Vlad Tenenbaum does a one-man improvisational pantomime show. The Improv Fest schedule appears on Page I4.

No one’s truly prepared for this week’s fifth annual Providence Improv Fest.

Forty groups from around the country are coming. They’ll perform over five days, Wednesday through next Sunday, at three downtown venues: Trinity Theatre, Perishable Theatre and AS220. And the performers haven’t a clue what they’ll do.

They’ll make it up. They’ll improvise, with games, music and video; in long skits and short ones; in big groups and small; with words and with movements.

This is quite a development. Five years ago, the festival had just three groups, all local. Now the festival features 15 local groups.

“The local scene is spawning other groups,” says Mauro Hantman, the festival’s director.

Scripts are forbidden. Imaginations are required. And program previews are based purely on probabilities.

We can’t tell you exactly what you’ll see, but we can give you a couple general ideas: roller skates and mime.

No, they won’t appear on the same stage, not unless two acts jointly improvise. And if roller skates and mime strike you as odd or funny, that’s the point. Laugh.

SidViscous! an eight-member troupe from New York will perform on roller skates.

“They’re not good skaters. So they’re struggling to stay up on their skates while they’re improvising. It’s intended humor, but not controllable.”

Vlad Tenenbaum of Portsmouth performs mime. Hantman knew that, yet admitted him to the festival anyway.

“It’s sort of theatrically antithetical to everything I believe. He’s hard to describe beyond that he seems to be a master of physical theater. He’s very funny.”

Let’s go to the source himself. Tenenbaum, a mime, speaks. And he addresses what you’re thinking, the stereotype.

“People picture a silly person with a white face pulling a rope or pushing a wall,” Tenenbaum says. “Mime is so much more than that. It needs respect. It’s not what people think of when they think of mime: the pesky clown on the street.”

Tenenbaum, who was born and raised in Russia, has studied and performed mime for 40 years, and completed master class with the legendary Marcel Marceau.

“For some reason, that’s considered the only way mime can be done. That’s ridiculous.”

In Russia, Tenenbaum says, mime is celebrated as a way to convey all emotions, and holds a lofty status with other art forms.

“Just as people would go to see opera or theater, they would go to see mime.”

Tenenbaum’s participation in the festival is comic. Most improv performers operate on input from the audience; so does Tenenbaum. However, while most input is verbal, Tenenbaum’s is physical.

“Poses are the language of mime.”

In a show, Tenenbaum usually asks a few audience members to step on stage and strike poses, which he incorporates into a theatrical sketch.

The idea to do mime as improv came to Tenenbaum when he approached the Newport-based Bit Players improv group about performing mime interludes between their sets. The group said he should do improv, too.

“English is not my native language, so I was always three seconds behind. On stage it looks absolutely ridiculous. The only characters I could be were old and stupid, which wasn’t a good thing, especially since I’m so close to that in life. To compensate, I came up with an original formula: mime to the rules of improvisation.”

Not only is Tenenbaum unusual in doing mime as improv, but for doing it as a 51-year-old. Improv is very much a young person’s art. And its fleeting form, he says, is what makes it precious.

“Improvisation is like giving a flower to the lady you love. You know the flower is going to die and you’re going to give it to her to die in her hands. It’s not about the flower; it’s about giving and receiving. We are sharing on stage, as performers and audiences. We share a unique moment that will never be repeated.”

Performing improv on roller skates is unique. And it is something that SidViscous! is often asked to repeat.

“We don’t want to be the group that only does improv on skates,” says Alex Farlow, a member of SidViscous! “But if we develop a reputation for that, I don’t think anyone would mind.”

The name SidViscous!, Farlow says, honors the group members’ nerdiness and penchant for punk.

“It came after a couple of pizzas and a few pitchers of beer.”

SidViscous! does perform improv in conventional footwear. However, there’s particular interest when it does so on roller skates, when the group then calls itself Sid on Ice. This performance is usually accompanied by fog machines to give the impression of a stage being a rink, but the fire alarms at the Providence stages, Farlow says, would go off. So there won’t be fog, just skating, which makes a difference in a performance.

“You end up with a few more performers on the ground than you normally would. You can’t be as precise in your movements. That becomes part of the show. Instead of people walking on stage and stopping at a certain point, they may end up across the stage.”

Improv, Farlow says, is about responding to unscripted events, which is bound to happen with inexperienced roller skaters.

“Skates are perfectly stable as long as you’re moving at a certain speed. It’s like riding a bike. But when you’re on a small stage and going really slow, it’s an entirely different experience.”