THEATRESPORTS is everywhere in the performing arts. Whether a tool in school drama classes or brain training for professional artists, it’s high energy, risky and not for the faint of heart. The Cranston Cup is the ultimate in Australian Theatresports. It took 3 months of ‘offer and accept’ to get the 742 teams participating in the heats down to 94 teams and finally to the 6 teams in front of 1500 people crammed into the Enmore Theatre.

The brainchild of Canadian and British teacher, author, playwright and director Keith Johnstone, Theatresports was refined and developed into its current form through his legendary Loose Moose Theatre Company in Alberta Canada in the late 1970s. But it’s everywhere now and there is a huge world alumni of famous theatre people associated. Take the (now destroyed) Bubble Gum Wall performances of Unexpected Productions of Seattle where GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE’s Brendan Fraser honed his skills.

Impro Australia has the licence here and their alumni are equally legendary. Names like Andrew Denton, Shaun Micallef, Wil Anderson, Frank Woodley, Adam Spencer, Rebecca De Unamuno and Julia Zemiro. And our two hosts for the evening Steve Lynch and Jane Simmons. Plus extemporaneously brilliant maestro Benny Davis on accompanying electric piano.
GOT is the theme and “Winner is Coming” announces the show. Wonderful fighting from Swordplay, the stage combat troupe, bursts onto the stage with some very dodgy looking monks. Then the hosts arrive. Lynch has his best Valerian plastic sword and golden hand, and with Simmons in Cersie regalia they introduce the teams.

We have:
The young-guns “Crash Test Dummies” (Jim Fishwick, Maddie Parker and Emilia Higgs).
“Watt the Watt” (legend Michael Gregory with Jane Watt and Ellie Watt).
Newcomers “That Breakfast Show” (Ryan Atkins, Brendan Atkins and Stuart Owen).
“We thought this was a Council meeting” (Robert Boddington, Jack Ballhausen and Sarah Gaul).
“Turtleneck Think Tank” (Reuben Ward, Angus Rees and Tom Cardy).
The seasoned veterans “Eejits” (David Callan Jon Williams, Anna Renzenbrink and Ewan Campbell).

Drawing their first games from a helmet we get to see what the teams are made of. What a spectacle!

Eejits pull out a spectacularly greedy Pauline Hanson in their given location of a Fish and Chip Shop; Breakfasts have a spectacularly sashaying Hawaiian girlie; Council Meeting let their repressive anger off the leash in a spectacular fashion ; the Watts have a spectacularly placed ageist joke to delight everyone; Turtlenecks have a nausea representation that is so spectacular that I looked away; but it is left to the Crash Test Dunmies to spectacularly sum up the night when their fortune teller intones “The future is delicate!”

About this time, my friend and I had our favourites. We’re pretty shallow like that. For me it was the Council Workers and for her it was Watt the Watt. Let see how our favourites go in the next round where one team gives the challenge to another team. The Breakfast team ended up in a Qantas lounge. In a brilliant move, the Watts got the phone of good sport audience member, Raymond and one of the characters only spoke using his texts. Not such a high score for my friend’s and others fav team here. The judges were roundly booed and gave the audience the finger! Nice behaviour!

More noice behaviour as the Eejits created a Tap and Fart experience; Council Meeting gave us a feminist invisible unicorn at a parent teacher meeting; Crash Test Dummies managed to compare Kanye to a famous carpenter and the Turtlenecks developed a classic goose wtf.

Interval and there are only 5 points separating the teams!
One of the aspects I loved most this year was the way the opposing teams helped out performing teams. From creating a volcano, to a 10 person wildly impressive traffic jam they leap in with abandon. The physical comedy stunt of the evening though was when the Crash Test Dummies put their life in others’ hands as they walked around the set without touching the floor … climbing on others backs, using chairs placed before them and being borne aloft. Those are very trusting people with lots of adrenalin. High stakes Theatresports action. Hilarious.

The skit of the evening though, had to be Council Meeting managing to make a wholly touching point about gender politics via a Disney princess in the style of opera! That got them 3 x fives from the judges and I should think so! So when we get to the final two teams to contest the last round, my friend leans over to me and yells above the noise “ We called it!”. Indeed our two favourite teams are vying for the cup.

A Headlice love story set in school vs a Shakespearean toaster and the winner is … WE THOUGHT THIS WAS A COUNCIL MEETING.

To sum up I can only repeat the words of the audience member to was asked to create a catchphrase for one of the team challenges … “I don’t know what to say!”. If you can turn that into a comedy about a lighthouse then you might be a budding Theatresports star and should start preparing for next year’s Cranston Cup.