Theatresports Grand Championships

The popular, month-long Brisbane Comedy Festival closed at the Powerhouse with the Theatresports Grand Championships, hosted by Siobhan Finniss and Ryan Goodwin from ImproMafia. It was a tense battle between Team Queensland and The Southerners. Team Queensland included seasoned Theatresportspersons, Wade Robinson, Luke Rimmelzwaan, Jaz Robertson, and Carla Haynes, a recent Grand Champion. The Southerners included Jason Geary from Melbourne, Emma Brittenden and Brendon Bennetts from New Zealand, and David Massingham (Brisbane-born but Melbourne-based –  this is why they invented State of Origin football, is it not?) Brisbane-based ImproMafia are improvisation champions and specialists in the Theatresports format, which has been seen on stages since the 1970s. The event was packed with enthusiastic and vocal comedy fans, who needed no encouragement to interact with the performers and react to the judges’ scores for each exercise.  

Audiences will be familiar with the team game style, which has evolved since last time I saw Theatresports to feature some complicated pre-formatted concepts. Does this mean the scripts are not as improvised? Not really, since the final scenarios depend on audience suggestions. An audience inspired setting of the 1990s set the scene for a funny ‘Clean up Australia’ act featuring the death of Kurt Cobain. Kris Anderson accompanied all the acts on keyboards and he kept great pace throughout. I only wish he’d added a few Nirvana riffs in this particular scenario, where the script was sung by the cast members.

Other scenes included a team storytelling exercise where each subsequent line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet. This kept the Queenslanders on their toes. Their other standout skit for me was their final soap opera set on the veranda of an old Queenslander, featuring a scene of infidelity – only in this case, the husband has betrayed both his wife and his best friend by supporting the blues at the State of Origin. The Southerners’ final scene was an opera about making a cup of coffee. The performances were great, but the scenario wasn’t as well-rounded as the Queenslanders, leaving a feeling that the final scores would be neck-and neck tight. The usual success for the Queenslanders on home turf did not prevail, and the Southerners took home the gold trophy. I suspect it has something to do with the scores for their earlier standout scene where they had picked a husband and wife from the front row (it wouldn’t be Theatresports without a bit of audience humiliation) and asked them about their own ‘meet-cute’ story. The bar-based meeting of the physiotherapist and the office worker for a mining company was then hilariously acted out by the Southern team in the style of a film noir script. It was a very funny and polished performance by the talented team.

Find out more about ImproMafia’s training sessions: https://www.impromafia.com

Beth Keehn

Images: Team Southerners and Full Cast.