■Absolute I mprov switches
gears to present a lengthier
presentation rather than its
traditional short-form
improvisation
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
Theater-lovers of all shapes and
sizes! Starting today, the Universi
ty’s one and only improvisational
troupe, Absolute Improv, is host
ing a one-time-only event for three
consecutive days. The members of
the group are going to great lengths
to make improvisational theater in:
“Absolute Improv Goes Long.”
The performances today, Friday
and Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Pock
et Playhouse mark the group’s first
public attempts at long-form im
provisation. Using a form called a
Harold, the group will take one
suggestion from the audience and
create a performance that will last
somewhere around 40 minutes.
Because nothing is planned by the
cast, each show will be entirely
different and never seen again.
This marks a giant deviation
from the troupe’s traditional use of
short-form improv games. During
the games, a few troupe members
take suggestions from the audience
and play out a scene lasting only a
few minutes. These short games
require much less effort and atten
tion on the part of the players.
Rich Brown, the graduate teach
ing fellow who introduced the
long-form idea to Absolute Improv,
said, “Long-form is the art in
improv, where short-form is just
the sport.”
The Harold is a style that was
developed by late comedian Del
Close. He worked with many
members of Second City Televi
sion and Saturday Night Live, but
his lasting mark was in the cre
ation of the Harold. Participants in
the improv start giving mono
logues that generate ideas sparked
from the main suggestion. Then
the troupe launches into three sets
of three scenes that create charac
ters, action and, ideally, resolu
tion.
Quinn Mattfeld, an Absolute Im
prov member, explained that this
is totally new for the troupe and
that it has helped them grow.
“I think that we’re adding on to
something that was already really
good,” he said. “We all have ab
solute — ha ha — faith in each
other whether we’re on stage or
not.”
Last year, the group had a regu
lar gig every Friday night at
Charley’s Comedy Club. They
have since stopped those perform
ances and have been looking for
other ways to perform. Doing the
long-form is a way to give the
group a shot in the arm, but it has
taken time to prepare.
“We’ve kind of been under
ground to rehearse for this,”
troupe member Sam Super said.
The last time the group per
formed publicly was in late Sep
tember at the Robinson Theatre.
Brown has been working with
the group during this hiatus and
said the group has made a lot of
progress with a challenging art
form. Not only are the troupe
members carrying themselves, but
they have to carry the audience
along with them for the duration
of the show.
The departure from caricatures
to characters and the absence of
the cheap laugh may catch tradi
tional improv audiences offguard,
but Brown is certain that it’s for
the best.
“There may be a bigger invest
ment from the audience at the be
ginning than in the short-form
games,” he said, “but you get a big
ger payoff at the end.”
Performances will be in the
Pocket Playhouse in Villard Hall
with a suggested donation of $1.
DVD-Audio met with mixed reviews by music buffs
By John Hanan
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Just when music fans thought it
was safe to lean back and listen to
their collections, here comes the
music industry to mess with the
mix.
Choices are multiplying again -
but not between hip-hop and jazz,
Waylon and Willie, Beatles and
Stones.
The newest next-generation for
mat in home audio has arrived, and
it's called DVD-Audio. Although
the disc looks like an ordinary CD,
in the bold words of one manufac
turer, it represents "the most impor
tant development in sound quality
since the introduction of the CD."
Warner Music and other music
software makers rolled out the first
DVD-Audio discs in November. A
few months before, the first mass
marketed DVD-Audio players be
gan competing for the hearts and
minds of sound fanatics when
Panasonic and Technics introduced
their trailblazing products.
If DVD-Audio catches on, prepare
to add it to the alphabet soup of
ways to hear music: CD, MP3, DAT,
SACD, MD, LP and cassette. Pre
pare also for more confusion at mu
sic and electronics stores - maybe
even a format war.
Battles over new audio formats
are fought across the nation in
homes such as Joe Prahler's. The
Waterford, Mich., music buff uses
several types of music players.
"I've been using DAT (digital au
dio tape) for choral recordings for
about eight years," he says. "I ven
tured into MiniDiscs about two
years ago and find that a better for
mat than cassettes. For daily listen
ing, I stay with the plain old CDs,
which I found so much better than
vinyl."
Prahler says he's not ready to
commit to DVD-Audio. For him and
others evaluating all the formats,
there are many factors to consider.
If perplexing choices and glow
ing promises of audio nirvana seem
familiar, maybe it's because the ad
pitches from the last format intro
ductions haven't completely faded
from memory.
In the 1980s, compact discs were
introduced as "perfect sound forev
er." In the early 1960s, RCA de
scribed its Living Stereo series of
long-playing albums, or LPs, as
"technical perfection."
In short, what is billed as the ul
timate remains the ultimate for
only so long.
So what's a buyer to do? Indus
try analysts recommend that con
sumers ask themselves and sales
representatives some tough ques
tions.
"Just follow the software," says
Bob Olhsson, an audio consultant
in Novato, Calif. To paraphrase,
listeners should think twice about
buying a machine to play music in
a format in which they will own
little music.
Warner Music and several other
manufacturers have DVD-Audio ti
So what's a buyer to
do? Industry analysts rec
ommend that consumers
ask themselves some tough
questions
n
ties out, but the number of discs so
far is few. A listener would be
hard-pressed to assemble a library
of more than 25 discs so far, and
most of those can be bought only
through mail order.
Furthermore, few of the discs
make full use of the format's ad
vanced standards. Through "up
sampling" and other processes, the
discs may simulate DVD-Audio
sound, but they do so by using mu
sic originally recorded in the CD
format, which holds less data.
In short, some of the first discs
may be only marginally better than
CDs.
The International Recording Me
dia Association expects mass pro
duction of DVD-Audio titles to be
gin in earnest next year.
Production will climb to 40 mil
lion discs in 2001 and 97 million
in 2002, the industry group pre
dicts.
By comparison, 939 million com
pact discs were produced in 1999,
and that figure will climb in 2000 if
the pace set in the year's first six
months holds, according to the
Recording Industry Association of
America.
Music industry experts say con
sumers can expect cassettes, com
pact discs, MP3 files and other me
dia to all be useful for the
foreseeable future.
"I think people will continue to
use all of these," says a Warner rep
resentative, also noting that CDs
will play in DVD-Audio machines.
"You can still keep your music li
brary."
Muddying the waters for DVD
Audio is Sony's rival high-end au
dio format, the Super Audio Com
pact Disc, or SACD. It also is billed
as sounding far better than CDs.
SACD and DVD-Audio are not com
patible, and experts believe only
one will survive.
"It's a standoff at the moment,
depending on the arrival of signifi
cant mainstream releases in the
two formats," says Kalman Rubin
son, a contributing editor to
Stereophile magazine. "DVD-A
and SACD sound better," but CDs
are still a more practical choice, he
says.
So-called universal players,
which could play CDs, DVDs and
SACDs, are in the works and
would offer protection from a Be
tamax-VHS problem.
Warner is marketing DVD-Audio
as a new, high-quality option for
music lovers, but not necessarily
as a replacement for established
formats. Some experts wonder
whether the average listener's ears
can tell the difference between the
new and old.
Finally, technology journalist
Gene Steinberg, who writes for
Cnet, is among participants in Inter
net audio newsgroups who champi
on rigorous scientific listening tests
as a way to determine which prod
ucts and formats are best.
That’s the only way to keep lis
teners from jumping on bandwag
ons because of marketing claims, he
says.
"Opinions without such tests are
nothing more than that," he said.
"They will not help you determine
whether the new CD audio systems
are truly superior in terms of
sound."
Recycle. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Reduce. Reuse.