silentimprov.com - L'improvvisazione con effetti collaterali

Oh my God, we just quoted a Nelly Furtado song. It's so sad. Anyway not as sad as the end of the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe. It's even hard to find the right words to write about it, but after all, EdFringe 2014 is not so far so we didn't have time to complain and we need to describe this experience, waiting for the next one. 

Well, if you don't find words, try with number:

• 18 shows (and some mixed improv jam-session). Some wonderful, some good, some bad too. It's improv. But every single show make us more skilled, stronger and better improvisers (pictures 2). 
• 14 cast member (in pictures 3 you see part of the last-week cast). Let me say "amazing". Living all together for three weeks can be absolutely hard, but this time was wonderful. Every single actor was at his best as professionalism and diligence in this project. 
• 2 sold out. In a festival with more than 2k show, 2 sold out for a show at his debut is really awesome. When we started we hoped on an audience percentage of 20% (As Fringe Society suggest for premier show), but we god 47%. Almost 50%. With 2 sold out. We should be proud of that. Yes, we are quite far away from Showstoppers or Mischief Theater but they are references in Edinburgh, we just newbies. So, we're very very happy.
• 1 final standing ovation. Should we explain better?
• A bunch of amazing reviews (one of them put us on the 6 must-see shows of the Fringe)
• Some bad reviews (it's absolutely part of the game and they teach us to be better)
• A lot of beautiful friends (how can't you love lovely improvisers like Mischief, Showstoppers, Blind Mirth..). We already miss you a lot
• Over 30 shows enjoyed. We love theatre and being in Edinburgh during the Fringe is like being in Italy if you love Pasta (or Mafia, or Mandolino as our favourite restaurant "Gianni the stereotype" suggest). 
• 1 lovely venue, with his great staff (picture 1)! Thank you very much guys, you definitely rule!
• 1 little white mouse in our beautiful big house (and this count as rhyme)
• 1 ton of spam eated.
• 5542€ collected in our crowdfunding experience from 130+ wonderful crowdfunders.
• 10000+ things that should be in this list.

What can we add? It definitely was an emotional rollercoaster, but it was just wonderful. We really hope we'll able to come back next year for our second silent run, but who knows. We need to think about this, cause "a lot of" it's also the way we can describe the pounds we used to found this experience.

Anyway, Edinburgh don't feel safe, 'cause we may be back sooner that you expect!

Thank you #edfringe, thank you crowdfunders, thank you all guys, you are all amazing!

To infinity... and beyond!

i Bugiardini

Hi There!

So, our Fringe Experience is near to an end and this is starting to be sad. Our last week we definitely find our way in this show and performance after performance is going better and funnier. We had a brand new cast, and a brand new attitude 'cause the "reviewer fear" is away and now we're having really fun in playing with our silent toys!

Anyway the audience seems to like it a lot and especially the guys from Showstopper, one of the biggest sell-out show here in Edinburgh. We're huge fans of those guys so seeing them at our show is so exciting. And what excited us most is that they liked it! Some of them came to see it twice and all the cast was in our audience. So amazing. Anyway if you're in Edinburgh you surely already know how amazing they are but if you're not, please remember this name "The showstoppers", One of the most beautiful improv show we have ever seen. So inspiring.

One more thing, with this last cast change we completed our photos team 'cause after Stefano and Zazza, now it's Umberto turn and his shooting a lot of amazing photos (as the others did). YOu can see them in this post or in our Facebook page! Don't miss them 'cause they're really beautiful.

Finally, here it is our show-title list, just for the record. On Monday we had "The short-sighted surgeon" a story of medicine and poverty; on Tuesday we had "The blind taxidermist", a story of kidneys and reptiles; on wednesday we had "the Jolly contortionist" a story of circus and jealousy; on thursday we had "the happy elf" a story of christmas and evil childs.

So, this is all for the moment, we really hope to enjoy those last four days of craziness here in scotland, but we surely will.

See you soon,
i Bugiardini

In our last post we talked about our Fringe Experience as an "emotional rollercoaster" . We think this post will even better help to explain why we said that . 

This week we did three more shows : "The Clumsy Astronaugh" (a story of lost planet and spacemen), "The tattoo artist" (a story of three brothers and a father) and today's show, "The incompetent dentist" (a story of a dentist and his work instruments). Good the first, a little bit worst the second, very good the last one. By the way is "the tattoo artist" the show that we want to talk about.

That day we had a lot of reviewers there and it was not one of our best show. By the way, as improvisers, we deal with failure just every second we're on stage (otherwise it will not be improv) and that show really interest us 'cause it got 4 reviews (maybe five but we could have lost one of them). Two three star review, one two star review and one very destructive one star review from broadway baby (you can read it here, published the same day we received a mention by "the Guardian"). As we said, it was not one of our most beautiful show but how can a reviewer said "this is crap" and another one says "this is incredible"? How can we get a "must-see outstanding show" from a reviewer and a "really boring" from another one? How can they say "they are not able to improvise" and another one says "they seems thelepatic?"

YESS! Cause it's improv, and more than improv it's silent-improv so anyone can understand the story as he likes (and if we're not good enough, you can even understand nothing, but we promise his happens rarely :)). And 'cause you cannot please everyone. We need to fail, we'll fail, we'll accept failure as every improvisers should do (and this is why we decide to share this instead of bury it under the carpet). But, finally, is this a five stars show or a one star show?

We steal a motto from our friends the Mischief theater and we said: YOU DECIDE! Come to see our show and try to figure out if it's an outstanding show (as someone said), or a crappy show (as someone said too). In spite of your choice, we'll be glad to hear it from you! And this is the reason why we'd like to thank every single reviewer that comes to our show: the good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones.

We now need to go to bed, waiting for the next 1 to 5 stars review that can make us happy, sad or just ok. YOU DECIDE!

Hope to see you soon,
i Bugiardini

P.S. In these days we took a bunch of photos. You can find it on our media section of this website (and some examples of this in this post).

Hi There!

We officially are beyond the half of our Fringe Experience and so far we can certainly say that this is a f***ing "emotional rollercoaster". Yes, this is the name of a classic Keith Johnstone Exercise, but this is also what we are feeling here in Edinburgh.

On tuesday our show was "The submarine captain" , a story of pirates and chefs, but we were so happy 'cause that was our first SOLD OUT! We read "No more tickets left" near to our show title on the Gryphon blackboard and we were so happy!But…

…the next day, our ninth show was "The barber" and we were really far from sold out (if you know what i mean) so we started to be worried a little bit, but…

…the same day we read that Fringe Review select us as one of the six "MUST SEE" show of the 6000+ show that are currently at the festival. So we passed from happiness to a little bit of sadness and then to happiness again.What will happen next? We'll discovery it soon!

Anyway this experience is still amazing because we're meeting a lot of lovely improviser during the days, the night and during yesterday "improsium" created by the wonderful Maydays, a London-based improv group. We met the amazing Mischief Theater too (if you are in Edinburgh GO TO SEE their show) and the Showstopper guys (what can we say about them? they are stunning!) and we love this kind of improv network that is growing up here.

Well, now it's time to start cooking PASTA with SPAM (pic.2) to mix Italian and English culture in just one beautiful, gorgeous, amazing gourmet for our tireless flyer-squad (pic.1).

See you next time,
i Bugiardini

Hi guys, it's tuesday and our second week of shows has just started! On Monday we did our seventh show: "The Assassin", the awesome story of a professional killer, with a twist that made the audience goes "WHAAAAAAAAAT?".

Our cast is changing everyday because the actors on stage are everyday different (as the show of course), but this week someone had to go back to Italy and someone else arrived, so this second week the cast is quite renewed: our amazing Susanna (aka The CatKeeper) left on Sunday and today is Edfringe's last day for Peppe (aka Mr Stakanov), but yesterday Zazza (aka Zazza, in the picture you can see him doing what he does best) and Andrea (soon he'll have an aka too) arrived at the BugiardHouse, so today on the stage there will be a brand new cast! We're so excited!

Anyway, everything is going just fine and the audience is starting to love us. A lot of people after the show asked for
photos, posters and autographs on boobs (last one is not true). The people on the streets love our flyers and our silent screaming flyering so there were a lot of photographers taking pictures of us (you can find them searching carefully on
Flickr...).

And on a little side note, here in Scotland (but we think in England too) there is no unique tap for hot and cold water, so to have a not-scorchingly-hot-and-also-not-freezing water, we need to open the hot water one and than the cold one and going with our hands a little bit here and a little bit there: basically, we'll never be able to find the right mix of hot and cold. But thanks God here at the BugiardHouse we have a genius! It's our piano player / improviser / Fifa champion / engineer Andrew Bent that created the homemade mixing machine that you can see in the picture. Is he a genius or what?

So, that's all for now,
till we have new stories to tell you!

Thank you for following,
i Bugiardini

So, our first week of shows goes away. Six improvised silent movies created on the spot based on audience suggestions. First of all, our audience is growing up everyday. We started with not-so many and we ended the week with almost a sold-out (just 10 seats left). It's our first year in Edinburgh and nobody knows us here so, we are really proud of this result and we hope it can go everyday better!

We missed three show descriptions and so here we are: Fourth show was "The Magician" a story of a selfish magician and an enterprising assistant. Very funny stuff. Then was time for
"The painter" a very jealousy drama, ended so bad for the main character. And today was the "Spaceship repairman" time with a sci-fi story, freely (i said Freely Mr. Lucas) inspired to Star Wars, except for the fact that Darth Vader was looking for someone who can fix his breathing machine.

Now it's time for some rest, 'cause sunday is our day off. We need to recharge our batteries 'cause flyering and playing and do everything
we need to do is really really tiring... Anyway we're starting having real fun in doing these show and it goes everyday better, but it's improv and so the failure is right behind the corner and we're ready to deal with it! :)

Meanwhile (one of our favorite intertitle cards) other two reviewers liked our show and you can find the reviews here (first and second).

What can we say? Thank you yo everyone, audience, reviewers and crowdfunders 'cause this experience is f***ing amazing!

P.S. In the pictures you can see us drinking some tea after the show when we have our cruel FEEDBACK!

It's five star time. No, it's not related to Beppe Grillo and his stuff, but it's how our first reviewer judges out our second show "The farmer". We're very happy even because here at the Fringe are those kind of reviews that bring audience to your show and, because of the 6000+ shows everyday, it's really difficult to do it. 

By the way this is an "Emotional rollercoaster". First day: not so good, second day: wonderful, third day: quite good and now we're waiting for our forth day. The third day show was "The Funeral Director" and we were not able to resist to put in the story a mafia boss, falled in love with a woman promised to our funeral director. Oh man, what a story! At the real end we had a zombie too! Fun.

There was a reviewer yesterday? We really don't know, as we don't know this today and tomorrow. Everyday a review (good or bad) can jump out from the web and you must be ready to deal with them passing fastly from joy to sadness and then to joy again. The only way to survive is really don't care so much about the reviews and be focused just on your show that, actually, it's the most important thing!

Oh, we are eating a lot of Spam, by the way. It's wonderful.

Greetings,

i Bugiardini

Hi Guys! How are you?

We're great! Everything here is supercool and we started to understand how Fringe things works.  First of all we had two shows. The first twos. The first one was "The Mad Scientist" a story of potions and mind control. We were very thrilled to perform and so we felt a little bit uncomfortable on stage but the story goes on and we bring a good audience hands at the end of the show. The second day everything was different goes we did "The farmer", a story of cows and poker. It was really really fun and hilarious and we enjoyed it a lot. The same did the audience who went crazy after the show!

This experience is absolutely amazing but is really tiring. We wake up early in the morning and after a fast home-breakfast for of us go out to give some silence-flyers (as you can see in the picture 1).  The people on the street loves us and our moustache-flyers are really working (for what it seems). Then we come back home for a lunch and at two o'clock we started to prepare ourselves. A good warm up and we move to venue for the show.
Everything is set up in 15' and after the show everything goes down in 10' (as you can see in the picture 2). Then we go flyering again

until 20 o'clock when we come back home for a dinner and if we're not dying on our sofas (as you can see in picture3) we go out for a shows (yesterday a wonderful improvised musical from the amazing showstoppers). This is all for now, we're waiting for reviews and audience comments but we will tell you everything here on our travel journey. Keep following us even on Facebook (iBugiardini) and twitter (@iBugiardini). Thanks to everyone for your support!

We need it all! i Bugiardini

And we're really excited about this. But first of all we're sorry of this two days of silence but here in Edinburgh we had some troubled days. As soon as we landed, we discovery that our most important baggage (the one with all technical stuff for the show) was lost. We were like a magician without his two-pieces woman so we were completely desperate. At 00.30 of our first day, when we were thinking about get as drunk as possible, we received an sms from KLM: "your baggage is flying to Edinburgh, we're sorry about the delay". Yippiyay, it's party time. So the next day we received our baggage and everything can really start.

Yesterday we had our technical rehearsal and of course there were some little problem with our tech, but nothing that can be fixed by our amazing technician SuperMary and the wonderful staff of Gryphon Venue (Thank you Jax an Catelyn!<3). In the evening we had our first "meet the press" party where we talked with a lot of kind reviewer and we invited them at our show! We can't wait to get a some-stars review.

By the way today it's the big day. While i'm writing it's like 6 hours to our first show and in our big big house everyone is really thrilled about this, but by the way, no one is really scared. We are all thinking "This is so coooooooool!" so we have no time to worry!

Well, now it's time to go out and do some flying on the Royal Mile, obviously dressed as 1920's. Shhh.

Looking forward to write again,
thank you for your support
i Bugiardini

P.S. By the way, our house is amazing, big and beautiful as you can seen in this video.

Hi Guys, first of all we're very sorry about our English. We're gonna write a lot of Grammar Bullshit here 'cause our English goes just some steps ahead "the pen is on the table". But we're gonna try so please forgive us. 

Well, it's August the first and so this blog is starting. We're starting to move to Scotland and here we'll tell you how our #edfringe experience is going in term of shows, audience, new friend, emotions, starbucks and all the rest. Actually, we're not still in Edinburgh 'cause a lot of our improv group is leaving on August 3th, just a day before our technical rehersal and two days before our first show. 

Anyway, everything is ready right now. The show is good, technical stuff are prepared and we're as excited as we can. We spend last month in silent-improvising something like 30 hours for week so we can't wait to try our show in front of the amazing #edfringe audience.

In the next days you'll read here a lot of news and if you'll want to follow our story we'll appreciate it so much that we can invent some of them.

Now it's time to go, but before we'd like to remember you where our show is and to do this, we're gonna post it our Flyers. We're so proud of them! 

Bye guys, see you soon!

The Little liers (i Bugiardini in English)