Tag Archives: Edmonton improv comedy

Lighting the Bonfire: Rapid Fire’s wildest festival is back, and it’s live

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca For two years, the members of the Rapid Fire Theatre ensemble have been storing up their wildest, coolest, most ridiculously challenging new ideas in improv. And that, my friends, is a lot of pent-up crazy. RFT’s … Continue reading →

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Noodling with The Stroganoffs: Die-Nasty returns with the first of three mini-seasons

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca    A weekday morning in the life of an improviser: Wayne Jones is hanging with Chekhov. He’s spent the a.m. watching The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. Who does that? The producer/artistic director of the 30th annual … Continue reading →

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Bonfire: the festival of new and flammable improv ideas, from Rapid Fire Theatre

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca How crazy is this? What if … you were quarantined in a room, and you had to improvise all by yourself — for an entire show? And you didn’t know whether anyone was watching or not? … Continue reading →

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A world of uncertainty: a playground for improv. Dungeons, Dragons, and Die-Nasty

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca In a world of uncertainty, improv makes perfect sense. It’s no coincidence that in a crisis, award-winning artists in this improv-crazy theatre town have stepped up to the challenge, and improvised new ways to take performance … Continue reading →

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Improvised Star Wars on the planet YEG, at the Grindstone

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Spring seat sale: I visited the planet YEG last night, a gritty post-apocalyptic landscape (and cantina) “far from everything that’s really happening.” Kanuck, cantina proprietor and aspirational Bounty Hunter in training, had evidently screwed up his … Continue reading →

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Monday nite special: seductive looks, upward mobility in CAL-gry, as Die-Nasty soaps return

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Welcome to the archive of lingering glances and lip-quivering gazes: troubled, dreamy, steamy, wistful, reflective, yearning, sultry, moody, sultry-moody crossover. Yes, the new season of Die-Nasty — “Die-Nasty does Dynasty,” makes Edmonton’s award-winning live improvised weekly … Continue reading →

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Oil money, glamour, seduction, betrayal … the new season of Die-Nasty starts Monday

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It’s 1983. And world-class cities don’t come any world-classier than the one down the road. Yes, it’s in the gleaming cloud-capp’d towers of Calgary, that fabled Shangri-La of wealth and power and world classiness, oiled by, … Continue reading →

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Gordon’s Big Bald Head unleashed on any play: a review of improv comedy at its most deluxe

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Gordon’s Big Bald Head: The Play’s The Thing (Stage 12, Varscona Theatre) There is a trio of performers at this Fringe who do something insanely difficult better than anyone else anywhere. Armed only with a Fringe … Continue reading →

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Márquez meets Buster Keaton in Speechless, at Improvaganza

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Even by the globe-trotting, frontier-busting standards of the  international improv comedy world, Speechless is an unlikely creation. Two acrobatic circus-trained improvisers from Bogotá, Colombia and a female DJ from Winnipeg? Come on, the odds-against factor doesn’t … Continue reading →

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