Something with Virgins and Chainsaws is an improvised horror-comedy play built off of audience member suggestions, which showed June 16-26 at the Ottawa Fringe Festival. The play is directed by Dan Dicaire, an 11-year veteran of the improv scene who also performs in the six-person troupe at the festival and during weekly improv shows at comedy bars.The Charlatan’s Oliver Sachgau spoke to Dicaire about stage chemistry, the beauty of comedy and Caesar salad.
TC: Why did you choose horror/comedy as the genre for the show?
DD: It had to be comedy, because that's what we do all the time, and it's kind of an idea we've been kicking around . . . I mean it also fits in well with the ridiculous, if you will. Even when you watch, for example A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, it doesn't make any sense. In fact, some of the shows we put out [are] far better than some of the shows that come out. So it kind of felt like a natural fit, because there's many of the B and C and D- level horror movies that, in all honesty look improvised.
TC: What is one of the most ridiculous plot lines that has developed from an audience suggestion?
Oh, good lord . . . last year, one of the audience members gave us “beluga” as a suggestion, and what it turned into on stage is that this beluga was the source of the worlds uranium, and he would eat hippies and then transform them. Well, he could eat anybody really, but his favourite was hippies, and he would transform them into Uranium, and that was why this beluga was being held by some German anarchist who wanted to take over the world.
TC: Theatre often requires weeks or even months of rehearsals to get a show perfect. What goes into preparing for a performance you have to make up?
DD: Well, what it ends up coming down to is more of the trust and the chemistry between the improvisers . . . it's something you develop a taste for. You want to make people laugh. You think you're funny, at least. And as long as you're not afraid to stand up there and put yourself out there and trust the people around you, usually, the audience is willing, maybe a bit forgiving at the same time. But they know that they're creating this with you and they're involved with the show, so it just becomes a big sort of party atmosphere.
TC: Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you don't know what to do next?
DD: Yes, that does happen, but at the same time it's improv, and since there's nothing written, you have no limits. So, if [you] ever find yourself at the bottom of a pit with absolutely no way out, all of a sudden you pull out of your pocket a time machine and you're able to fly back or you're able to teleport somewhere, so that's kind of the beauty of the comedic aspect of it. If ever the audience or the improvisers lead us down a path that doesn't make entirely too much sense, we can add even more nonsense to it and piece it together. And at the end of the day, it's supposed to be a comedy so even when you end up throwing out these ridiculous twists, it basically makes it a more hilarious show.
TC: Do you ever find you can't keep a straight face because of a joke another actor makes during the show?
DD: That's one of the most beautiful things. Obviously we're six people, and we think we're really funny, and we play very well together. So, it absolutely does happen that somebody whips out a ridiculous [joke] that no one expected, and you can see everyone on stage is squeezing their lips, trying not to laugh. Because we're supposed to make the audience laugh . . . sometimes that trickles off into us and sometimes you just can't help yourself and you give in. Hopefully the audience is laughing as hard as you at that point.
TC: Can you give us an example of one of these jokes?
DD: We did this scene where me and one of the improvisers were Caesar and Brutus, so we're going back to the Roman ages, and what had actually happened was that Brutus invented the Caesar salad, but Caesar liked it so much that he took over it. He was like, “Oh no no, this can't be named after you, it has to be named after me.” It's basically Caesar and Brutus fighting over who gets the right to call the Caesar salad.
TC: What would you do if an audience member gave you the suggestion "Something with Virgins and Chainsaws" and how about if I throw in a museum as a location?
DD: So it turns out the museum is about to receive a very rare artifact and no one knows what it is, but all of a sudden people start disappearing. Somebody goes down to the catacombs and sees what was coming in to the museum. This artifact was coming in from Egypt, which is actually where the chainsaw originated from ― that's what they used to cut the sandstone, and no one has yet realized what they did to make them so symmetrical. And, since the Egyptians never got any credit for it, 2000 years after, they have come back to claim the chainsaw, and they're starting to eliminate people, starting with the museum.