Watch out! Guerrilla Improv Van on the road as funny fest begins

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 25, 2006

BY BRYAN ROURKE
Journal Staff Writer

Somewhere, just outside Providence, in a quiet, residential neighborhood, comic commandos gather in their lair.

That's okay. They're not really planning. They're just planning to improvise.

The third annual Providence Improv Fest takes place Wednesday through Sunday. It involves 28 companies, 3 stages and 1 Guerrilla Improv Van.

Think of it as an urban theatrics assault vehicle. But picture a family-friendly blue-grey Toyota Sienna minivan.

"It came to me in a flash of inspiration," says Mauro Hantman, director of the festival. "I said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we had a van and we drove around and did improv to random groups of people?' "

Yes, several supporters replied. And just like that, a guerrilla movement began.

Hantman takes the idea literally -- or at least phonetically -- and pulls out a plastic strap-on gorilla mask.

"Wait a minute," says Chuck McKenzie. "I have a bunny suit in my trunk."

Huh? You do?

McKenzie, sensing that his fellow commandos think he's a freak or something, sets them straight.

"It's for emergencies," he says.

They seem to understand. After all, who would want to break down on a desolate road without a bunny suit?

McKenzie, a former child-care worker, used to dress up once a year as the Easter Bunny, presumably sometime around Easter; hence the costume . . . or so he says.

The Guerrilla Van gang takes on a mascot. Small it's not. When McKenzie, who stands 6-feet-7, puts on his "once-a-year" outfit, he's a very big bunny. He's also very hot.

It's a nearly 90-degree day.

The improvisational promotion of the Improv Fest is underway.

Let the raids begin

The goal is simple: Be seen; pass out manifestoes.

"Every time I go past someone passing out flyers, I try to avert my eyes," Hantman says. "I prefer to watch someone do something crazy."

Kim, Hantman, McKenzie, Tim Thibodeau, Tom Gleadow and Melissa Bowler, all members of local improv companies, pile into the minivan. Each carries weapons of wacky free-associations.

If those don't work, Hantman has brought along a drill-sergeant's cap, a rope and a butterfly net.

Props aren't that important to an improv assault. What really matters, the commandos say, is the "Yes, and" rule.

When one improv actor says something strange, the others must acknowledge it and add to it. The results are usually ridiculous.

This year's Providence Improv Fest offers lots of options: large groups, small groups; all-men goups; all-women groups; mixed-gender groups. Some play games. Some do long sketches. Some do short ones. Some include music, singing and dancing.

All ask for audience participation. Sometimes just an utterance will do, a noun, a concept, something to get them going.

It's all made-up. This is what the members of the Guerrilla Improv Van remind themselves as they drive into Roger Williams Park for the first of four scheduled artistic raids on the city. (The second one was to have taken place yesterday; there's also a raid Wednesday in Downcity and another Thursday on Thayer Street, both at noon.)

General ideas are good, the guerrillas tell each other; specific ones aren't. This is supposed to be extemporaneous.

"We get there," Hantman says. "We jump out. We improv. Right?"

The guerrillas agree. The van stops. The doors open.

The big bunny bolts.

Bunny on the front lines

McKenzie takes a hill like a Marine storming Iwo Jima, passing a bewildered picnicking family en route.

"The bunny has glasses," a young boy says.

"He eats a lot of carrots," Gleadow says. "But he wears glasses."

The boy and his brother coax the bunny down the hill with carrots. McKenzie eats, sweats and retreats to the air-conditioned safety of the Guerrilla Van.

"I started breathing through my mouth," McKenzie says. "I started inhaling carrot. I was dizzy for a second."

McKenzie's face is flushed. He's not improvising, though there are lots of others doing that these days, in a half-dozen companies in Rhode Island.

"The improv scene," Hantman says, "has taken off."

So has the Providence Improv Fest. In its first year, it involved three companies. Last year it was 16. Now it's 28.

A couple of companies each come from California, Chicago and Boston. Several are from New York. There is also one from Toronto and one from England.

"I wanted the festival to get this size," says Hantman, who besides being a member of the Improv Jones comedy troupe is also an actor at Trinity Rep, where he recently played the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac. "I don't think we can get much bigger than this. I'd have to kill myself."

Actually, someone is expected to get improvisationally shot during the festival. That's what you expect from Code Duello, of Boston, which re-creates, with audience input, the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr spat.

"They know it's going to end in a duel," Hantman says. "But everything before that is improvised."

Counterattack

The big bunny is drinking water and perking up. He says he's got a hop back in his step. But he says he'd rather ride a horse in the park's carousel.

The guerrillas, carrying ropes and a butterfly net, follow him, sit on horses behind him and give chase.

Judy Mori, of Cumberland, watches. She sees lots of theater, she says, "but not like this. It's, um, spontaneous."

The performers don't know what to expect from themselves. And on this day, their audience members aren't expecting anything at all. It's ambush acting.

Everyone's surprised, except Lisa Maloney, of Providence, and a friend.

They heard about the Guerrilla Improv Van visiting the park. So they visited, too, to confront the performers.

"We're ambushing them," Maloney says. "Improv audiences aren't normal either."

Maloney gives the group a noun: flux. The group performs a short skit for her involving a flux capacitor and the transmogrification of people, with one guerrilla improviser turning into another.

Then the group goes back to the van. Inside, the bunny's recuperating.

"I'm surprised how dizzy I got just getting on the carousel," he says.

The zoo's not far. The bunny can make it. So the guerrilla movement moves.

Retreat and regroup

The guerrillas find 100 people outside the zoo's front gate. They let their bunny loose, then follow.

"Has anyone seen a large bunny?" the members ask, seriously.

The zoogoers point cautiously and sheepishly at McKenzie, who's blending into the crowd of kids and stroller-pushing parents like a 6-foot-7 stranded motorist wearing a furry white roadside emergency outfit.

"I don't know what's going on," says Joanna Mann, a teenager from Smithfield.

"They're trying to capture a bunny," says her friend Mike Gamba, of Glocester. "They're doing a bad job."

The guerrillas coax the bunny back into the van, pass out flyers and go.

"People have no idea what they're seeing," Hantman says. "It can be confusing."

Jayda Rodriguez understands. The guerrillas stop in the zoo parking lot next to a costumed character who's there for an advertising promotion. And the 4-year-old girl from Southbridge, Mass., is standing there, too. She sees a bespectacled guy in a bunny outfit breathing heavily, standing next to another guy in cartoon costume with an enormous artificial head, kind of like a deep-sea diving helmet but without the benefit of an oxygen hose.

What, the guerrillas ask Jayda, is going on?

Pointing first to McKenzie and then to the helmet-headed guy, Jayda says, "He's hot. And he can't breathe."

The guerrillas' weapons aren't working.

Retreat. Regroup. Reconnoiter.

"This wasn't our target audience," Hantman says. "I think we'll do better on Thayer Street."

brourke@projo.com / (401) 277-7267