===Duofest Logo designed by Amie Roe===
The Philly Improv Theater hosted the first ever Düofest last weekend. I helped out as a volunteer, and had a blast. The 4 day festival featured Improv Duos from 13 improv communities (Philly, NYC, Kansas, Rhode Island, Calgary, Boston, Chicago, Austin, NJ, Minneapolis, Richmond, Pittsburgh, and LA). I wasn’t lucky enough to see everything, but I got to see a nice mix of shows.
THURSDAY NIGHT
So the first night of the festival, I saw about half the shows. Phil & I from NYC opened up the festival, and had a great energy. I liked how the would kinda fuck with each other a bit. They seemed to put each other in the shit a lot, but not in a negative way. The two of them would kinda create difficult scenarios for each other, and then sorta sit back and let the other work their way out of it, getting laughs the whole way.
Right after that was Til Death Do Us Part, a duo that “are married, but not to each other.” They opened by just talking, eventually involving an audience member in their conversation about the give and take of marriage. Then they played off the ideas in that conversation. It was fun, but I felt like if I saw them again, it would lose the appeal real quick. I imagine that the conversation at the beginning would typically go very similarly each time. Maybe I’m wrong. As a result of their format, most scenes were very relationship oriented. Oddly enough though, my favorite scene from their set wasn’t one of those, it was an occupational therapy session.
Then I missed a couple groups as I manned the stage door in the pouring rain. I came back in a couple minutes into We’re Matt Weir from NYC. This guys seemed to have a great chemistry together. Maybe it’s cause they have the same name. Two Matt Weirs, playing together. At one point in their set, they were playing this game of no talking, trying to get each other to come to their side of the stage. It built to a very physical exchange, in which one of the Matts received a head wound. As the scene progressed, blood was visibly in his hair, and once it got mentioned, it got a little meta. But they played off it very well, and eventually had an amusing apology mixed into a comic book store scene. Matt was not seriously injured.
Then came Thibowla Virus from Providence. They played a really cool narrative format. Each transition would be narrated by one of them, as the other provided a bit of musical transition music. The story flowed from first a button factory, to then a shirt folder in a GAP, to a first date from some online dating site. there was great character exploration as the scenes went on.
Then I headed back out into the rain. This time I accepted an umbrella.
I came back in for Toy Soldiers from Philly. It was a fun set to watch, but I’ll be honest, it wasn’t all that good. It felt like drunk improv. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but it seemed like unfocused, silly playing. So it had a good energy, and a likable quality, but I would say it was my least favorite of the night.
Closing out the night was Gay Boy/Straight Boy, from Boston, and as the name suggests, it is one gay man, and one straight man. But rather than play a form, their show was a conversation with the audience. They would field questions from the audience, primarily about relationships and sex lives, and provide the gay answer, and the straight answer. While more talk show than improv team, it was fun to watch, and amusing to hear them not only answer questions, but react to each other’s answers.
And that was the first night of shows. Soon I’ll post more about the Friday and Saturday shows, and about the two workshops I got to take. Sadly, I couldn’t see the Sunday shows, so I won’t be able to comment on them.
Til Next Time,
-Hochman
Improv Kerouac 