LA troupe hilariously improvises quasi-Bard

It’s an actor’s nightmare: Finding yourself onstage in a Shakespeare play, but without a script — and having to make it all up as you go along.

But the six members of Los Angeles-based Impro Theatre (including North Little Rock native Brian Michael Jones) who put on Shakespeare UnScripted Thursday night at the Argenta Community Theater not only made it work, but earned the audience’s laughter through a blend of verbal dexterity, physical shtick and being able to think fast on their feet.

The troupe asked for audience suggestions for an image from nature and, behold, a show was born out of just that. The Waterfall and the Apple Tree is pretty much what William Shakespeare might have produced if, instead of penning a play, if he was making it up out of whole cloth as it went along.

All the facets of a Shakespeare comedy bloomed upon the stage: star-crossed lovers separated by family conflict, a father who plans to marry his shiny daughter off to a spavined but wealthy duke, a mother who only wants the best for her child, a brother-turned-comic-manservant and a somewhat soggy spirit helping true romance blossom. Silliness, of course, ensued.

There are very few things harder for an actor than to improvise in iambic pentameter and Elizabethan phraseology (if you don’t think so, try covering for a late entrance in The Merchant of Venice sometime), and things often came close to falling apart. But the performers — even at the risk of cracking their colleagues up — ably stepped in (literally and figuratively) to save one another. They also contributed stormy sound effects and bird calls via stage-side microphones.

Impro Theatre changes a couple of gears to present The Twilight Zone UnScripted at 8 p.m. today at Argenta Community Theater, 405 Main St., North Little Rock. It’s part of the 2017 Acansa Festival. Ticket information is available online at visit acansa.org.