ANDREW JANSEN / JOURNAL David Strugar, Affton, and Heather Cooper, Dogtown, of The Improv Trick, perform a skit during the Cheers to the Troops event to benefit the USO at the South Broadway Athletic Club, Saturday, July 30, 2011.
It’s funny the moments that get remembered.
In the dashing photograph above, Heather and I are playing a game called “Foreign Film,” which I hate and suck at. It’s a gibberish game where two players speak to each other in gibberish, while two others “translate.” The gibberish is supposed to represent a language that we get as a suggestion from the audience—that night it was Bosnian. Since I’m half Serb, I threw in the three or four Serbo-Croat phrases I know to get things going. After that, it was all…well, gibberish.
Gibberish games require a certain freedom of mind, to just open your mouth and let whatever syllables are inside come spilling out. Unfortunately, when I play, my brain keeps rebelling and wanting to make some sense. Either that, or I just spit out the same couple of syllables over and over: “mooma da gooma” somewhat approximates it, I think.
Obviously, the joke is that nothing you say makes any sense anyway, and it can be even funnier when your gibberish sounds nothing like the language you’re supposed to be imitating. I have, however, heard improvisers who make gibberish sound like poetry. Sometimes they even find a certain mash-up of syllables that sounds like a real word, and it becomes part of their temporary, made-up language. Great stuff.
As luck would have it that night, we didn’t have enough microphones to cover everyone. Heather and I performed without so that our translators could use them and be heard. So in the end, we could have been speaking perfect English, insulting each other’s mothers, for all anyone knew.
And we got our picture in the paper for it! And they didn’t use the moment where I was admiring Heather’s armpit hair. Not a bad night.
(Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/photos/image_190a08e9-9dff-537d-a973-1f3995284603.html#ixzz1UBoFuHYc)
m. Louks
August 15, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Its a good picture. I was surprised to find you in the paper (it was the Journal ?) Saved a copy and gave it to your mom.
Aunt Margie