Sea Tea Improv Launches Long-Form Showcase

Thanks to a grant from the Greater Hartford Arts Council, Sea Tea Improv will launch a brand-new Long-Form Improvisation Series at the Studio at Billings Forge. The first performance will be on Friday, January 20th at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $9 per ticket online via EventBrite (http://seateaimprovlongform.eventbrite.com), or $10 at the door.

Each installment of the Long-Form Showcase will feature Sea Tea Improv and a superb guest group from Connecticut, Boston or New York pushing the boundaries of what improv can be. The series is dedicated to extended scenes and structures. Audiences will experience the Montage, the Musical, the Movie, the Monoscene, the Harold, and their very own "Sex and the Sea Tea”—original forms, or forms that have only been seen in New York City and Chicago until now. Every Sea Tea Improv show is completely unique and built around the ideas of the audience.

January’s guest is Franklin's Peaches, a troupe formed out of West Hartford.

The mission of the project is to offer Hartford a new, artistic form of improv that is rarely performed in the city.

Sea Tea is known for its short-form improv, where performers create several short, unrelated scenes, each based on audience suggestions. In contrast, long-form improv is a lesser-known, advanced theatrical style in which performers improvise an entire play (between 30 and 90 minutes) based on an audience suggestion of a word, a phrase, or an interview. Sea Tea has been studying long-form improvisation with the Upright Citizens Brigade for two years, and this year we began performing long-form publicly. Sea Tea has had great success with long-form shows at the Hole in the Wall Theater in New Britain, La Paloma Sabanera, and in the Connecticut Cage Match, where they are currently the reigning champions.

The Long Form Showcase is only one facet of the troupe’s hectic performance
schedule: in 2010 they performed over 50 individual shows, at big-name venues
such as the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Stage Company, the Mark Twain House, Playhouse on Park, and First Night, as well as in small venues such as La Paloma Sabanera and the Wethersfield Corn Fest.

Sea Tea Improv's next monthly short form will be held on February 14th at 7 pm in City Steam’s Brew Ha-Ha Comedy Club at 942 Main Street in Hartford. Reservations can be made at (860) 525-1600. Audience members may order food and drinks off of City Steam’s menu throughout the performance. As always, the show is free. These shows are made possible in part by a Community Events Grant from the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

The Long Form Showcase is made possible by the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s Hartford Arts and Heritage Jobs Grant.

For more information or Sea Tea Improv please visit seateaimprov.com, or call
(860) 578-4TEA.

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