An article written by Lyn Gardner for the programme for Improbable’s Lifegame presented in May 2004

Sit back and relax...
Lyn Gardner

What you are about to see will almost certainly be very different from any other piece of theatre that you have seen at this address. It will quite probably be less polished and it may well be far more shambolic. It will definitely be more dangerous. That is because there is no script. At this point in the evening, before the show begins, the actors have no more idea what is going to happen tonight on stage than you do. Lifegame is an entirely improvised show; nothing is prepared in advance, the performers will be making it up as they go along. This is what live theatre should be: perilous, unpredictable and pulsatingly alive.

It is this willingness to leap into the unknown and create by the seat of their pants that has always characterised the work of Improbable, the company founded by Julian Crouch, Phelim McDermott, Lee Simpson and producer Nick Sweeting back in 1996. Crouch is a self-taught designer with a gift for extraordinary puppetry, who can conjure forests out of sticky tape and puppets out of newspaper and junk. McDermott and Simpson have honed their skills not just in traditional theatre but also as regular improvisers at London's Comedy Store. Together the trio have abandoned traditional ways of making theatre, swept away the demarcations that separate the designer from the director from the writer from the actor, and most of all, have forged a new connection with audiences that creates a genuinely open relationship between performer and audience.

Improbable has been responsible for a string of legendary shows from 70 Hill Lane, a storytelling piece of theatre based on McDermott's teenage experience of having a poltergeist in the family home, to the dazzlingly and ephemerally beautiful outdoor show Sticky, a monumental piece that utilised one of Improbable's favourite and versatile props – hundreds of rolls of sticky tape. The 1997 Animo relied entirely on the audience to provide suggestions for imaginative games of object-animation. The Bridge of Sighs created entirely out of newspaper had to be seen to be believed, as did the newspaper swan swimming under it.

Improbable shows are not just different from each other, they are different every single night. Even the shows that are not entirely improvised have a loose anything-can-happen quality. Improbable shows are more likely to be devised than written and are almost always unblocked. Nothing is battened down so any thing can – and does – happen. It is not a way of working that all actors can handle; when an Improbable performer walks on stage they must be prepared for anything.

While other companies rehearse to excise the unexpected and unforeseen from their work, Improbable positively embraces what other companies would consider mistakes. Far from being thrown when something goes wrong during a show, the Improbable team find the unpredictable liberating, the potential starting point of something unique and brilliant, a thrilling firework moment that can take performers and audience into a different stratosphere. The Improbable philosophy is simple: to make great theatre you have to be prepared to take risks, and taking the risk to be really good means you have to flirt with the bad, even with possible disaster.

Improbable shows love to tell a story, but there are always two things going on – the story that is being directly told and the story of the people who are making the story. As you will see in Lifegame, narrative and process are equally transparent. There is directness and honesty in what happens on stage that gives Improbable's work an open and engaging quality. Frequently the shows have evolved from issues and experiences that matter deeply to the company: the death of McDermott's grandmother was the starting point of Coma (1999); the 2001 Royal Court show Spirit grew out of a quarrel between the trio about the direction the company should take and the role of each of them in it; while last year's The Hanging Man was clearly about risk and dealing with success, something Improbable had to confront in the aftermath of the monster world-wide hit Shockheaded Peter that was co-created by Crouch and McDermott.

Lifegame is a key show in the Improbable back catalogue in that it combines the storytelling and improvisational skills that are the twin planks of the company's work.

The show was developed after 70 Hill Lane when, post performance, many members of the audience approached the company keen to share their own stories and memories of their childhood. It was inspired by the theatre games and workshop exercises created by the improvisational guru Keith Johnstone. Improbable worked with Johnstone at the beginning of their initial rehearsal period for Lifegame, and then gradually developed the format to suit the company.

The result is a brilliantly simple concept that gives a dramatic twist to an old journalistic format – the interview. Each night a guest – sometimes someone famous, more often not – is invited on stage to talk about their early memories, formative influences and important and not-so-important moments in their lives. At certain points the conversation is stopped so that scenes from the subject’s life can be acted out by the cast, scenes that sometimes whirl off into fantasies and yet are always grounded in the truth of everyday life. At its inspired best Lifegame is not only compulsive viewing but also taps into all our desires to go back in time and memory and see ourselves as we once were.

Nonetheless, as the company happily admits, Lifegame doesn't work every single time, the alchemy sometimes fails to materialise. As with all Improbable's work nothing is certain. Tonight if you are very unlucky there may be some longueurs and if you are lucky you may be rocketed into the theatrical stratosphere by a show that reminds that all of us, however ordinary, has a quite extraordinary story to tell. So sit back and relax. Improbable though it may seem, anything can happen and it probably will.


© Lyn Gardner, April 2004

Lyn Gardner writes about theatre for The Guardian.