By Claire Dietz
Finding someone who doesn’t enjoy games may be a challenge. But finding someone who wants to play games involving being funny, on stage, live, in front of hundreds of people is no laughing feat. Oh, and did we mention it’s all unscripted?
“Whose Live Anyway?” will take place at the Des Moines Civic Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. The show will feature the improv stylings of Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Jeff B. Davis, and Joel Murray.
“Whose Live” is based on the original television show “Whose Line is It Anyway,” the iconic American improv-based comedy show that ran from 1998 to 2007 and was based on a British show under the same name. One of the three original comedians on the show, Stiles, is on tour with the live show.
“Whose Line is It Anyway,” now hosted by Aishi Tyler, was revived on the CW network in 2013 and features the three comedians from the show’s original lineup, Colin Mochrie, Stiles, and Wayne Brady.
With a background at the Second City in Chicago, Murray hails from a long line of improvisers, but he never anticipated he would be working with some of the best in the game. Murray described it as “going to batting practice with the Yankees.” This forced him to be on his A-game almost constantly.
“I come from long-form improvisation, in a much slower style,” he said. “This has been completely new to me, to do this as quickly as they do.”
“It’s stretched me in that way, but also it’s a whole new thing,” he said. “But when I go back to do long-form, I can be quicker in the scene. It’s a different tool, but it’s nice to keep them all sharp.”
Murray describes the experience of being on stage with this form of improv as being similar to “performing without a net.”
“If that doesn’t excite you, you’re dead,” he said. “That’ll get you awake, that’ll snap you to.”
One way this show is different from what some might remember from the TV show is in the way topics, characters, and other suggestions are landed on. Where the TV show saw audience members place words on paper slips and deposit them into a hat, the live show requires attendees to actually trek onto stage themselves.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get, what curve ball they’re going to throw,” he said. “Some people come up, and they’re great, and it makes it great, and others come up and aren’t so great, and that, somehow, makes it also great.”
