Melanie Karin won the Rubber Chicken Award at the 13th annual Ottawa Theatre Challenge.
She improvised. She bribed judges. She claimed the championship chicken when the Ottawa Theatre Challenge hit town for the 13th year in a row.
“I’ll either succeed or fail miserably, but that’s theatre, you take risks,” victor Melanie Karin said in the days leading up to the show.
Her risk – going in as a solo performer new to the Ottawa theatre scene – paid off. She earned bragging rights as Ottawa’s Best Theatre Company on behalf of 411dramaturgy with a skit created only 48 hours in advance and brought home the coveted Rubber Chicken Award.
The poultry prize was chosen in a moment of serendipity, says A Company of Fools’ Gertrude Wilkes, but has become a monument to the challenge’s history.
The award is a compilation of chickens mounted on a red wooden base: One with an Elvis-style hairdo stands on the left. A highly affronted one gawps from the right. A third lies prone across the base.
Deviating from the traditional rubber chicken, a stuffed Angry Bird crowns the top of this year’s trophy.
It showcases the spirit of the night, which encourages performers not to take themselves too seriously. The challenge is not so much a competition but a celebration of theatre, says Wilkes.
“It’s a chance to challenge yourself and really create something brilliant under a deadline,” says Al Connors, a member of theatre companies Crush Improv and A Company of Fools. With the Fools, Connors took home the Best Dying For Your Art Award.
The challenge is also a chance for groups across Ottawa to see what one another can do, said Mike Kosowan, of GRIMprov.
The skits were performed at the National Arts Centre on March 27. The mad dash for ideas didn’t start long before then. It began on Inspiration Night, 48 hours before the skits were performed, when groups received one item – a headline, a sound or something edible – from a hat.
With a background in improv and a fondness for writing quickly, Karin says the limited time didn’t scare her.
Her only worry, she joked, was making sure she didn’t go too crazy during the process. And while an improv background may have helped her, Connors says this isn’t always the case.
“The trouble with improvisers is improvisers like to go off script all the time,” he says, “and if you have a great script you want to stick with it.”
Kosowan also believes having a background in improv helps. Far from being a risk, going off script was encouraged. Indeed, for GRIMprov, there was no script.
They didn’t plan hours in advance for the Challenge; they planned minutes – even seconds – in advance and still snagged the Best Product Extension Award for their use of Girl Guide Lettuce.
While skit quality and audience reaction are the main criteria for judging, Wilkes says the judges will also take something else into consideration. In the spirit of tomfoolery, participants are encouraged to resort to bribery.
Youth theatre Suzart Productions won the award for Most Generous Bribe, according to a press release by the Fools.
Their ages were taken into account, however, and the award was soon renamed the “Getting Adults to Buy Us Booze” Award.