So. It’s easy. Anyone can do it.
Give me a name … any name. Dean Haglund!
Odd name but there we go.
Now give me a place… any place. Old 505 Theatre, Newtown!
Oddly familiar but moving on.
Give me a job … any job. Actor!
The most weird choice so far but I’ll go with it.
Improvising is easy. Watch this! I’m going to use your three ideas and improvise a story.
Once upon a time there was an actor who got sick of starring in television shows like THE X FILES and THE LONE GUNMAN and BONES and who decided to use all his skills in a one person improvised TV-murdering extravaganza at Old 505 Theatre.
Oh dear. Not as easy as I thought, I seem to be out of material already. This is where I bow to experience and declare Canadian import, Dean Haglund (the real one) the new King? Duke? Master? something like that … of Sydney Improv.
Much the same way that tonight at his show KILL YOUR TELEVISION, using suggestions from the audience in a Gilligan’s Island/ Game of Thrones mashup, he brought to life a King Gilligan (suggestion from the front row). To save the island (suggestion from up the back), King Gilligan calmed the dragon (suggested by the slightly tiddly girl in the second row) with quotes written on little bits of blue paper by the audience! And a violin (from the possibly shitfaced guy in the middle).
Great improvisers like Haglund are fearless! Perhaps some kind of fecund alien jelly rubbed off when he played Richard “Ringo” Langly in THE X FILES. But he’s not a scary alien. When he invites audience members up to help him as Foley Effects makers or as the hands through his professor’s coat, he is kindly and obviously genuinely interested in them. This makes us keen to see them enjoy themselves. Which everyone does.
Haglund is charming and open when he wanders the foyer talking to the audience before the show. On stage he is gracious and quick witted but he doesn’t hit us over the head with a succession of rolled up witticisms. The show is less steamroller than pleasant train ride through a surprising and ever changing landscape. He is warm and relaxed and can stand silent with his hand in a V on his chin while thinking or throw out hilarious comments at an audience which he has obviously nurtured onto his wavelength.
There is so much skill in the way he relaxes an audience, protects his volunteers, controls the callouts and in the effortless way he can make those weird suggestions into an hilarious, laugh filled storyline. Sadly this show, which was part of Old 505’s FRESHWORKS has now finished.
But the good news is that I still have a chance to improve my improv by joining the kingly, ducal, masterly Haglund in his shows THE X FILES IMPROV which will run on Mondays from 8th February at the same venue. Those shows are billed as ‘pay per laugh’ so take your stony face … bet it doesn’t last through meeting him in the foyer!