Consumers are sick and tired of all the predictability. They are fed up with shallow scripts and unoriginal plot lines. For goodness’s sake what does it take to get a new story around here? Audiences do not need another “Fast and Furious.” For all Northwestern students joining this plea there will be a block buster event this week on campus. Just Jazz Combo is partnering up with the Black V to present the Vusical. This combination of jazz and improv is destined to make audiences cry either from laughter, sentiments or just secondhand embarrassment. There is no charge, but audience participation is appreciated, even if the only suggestion one can muster is “a bear.”
It seems to some that jazz and improv together might just be too much chaos. So, members of both the Black V and Just Jazz Combo helped explain the rules to their respective trade. Just Jazz members Josiah Troutner and Elena Lee both responded to the question, what are the rules of jazz, with a simple “There are no rules.” However, Lee added this stipulation “If you are not mentally ill you are doing it wrong.” Now, to a non-jazz enthusiast, the latter statement might be a little confusing, so Lee added some elaboration. She explained that “Jazz is a unique form of self-expression that requires the performer to be creative and vulnerable at the same time. This attracts people who have a hard time expressing themselves through typical mediums. You can see this in the history of jazz which is colored by artists struggling with mental illness.”
Likewise, an improver explained the tenants of improv. Gideon Fynaardt listed the principles of love and trust, strong characters, yes-and, physicality, and raising the stakes. Fynaardt elaborated on love and trust saying, “You cannot perform good improv unless you know your scene partner will abide by the other rules of improv with you. This takes patience, trust and love.”
To these performers many students will gladly entrust their evening. It seems that great intentionality is put into both jazz and improv. There may not be a script, but there is obviously a moral and a motive. The core is to be genuine. There is a self-giving required here of every performer. They give of themselves, trusting that those with them on stage will give with them, but also trusting those in the audience will receive openly. The motivation is that within that giving a story will form and a connection will be made. Improv and jazz may not have a script, but the well of thoughts people hold inside bleed out in the scenes and notes.
So please come by and enjoy a unique space. It will be a night of humanness. Where instruments and actors will most likely say and do all sorts of things, but in the end, it will be people trying to tell other people “I am just as much of a person as you, and we should celebrate that.” Expect campus to be peppered with V posters in horribly obvious places giving students all the information they need. Seats are always open to everyone.
