Short-form improv is something I’m very familiar with. It’s the bread and butter of most people’s experience of improvisation as entertainment: the games, and challenges of your ubiquitous Whose-Line-is-it-Anyways. The expectation is light-hearted silliness, with challenges set in front of players as a way of bringing the audience the excitement of seeing them overcome, or laughter as the players fall short.

Chronically Ill-Prepared does this too, of course. But it has a little more to say. The truly interesting thing about it is the way that it re-contextualises these games, and uses them as an allegory for the experience of living with chronic illness. 

Our players, part of Unscripted and Unmasked, of Tandanya/Adelaide – Dylan Haar, Inkie Elliott-Potter, Alice Kelly, Kate Gallagher, Curtis Shipley and Alex Vivian – begin as hopeful patients, eagerly awaiting instructions from a calm, disembodied voice: Luke Foale. This program, which promises to “make them better”, is a series of improv games.

As the disembodied voice challenges them, criticises their choices, nitpicks and questions their commitment, the metaphor is made clear. The hoop-jumping of short-form improv is an apt comparison to navigating unreasonable expectations and poorly funded health systems.

The players do not have control of their own bodies; sometimes they feel like a different person. The cast expertly flips between the humour of their improv and the discomfort of this meta-narrative.

These tonal shifts are helped enormously by the creative sound and lighting: Steyn Freedendal and Tristram Domican. Rather than new material being generated from the audience, it is brief monologues from the players about their genuine health journeys, that provide the starting points for scenes – which helps to humanise them even further. 

Although there are a few bumps in the first couple of scenes, most notable by people going to speak at the same time, these are soon ironed out and the cast is connected and energetic.

Chronically Ill-Prepared is a heartfelt examination of chronic illness, through an unexpected medium. I find myself very much rooting for every player on their journey, frustrated by the situations they find themselves in  but thoroughly entertained by their play.

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