The Canadian Improv Games is coming to Guelph at Guelph CVI for its regional tri-city tournament giving students the opportunity to act silly and gain confidence while entertaining an audience.
The Guelph teams are stacked with five from GCVI, one from Centennial and one from John F. Ross. There are 11 teams from other high schools in the region.
The tournament runs from Feb. 25 to March 1 at GCVI. Tickets are available online.
To catch a glimpse of what to expect GCVI is hosting an exhibition night Feb. 20 ahead of the tournament. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and it's open to the public. Tickets are pay-what-you-can.
GCVI drama teacher Jamie McBurney started improv when he was in high school. He began teaching at GCVI in 2019 and for the last five years he’s been running the improv club and coaching improv teams.
He was approached by the Canadian Improv Games to have the tournament hosted at GCVI. It was a no-brainer for McBurney.
The games are open to all grades and there are eight students per team with two alternates. Teams choose four of five events to perform and have a four minute limit per scene.
Here are the events:
Story event
- A plot with a beginning, middle and end, including narration
Character event
- Create a character based on an audience suggestion
Life event
- Significant life events aimed to be more realistic serious scenes
Theme event
- Based off of a one word
Style event
- Teams choose a specific style like film noir
All suggestions for the events are given by the audience other than the theme event.
“I don't think I've ever seen something that matches that peak of energy,” said Jeremy Harris, teacher and improv coach at Centennial.
Judges will give up to five or seven points per evaluation criteria. They could be looking for staging to see if the performers are at the front of the stage and centred, or plot development.
Harris competed in the Canadian Improv Games when he was in high school and said it helped him find his place as a teenager.
“It’s a really cool collaborative skill, and that's sort of what I think is ultimately, even beyond the points, what really makes improv games, and the Canadian Improv Games particularly special is that it privileges and prioritizes that active forming of connections as a team, which is pretty sick,” said McBurney.
The first four days of the tournament is the open component where four to six teams perform each day. The teams with the top nine scores move to the finals. The bottom five to nine teams compete in a wild card round and whoever wins, also goes to the finals.
Whoever wins the finals moves straight to the national tournament in April hosted in Ottawa.
As far as Harris knows, as long as he has been competing no Guelph team has won the national competition.
There are teams for sports and academics in schools that go to competitions. “They get to experience the kind of thrill of competition, just being able to go out there and show your best stuff and compete with other teams who are trying to do the same. There's not a lot of that in the arts,” said Harris. He’s happy the tournament acknowledges the arts in this way.
It also gives younger students and newer teams the confidence to make things up on the spot and trust themselves in what they’re doing in front of an audience.
McBurney thinks of the regional tournament as a celebration.