequences, perhaps subverting but most of all digging deeper and leading to a moral. There’s not room for your whole family in your flat – you can find places for them to crash… but shouldn’t you ask people before doing something like this? The comics creator, still successful, is distracted from work by a gift from friends… Maybe you need to find your joy first, then seek the career? Finally the genie, perhaps reluctant to tarnish the Oscar dreams of that particular audience member, simply declares himself unable to ultimately grant the wish – because the power lies in her hands.

“Fair?” he asks of each wisher as he reaches his conclusion. It is. We’ve all dug a little deeper into the heart of our dreams.

Next up is Laura Termaine who, brimming with innocent cheekiness, walks her toes along the literal line on the floor that quarantines the Bats audience from the performers, coaxing out stories from people who recently felt awkward or out of place. She then declares she is going to “foreignise” these experiences, adding by way of explanation that “I don’t know what that means either.”

It turns out to mean replaying each scene with immaculately goofy clown energy. A reconciliation between a mother and a daughter (the former having embarrassed the latter in public during the course of collecting the audience stories) plays out sweetly in Tremaine’s native Spanish. A haphazard re-enactment of having to refund tickets at Zealandia climaxes in absolute hilarity with a cheerfully bizarre physical presentation of various birds and, as Tremaine feels obliged to explain, that gate where you check if you have any rats in your bag. A first-time minor car collision plays out with basically the energy of a small child ramming matchbox cars into each other. The whole time, the audience is back and forth over the edge of laughter.

Marea Colombo, described in her introduction as “single”, explains her trouble with relationships in a performance full of metaphors. We follow her journey from finding some quality of a new partner cute (an audience offer of “smart”) to later finding it unbearable, in scenes presented through a combination of description and playing out the characters, periodically asking for extra details from the audience.

Some of these details, or those that she creates naturally in the course of describing scenes – watches, the julienne cutting of vegetables, the point where she describes herself accidentally grabbing two pairs of socks out of the drawer in the morning – are seized on; she explains them as metaphors for what she wants in a relationship or how this one has developed. He is, ultimately, someone who does not understand about wearing socks as gloves. Next time, she will get a fitbit.

It’s an interesting mixture of character exploration, personal honesty and bursts of silliness. I recall little ripples whisper through the audience as people recognise moments and feelings from their own stories.

There are other improvisers in these solo performances: Liam Kelly on music and Jen O’Sullivan on lights both have their own influences, shaping scenes and tone. But most of all, as Powell says in closing, you’re never alone doing an improv show if there’s an audience there. Even though Covid rules have formally separated the Improv Festival audiences from the player, their offers and their every reaction are still there to shape everything that happens on the stage – partners in these solo scenes. So, congratulations to all – but perhaps the performers in particular – on an entirely successful show. 

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