October 17, 2024

Jennifer O’Sullivan October 17th, 2024

Kia ora John, and thank you for coming along to the festival again! Context for the following: I’m on the board of the NZ Improv Trust which oversees the festival and I’m the most recent former director, but I was not involved in the programming of this show or the show itself. I am a good friend of director/creator CB, and I saw (and enjoyed) this performance.

The festival has always aimed to expand the public understanding of improvisation, as well as push the boundaries of what improvised performance can encompass. This show in particular was a TTRPG live play performance – also known as Actual Play. These are usually podcasts or web shows and they are hugely popular. Big ones include Dimension 20, Critical Role, and The Adventure Zone to name just a few.
Locally, Dungeons and Comedians is a “Christchurch cult hit” (Erin Harrington, Theatreview) and I had a great time guesting in Diceratops (Wellington).

I would call shows like this improv-adjacent – they certainly require improv skills but they use them in a different way for a different purpose. There have been plenty of shows in Wellington (and everywhere!) that have taken role-playing games and turned them into the kind of acted-out story you refer to, and they satisfy that theatre-audience need for embodied story. But Actual Play performances are serving a different audience; they’re role-players and game masters who are watching the way the game is played, listening and relating to the table talk, appreciating the way the rules help/hinder the action, and in some cases deciding if it’s a game they want to try themselves – which they can!

Live TTRPGs are usually using a system that is generally available, either free or paid. And there’s a joy in watching people play something you yourself have played or will soon, something accessible and achievable as well as aspirational. I think this is where the un-asked-for offer from the audience came from – less a restlessness and more an enthusiasm to join the fun and add to the story on stage. Hopefully that audience member gets a copy of the game and plays it themselves sometime.

I hope this was useful, I just wanted to offer some more information contextualising this show and its structure, and share that I viewed it as a complete offering, something a little different to other shows in the festival.