For decades now, Lifetime, the network once branded as “Television for Women,” has used original TV movies to expose the secret evils of seemingly perfect boyfriends, perfect roommates and perfect babysitters. Onstage Saturday nights until Nov. 9, “Mother, May I Sleep with Improv?” a new, unscripted show at Dad’s Garage for spooky season, seeks to tackle the format of the network’s women-in-jeopardy thrillers by making them even more wacky and outlandish than classics featuring stars such as Tori Spelling and Meredith Baxter.
“There will always be, for the most part, middle-class, suburban white women who want to see movies about women in danger,” said the show’s co-director Eve Krueger, who is also the associate artistic director of Dad’s Garage. “The thriller-style genre has been around for eons in Lifetime’s original movies.”
Photo by Nick Sketchety
Photo by Nick Sketchety
To prepare for the show’s format, Krueger, along with co-director Ed Morgan and the rotating cast, watched lots of Lifetime movies.
“We found that every one of the movies that we watched was called ‘The Perfect Whatever,’ like ‘The Perfect Teacher’ or ‘The Perfect Husband’,” Krueger said. “It turned out that the perfect person in the title was evil and trying to kill the heroine. It was a clear formula where she is unsuspecting, then there’s a time jump and this person is deep in her life. Then all hell breaks loose as they kill everyone around her and try to kill her.”
Krueger said Lifetime has recently changed the titles of its thrillers and diversified its casting, but the formula remains the same. And that formula is what the “Mother, May I …?” showrunners have adapted.
“You’ll see danger; you’ll see action,” she said. “You’ll see corny acting and terrible dialogue! Whereas Lifetime is trying really hard to make a serious movie, we are not trying really hard to make a serious movie. We’re trying really hard to make a funny improv show that is disguised as a serious movie.”
A revolving cast of 15 performers will take the stage each Saturday. Each show will feature a predominantly female cast of improvisers and one man. Suggestions will be taken from the audience, using limited props and no costumes, and the cast will create a ridiculously fun Lifetime thriller on the spot. Though “Mother, May I …?” runs every week, every performance will be a stand-alone, long-form improv show with no returning characters or continuing plot lines.
Photo by Nick Sketchety
Photo by Nick Sketchety
Unlike short-form improv, which uses games and quick scenes, long-form improv uses an outlined format wherein seasoned improvisers create characters over a series of scenes to tell a movie-length story. Years ago, former artistic director Kevin Gillese created an original long-form format outline that Dad’s Garage could use, based upon screenplay-writing principles from the book “Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need.”
With “Mother, May I …?” using the same format, Krueger said each story should take wild, unpredictable twists.
“Preparation for this cast was just learning the basic format for this long-form show, then learning how to adjust its steps to fit a Lifetime Original Movie,” she said. “We’re always following our protagonist and our antagonist. We get to see both the hero and the villain separately — and how they interact with each other.”
Krueger said “Mother, May I Sleep with Improv?” is intended to appeal to all audiences, but it should make for a particularly appealing night out for women who love those movies. In addition, people attending the 8 p.m. performance also are able to see the 10 p.m. improv performance at Dad’s for free.
“The concession stand has lovely little personal cans of wine,” Krueger said. “This would be a great girls’ night out.”
IF YOU GO
“Mother, May I Sleep with Improv?”
Through Oct. 26 at Dad’s Garage. 8 p.m. Saturdays. $25 includes ticketing fee. 569 Ezzard St., Atlanta. 404-523-3141, dadsgarage.com.
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