Send in the clones

AUSTEN-TATIOUS The broads of Improvised Jane Austen mess with her sense and sensibilities.

Photo: Donald Cardiff; Photo Illustration: Petrina Chiu

I sit in “Leavittshire Manor” (a small, cozy apartment in Lincoln Square), waiting for the lady of the house to bring a comestible to quell my hunger (a brownie). I’m surrounded by eight ladies-in-waiting, all preparing to curl up their hair, slip into some Olde English verse and show the Playground Theater what it’s never seen—the screwed-up side of classical lit.

“It started as a joke,” says Lauren Glass, one of the founding members of Improvised Jane Austen. “I was watching Improvised Shakespeare [at iO] and thinking, What is the female equivalent of Shakespeare? Jane Austen.”

Creating a new story in Austen’s style every Wednesday night, the group prepares to entertain both high- and lowbrow audiences by reading (and rereading) Austen’s work, e-mailing each other in English Regency dialect and adopting faux titles of nobility based on their respective Chicago neighborhoods.

“Jane Austen’s characters are so solid, and the more you read, the more her characters are hilarious and real,” says Kate Parker, an IJA member who occasionally writes under the name Lady Kate of Winchestershire. “That’s the foundation of a great improv show.”

The Janeites aren’t the only ones creating their own art via another’s. Last week, the Playground debuted Tarantino—an on-the-spot creation of a Tarantino-style flick—and earlier in January iO brought back The Improvised Midnight Movie, a 2007 show that creates a new film, from intro credits to closing song, in front of a live audience. The three new shows, combined with the long-running iO group Improvised Shakespeare, may be fomenting a distinct comedy genre—one in which improvisers expand upon another artist’s style and plotlines rather than create their own.

“Working within someone’s framework eliminates certain variables and enables character interactions to be more complex,” says Barry Hite, a cast member of Improvised Shakespeare who directs the ladies of IJA. “In a regular show, two people walk onstage; it could be two penguins about to commit suicide, two astronauts in line at lunch. But with this construct, there is a limitation to who they could be. You already know certain things about the characters, and that lets you spend more time building them up.”

Tarantino director Tyler Samples adds that playing by Quentin’s rules allows improvisers to break everyone else’s. “Usually improvisers are decent-enough people that they don’t like to kill or scream at each other onstage, but in our show it’s expected,” Samples says. “It’s fun to watch performers break those traditional improv rules and play in these new realities.”

The form works well for Improvised Shakespeare, which has a wide range of comedies, tragedies and sonnets to draw inspiration from, but can it work as well for a genre that comprises only a few works? According to Tarantino cast member Dave Urlakis, who also belongs to the improv troupe BatteryMouth, it’s not the size of the genre that counts; it’s the size of the characters. “Everybody has such strong intentions in Tarantino’s movies,” Urlakis says. “Everybody wants something so badly, and when you get that across, that’s when it starts sounding like Tarantino.”

In fact, the one thing Shakespeare, Austen and Tarantino seem to have in common is strong-willed characters, all hell-bent on achieving their goals. The trick to making the form work, says Improvised Shakespeare cast member Steve Waltien, is to use those characters not as a cheap, audience-drawing gimmick but as an authentic way to explore an artist’s work. “If you’re performing in anybody’s vein, you have to find that thing about them that you just love. You have to find a reason to live out their fictional canon,” Waltien says. “If you love it, then the possibilities seem limitless.”

Improvised Jane Austen brings the O.G. English to the Playground Wednesday 11 at 8pm. Tarantino can be seen Saturday 7 at 10pm.

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