Show: 13
Title: Final Dress
Category: Comedy / Improv
By: MDV Productions
Created by: Michael DallaValle & Sean Dillon
Location: Open Eye Theatre
Summary: An improvised final dress rehearsal, featuring a different "director" at every performance.
Highlights: The conceit of the show is that Michael and Sean are actors preparing to open a show, if they can find another venue after learning that the Theatre Garage is closed (RIP). In this fictional set up, Sean wrote the play, but the director, played at this performance by playwright/director John Heimbuch of Walking Shadow Theatre Company, is putting his own spin on it, in a late Sam Shepard / early David Mamet kind of way. What unfolded was a story of brotherhood with murder, adultery, and cannibalism, so that tracks. This is perhaps the most layered improv show I've ever seen, with Sean and Michael improvising lines and situations both as the actors and as the characters in this play (called The Chopping Block) that they're making up as they go. Every now and then John, the stereotypical director in a scarf and dark classes carrying a binder and making notes, would interject and ask them to do the scene again, or make suggestions on tone or line readings or positions, even calling out light cues on occasion. It's a very intricate operation, pulled off smoothly, hilariously, and sometimes cringingly. Guest directors for the final shows are Mike Fotis and Duck Washington, which should be very different shows.
