Dirty Laundry cleans up with soaps
Calgary's only live, improvised, comedy soap opera is back for its fourth season
PREVIEW
DIRTY LAUNDRY
Opens October 6
Buckingham's Pub
For the cast of Dirty Laundry and their fans it’s been a long summer. It’s nearly six months since Calgary’s only live, improvised, comedy soap opera closed its third season at Buckingham's Pub.
"It’s amazing how many people have come up to me over the summer and said ‘I can’t stand it. I have nothing to do on Sunday night!’" says actress Karen Johnson-Diamond.
She and Elinor Holt are co-producers of and performers in Dirty Laundry, the highly successful cross-breeding of pub entertainment and theatre that has spawned a faithful weekly audience. The show boasts a cast of local professional actors who are eager to strut their stuff.
"Because it’s our fun night, since it’s us getting together and getting to do the stuff that directors don’t let you do in a real play, we’re dying to get back at it," says Johnson-Diamond.
Dirty Laundry is a Calgary theatre phenomenon built around sex, intrigue, drama, sex, comedy and sex. Thanks to its soap opera format, Dirty Laundry has a cast of characters and a story that extends throughout the show’s eight-month run. These features set it aside from other kinds of improvised theatre and have the audience coming back week after week. Like fans of TV soaps, some fans of Dirty Laundry faithfully follow new developments and never miss a show. Any performer who forgets a character’s name or what happened last week can be sure that someone in the audience will help them remember.
The fourth season kicks off with the annual Money Laundering Night fund-raiser. The show is a double feature, beginning with an interactive murder mystery from Shadow Productions, known for its shows at the Deane House in Inglewood and at Stage West. Once the whodunit is solved, the highly anticipated preview of this year’s Dirty Laundry will hit the stage.
Every year the show uses a different setting for its soap opera shenanigans. In the first season, The Spotwells focused on the powerful dry-cleaning empire of the tyrannical Pressman Spotwell. The following season, the backstage machinations at a struggling religious cable network were on display in H.O.L.Y. TV. Last season’s Lust In Space followed the adventures of the crew of the USS Love Rocket in a show that was part Star Trek and part Flesh Gordon. The setting for this year’s show is a closely guarded secret that will be revealed at the preview.
"It won’t be until the moment it starts that the audience will know what it’s about," says Johnson-Diamond. "Last year we concealed the set, we concealed our costumes, we didn’t give any hints until the director announced the title."
For the actors, who have to create their own characters and dialogue as well as provide their own costumes, Dirty Laundry is a labour of love.
"We’re professional actors who work all across Calgary," says Johnson-Diamond. "And this is our one night to throw away the script and not let anyone tell us what to do. We don’t get to do a lot of improvising in our careers – there isn’t much opportunity in rehearsal or even in performance unless someone blows a line. So it’s a night for fun. It’s a histrionic jam session." |
