By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
With a little help from the audience, The Loose Screws
Performing Arts group --clockwise from left, Monica Cho,
Michael de Ycaza, Tony Pisculli and R. Kevin Doyle
-- creates a new show for each performance.
Loose Screws turn out
By John Berger
entertaining improvisations
Special to the Star-BulletinWhite masks and a plastic owl were important items as Loose Screws opened "Masquerade" in Kawaiahao Hall on the Mid-Pacific Institute campus last week. The masks may be part of the show when the run continues this weekend, but the owl will have been replaced by some other "unusual object."
Loose Screws does improvisational theater. Each show is as unique as possible. Improvisation with objects is one of the new concepts being explored in "Masquerade."
Loose Screws provides the performers. The audience provides the objects. Anyone who brings an object suitable for use and display in a G-rated show gets a dollar off the price of admission.
Among other items tendered on Saturday were a wooden mask, several bells hung on an ornate coat hanger-type device, a plastic Mr. Potato Head, a tiny spoon and a piece of white plastic roughly the length of a table leg.
By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Loose Screws (clockwise from left) Monica Cho,
Michael de Ycaza, Tony Pisculli and R. Kevin
Doyle make the most of odd props.
Audience assistance is also solicited in positioning two large black boxes on the stage and selecting an adjective as a starting point for the performance. R. Kevin Doyle was the son/servant of the wealthy-but-incompatible Tony Pisculli and Monica "Mad Dog" Cho in the opening segment last week.Doyle eventually died after totaling one of the family Ferraris and was reincarnated as a talking owl. Mike De Ycaza and Emily Grush were the family's red-neck retainers. It all worked out well as comic theater.
Another highlight last week was a "shrinking play" segment. Two actors improvise a 128-second sketch (on Saturday it was about cutting down trees for Arbor Day and decorating at least one of them with a dead cat). Two other actors must then perform the same sketch in 64 seconds. The first two return to do it again in 32 seconds, the second team must then do it in 16 seconds, and so on down to the final 1-second version.
The two teams -- Doyle and Cho, and De Ycaza and Grush -- were hilarious in their efforts to squeeze as much as possible into the ever-shorter time available.
Quick minds will want to play along when Pisculli hands the other cast members some of the other objects for "sudden death" improv. Audience applause determines which bits earn the cast members the chance to play another round. De Ycaza was the winner on Saturday, but as the guy at the end of the line, he had at least a few more seconds to think of something to do.
Two segments are familiar Loose Screws material. Two members of the audience are enlisted to animate De Ycaza and Grush in "Mold The Performers." De Ycaza and Grush were the mannequins last Saturday in a sketch about a cab driver and her passenger.
Grush was also a hostess trying to guess her guests' secrets in the other familiar premise. Grush left the room while the audience decided Doyle's quirky super power was the ability to wash dishes very very fast, Cho was a victim of Tourette's syndrome, and De Ycaza was Woody Allen. Grush diagnosed Cho quite quickly but had a hard time identifying Woody Allen despite a number of helpful hints from Doyle.
As with Cabaret Tiki's recent production of "Postcards From the Stage," the potential always exists for childish types in the audience to spoil the improvisational process by yelling out cutesy, unwieldy or scatological suggestions. Pisculli deftly kept things on track last Saturday.
On stage
The event: Loose Screws "Masquerade"
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