It wasn't too long a go that there was a multi-theatre group event in the basement of the Grand Avenue Mall. A diverse group of theatre companies all performed one-acts by David Ives a few times over the course of the evening. It was a really fun theatrical mini multiplex kind of feel about it. And Ives is so universally accessible in his humor that you don't really have to settle-in to appreciate it.
They're doing it again. This time it'll be on Friday, February 7th. InterACT--A Night of Immersment Theater runs from 7pm to 10pm. On the 7th of February, they're doing seven Ives shorts. Here's a look:
--will be performing The Many Deaths of Trotsky. A clever choice for the physical theatre troupe--I've seen this referred to elsewhere under the title Variations on the Death of Trotsky. Ives has Trotsky dying numerous times in numerous different ways. Has sort of a Wile E. Coyote-meets-Grigori Rasputin sort of a feel about it that's very appealing.
--will be performing The Mystery at Twicknam Vicarage--Ives' own take on a murder mystery spoof that reads really, really well. It'll be interesting to see what World's Stage does with it.
--Will be staging Universal Language. I truly, truly adore this short. Saw a really fun staging of it in a production of Ives' All In The Timing at Sunset Playhouse ages ago. A woman attends a class in the language of Unamunda--a language evidently only spoken by one person. It's a fun play on language and communication. We all speak our own language. There are roughly 7.137 billion languages out there. Unamunda is only one of them.
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--valiantly takes on Ives' Speed the Play--four David Mamet plays in 7 minutes (give or take) courtesy of Ives. I've seen Reeduced Shakespeare productions enough to have gotten sick of them. This comic isotope of Mamet is a clever comic mind tackling the same type of thing in a much classier way…
--will be performing Arabian Nights. A normal guy named . . . uh . . . Norm walks into a floral shop and falls into a romance that just might be the work of a strange translator.
--will be handling The Other Woman--a story that has a man's wife becoming his mistress by virtue of sleepwalking.
--will be performing doing a musical performance--A Revolutionary Revue.
You can wander around see the plays in whatever order you want . . . see any of them more than once. It's a fun atmosphere.
For ticket reservations to InterACT--A Night of Immersment Theater, visit ART Milwaukee online.
