Children’s Adventures of the Mind Now Appearing on Center Stage

On her seventh birthday, Rachel Small left her home in the Hollywood Hills and went on an adventure through a cave on a flying carpet with a kangaroo named Mark.

Hollywood’s veteran improvisational group, Theatresports--celebrating its third year in Los Angeles--is taking children on imaginary adventures every Saturday afternoon in its Kidprov program. The stories, settings, situations and costumes are all designed by the 6- to 12-year-olds in the audience, and adult actors transform the ideas into full-fledged plays.

“When we ask for a favorite food, we always get a lot of pizza and sushi,” said actor Jeff Weissman, who often has to eat the imaginary helpings that the children dish out. “We just try to find new angles for the same suggestions.”

Beauty and the Beast, Batman, Disneyland, Iraq and assorted odd animals were on the minds of the 22 children attending a recent improv session. Jo McLachlan, who directs and narrates Kidprov, said an audience of children is often more demanding and less forgiving than adults.

“They buy into our reality a lot more quickly, but we have to struggle harder to keep their attention,” McLachlan said.

“We try to avoid violence in the show, but when there’s a fight, or someone dies, the children always want the character to come back to life,” actor Barry Thompson said.

So when actress Nectar Goldman became mean, wide-eyed “Bigtooth the Shark” at the children’s suggestion and was harpooned, she came back to life as a princess. The children applauded.

In June, Kidprov began giving free shows at schools, including private schools for sociopathic children and homes for runaways. Every other week, proceeds from the weekly shows are donated to the Adam Walsh Missing Children’s Fund.

“While they are here, children can boss around adults and tell them what to do,” said McLachlan, who said her day job is being a full-time mother.

When told about her new power, birthday girl Rachel turned to her mother, Laura Small, and ordered: “Now, Mom, you sit down right now.” Rachel and her friends then took over the show.

They made actor Cooper Bates into a singing lizard named Zingblat, who ad-libbed a song about hating to eat peas. Colin Dana, 6, dressed red-haired actress Kay Queenman in a ridiculous babushka outfit from the hats, shawls and costumes strewn around the stage. And 9-year-old Adam Mazurka took part in a Western skit featuring cowgirl actress Libby Bideau, who is a secretary when she isn’t improvising on weekends.

The whole time, Alan Axelrod is on a keyboard making the necessary sound effects and musical mood for the spur-of-the-moment scenes.

These interactive plays by Theatresports are part of an international improvisational program with teams from Ventura and Chattanooga as well as Norway and New Zealand that compete at periodic conferences. They perform on teams as if they’re in an Olympics-style sporting event with judges keeping score.

Los Angeles Theatresports, started by Dan O’Connor and Ellen Idelson at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood, celebrated its third anniversary this month with 81 local members competing in one night. Those members rotate to perform at Kidprov.

“Children have remarkable imaginations,” said Idelson, Theatresports artistic director. “It reinforces kids’ imaginations because there is no wrong answer. It builds self-esteem and makes them stars.”

One child a week gets a “Chance of a Lifetime” to do whatever he or she has dreamed of doing. “We’ve had a little guy want to slam-dunk against basketball star Michael Jordan, a girl who wanted to get her ears pierced, a guy who wanted to ride a skateboard, then we set up a story to create that scene on stage and we make that child’s dream come true,” Idelson said.

Not all involved in Theatresports are actors. Writers, lawyers, housewives, therapists, a computer disk salesman and an advertising executive are among those who have taken a series of $100 six-week workshops to prepare them for the stage competition. The course teaches people how to take risks and how to cooperate with others, Idelson said.

Friday and Saturday night shows often fill the 65-seat theater, and celebrity judges rate each performance, sometimes honking a loud horn if the scene gets boring. In adult shows--not during Kidprov--a bag may be put over the head of either an actor or an audience member who makes a gratuitous racist, sexist or obscene remark. (At the anniversary competition, a member of the audience had to wear a bag over his head after suggesting that the players “drop the baby” in a scene taking place on the Eiffel Tower.)

Sometimes the actors pull off impossible audience suggestions, such as a hilarious impromptu musical by a team told to do a Shakespearean opera about a lizard in Egypt. Then there was a Kabuki interpretive dance about a horse named Slug and a fast-paced rap song about income tax filing.

To help children with ideas in Kidprov, they spin a wheel listing genres such as science fiction, Western, teen-age romance, scary story or fairy tale.

“Rarely are the children at a loss for suggestions, and we try to pull out the shy ones to participate more,” McLachlan said.

One Saturday, a shy boy with a lisp was asked about something he always wanted to do. After repeated attempts to ask him to speak up, the actors brainstormed to fulfill his dream about lassoing a whole house, and continued to allow him to rope a condominium and then a whole city.

After enacting the far-fetched idea, the boy finished his wish and the exhausted actors asked him if he was satisfied.

“That was fun,” the boy answered. “But I meant rope a horse, not a house.”