The Oxford Imps are having a splendid time, it has to be said. After a veritable string – nay, rope – of weekly sell-out shows at the Wheatsheaf (including a now-legendary gig of Valentine’s Day), a host (or compère) of College comedy nights, a rockin’ Catz Ball, and scooping the Best Sketch/Improv Group Award at the Southampton Student Comedy Festival 2011, our intrepid band of improvisers were at last ready to take on The Challenge (capitalised for challengerous emphasis) of the term: No Fixed Abode.
On the 28th February, the Imps performed twelve straight hours of improvised comedy, storming ten Oxford Colleges and finishing with their regular 2-hour show at the Wheatsheaf. This gargantuan Improvathon was all in aid of Oxford-based charity Homeless Action Group, for whom we raised £626.01! And what adventures were had during this adventure: Pepys and Dostoevsky got to grips with each other in the ‘Tale of Three Cities’, told in flawless – almost – Jamaican accents; the recently discovered Shakespeare play ‘The Three Civil Servants of India’ saw the demise of a Count who wasn’t allowed to count; the arts of rhymery, punnery, innuendo and satire made appearances of varying discretion and taste; and all were left in suspense by the sordid entanglements of the improvised soap ‘Vampire Road’. Dougie (Herr Direktor) was there for every single minute, and said ‘well done’ to his troupe of happy and exhausted performers. True and deep words from a man who had all but replaced his blood with Red Bull by the end of the day.
So what does the future hold for the keener-than-keen-if-keen-were-keener-than-keenness Oxford Imps? Radio shows? Murder mysteries in Oxford cloisters? A tour to Holland? YES. YES. And YES. But more on these (and more) as the veil of time unfurls its misty folds… the rest, as they say, is improv.
– Dylan x