No holds Bard

An hour into a group analysis of Plato’s Republic, led by Blaine Swen, they’re hung up on the definition of beauty. If we think someone’s beautiful, but our friend doesn’t, is that person truly beautiful?, they wonder. To address the question, Swen produces three pieces of paper, all of which feature circles drawn in their centers. “What is this?” he asks as he hoists each one.

“Obviously, they’re all circles, but not the same circle,” Swen continues, answering his own question. “We’re acquainted with the form of circleness, even though in our lifetime we’ve never seen a perfect circle. Somehow, you still know what it should look like. It’s the same with beauty. You’re acquainted with it in your soul. The true philosopher contemplates this, the nature of beauty.”

“Like the difference between Lindsay Lohan and, um, fatties,” one improviser jokes. The others laugh, contribute bits of their own and the rehearsal proceeds.

Even if it didn’t conduct such intellectually stimulating meetings, the Improvised Shakespeare Company is already unlike any other improv troupe in Chicago. The actors speak in Old English—or at least something close to it. They wear tunics and brown pants, and fully invest themselves in the mock Shakespearean world they create. Their two-act show (no, they don’t plan anything during intermission) brims with his archetypal themes—such as love, lust and loss—but familiarity with the Bard’s work is not necessary to understand the improv. The actors are as apt to perform silly slapstick as they are to weave compelling classical narratives, though they do both extremely well.

It follows that their rehearsal process is just as unusual. After boning up on Shakespeare’s plays, ISC has begun making its way through the Republic, Plato’s transcribed conversation with Socrates and his scholars concerning the nature of justice. The improvisers are assigned a section as “homework” each week, and the first hour of rehearsal is dedicated to a Socratic discussion of the book. Since creating these open forums, “our improv has gotten a lot richer,” says Swen, the group’s founding director and an occasional player. He also notes that everyone participates—and does the reading. “The form is attractive to people who like to study, which means our shows fly [intellectually] on two different levels.”

Swen is no stranger to ancient philosophical texts, or Shakespeare for that matter. Back in 2000, he performed at L.A.’s I.O. West with the Backstreet Bards, a team that won the theater’s cage match ten weeks in a row. Swen moved to Chicago a year later for grad school (he studies—surprise—philosophy at Loyola University), but it wasn’t until 2005 that he decided to bring Bard-prov to the Windy City. He gathered a handful of improvisers whom he deemed fit for the form and produced a short Donny’s Skybox stint. I.O.’s Charna Halpern got wind of ISC, and the group’s been performing at her iconic theater weekly since February 2006.

“We’ve grown in many of the ways that someone might expect: a greater facility with Elizabethan language; a better sense of Shakespearean character archetypes and plots; better listeners with richer reactions to discoveries within scenes. But most importantly, we continue to have more and more fun,” Swen says.

Thomas Middleditch, one of the group’s first Chicago recruits, is thankful ISC bleeds into the rest of his work. Aside from practicing his thee’s, thou’s, thy’s and thine’s, the distinctive ISC aesthetic—embodied by the ideas that come out of the troupe’s weekly talks—has given his improv a sharp intellectual edge and complex emotional awareness. “One night I played [Swen’s] son and he my mother, and I had to kill someone else to satisfy her bloodlust. At the end, I stabbed her. People gasped. He and I took that moment, no jokes, and just, you know, acted,” he says. “This is where a bunch of dudes in black turtlenecks and berets snap their fingers and go, ‘Yeah man…just act.’”

Forsooth, Improvised Shakespeare Company performs Friday 25.