Drinks, shedding a tear and waiting on tenterhooks for Bilyard’s pics
While a sleep and a shower might be the first port of call, actors directors and musicians say there is more to recovering from an improvathon than catching up on sleep.
Many mark the occasion at the post improvathon drinks.
For Damian Robertson the technology director of the show, sometimes it’s a good opportunity to meet the actors behind the characters and find out people’s names.
“It’s good to see people outside of the environment,” says Robertson noting how when there is an international player he hasn’t met or a newer entrant, he only knows them by their character name and the choices they made in their story.
“It’s good to break that cycle a bit,” says Robertson laughing.
Sleepless in London
Actors may need to mourn this years’ London 50-Hour Improvathon in 2024 from 7pm on 8th March to 9pm on 10th March at Wilton’s Music Hall, where memories will be made from scenes of madness as actors without sleep will make up a show for an entire weekend.
Over the course of the weekend, more than 50 of the world’s top comedy improvisers will perform a show lasting an entire weekend. This year, it’s wedding season at Everafter Manor – the UK’s hottest spot to tie the knot. Loved-up couples arrive with friends and family, but will they falter before the altar? The weekend will be split into 25 episodes, each 2 hours long, and audiences can drop in at any point to catch a stand-alone episode, or binge-watch everything back-to-back.
Directors return to their notes as a keepsake of the show. Many ideas and plot lines will be dotted through the margins of their book, including the start and interruption of many story lines, say both Adam Meggido and Ali James, co-directors of the show.
“There will be notes like ‘hedgemaze, midnight’ where characters had planned to meet before everything went awry,” says Meggido.
James usually takes a ‘sunrise selfie’ with co-actors during the two mornings. It’s looking back at these kinds of memories that sees her through.
The mighty Bilyard
Many wait with great anticipation for the pictures of Claire Bilyard to come through on Facebook.
Bilyard, a sound engineer by day and theatre photographer, has stayed awake throughout the show for several years to take pictures during every episode.
The life of an actor, musician and technician is to move from one project to another, even where people form intense connections.
“Whenever you do a run of a show, you see people every day and then not months or sometimes years at a time. Me and most performers are fairly used to that idea,” says Robertson.
Physically and mentally, all agree, the toll is harsh and it takes a while to recover.
One year, Ruth Bratt remembers going to a café to order breakfast on the Monday after the show.
“It took us four hours to decide what to eat,” she says. Blurring the line between reality and pretend requires some untangling, she adds.
Hits you in the feels
Seamus Allen says the physical bit usually hits him the weekend after as he has often had to work immediately following the event.
“One of the Mondays, I thought I was doing fine. I went to get a coffee and the woman behind the counter asked if I wanted milk.”
Allen immediately burst into tears.
“It was too many choices,” he says.
But he lives off of the psychological boost from the improvathon for months, he says. The experience of theatre being truly something communal and present keeps this fire alive, he says.
Some actors never return to reality at all.
“I still think I am queen Victoria in my own mind and I don’t mind admitting it,” says Bratt.