The Young Professionals Company At Oct Presents IMPULSE XIV: BONUS LEVEL!

The Young Professionals Company at Oregon Children's Theatre is bringing its wildly popular improv performance Impulse! back to the virtual stage this summer! The graduating seniors of Portland's premier teen improv group will be livestreaming a final virtual performance July 23 and 24. This final performance will celebrate these teens as they complete their time with the YP Company and move forward into their futures.

The Young Professionals Company, the award-winning teen mentoring program at OCT, rose to the unique challenge of producing shows for a virtual platform amid the COVID-19 pandemic; the company has produced the entirety of its 2020-2021 virtually, including a three-part series of original works, full-length productions of In the Forest She Grew Fangs by Stephen Spotswood and Alex Getting Better by Audrey Lang, and-of course-Impulse XIV: Level Up! In February. Adapting improv for a virtual platform, however, proved to be a unique challenge: "Improv comedy relies on the in-the-moment 'feedback' from a live audience," Director Blake Wales explained. "We had to figure out a way to keep an audience engaged without being together in the same physical space. Without an audience's energy to react to, the teens had to hone their comedic instincts to keep the scenes moving." Since improv games are often physical in nature, Wales and the troupe had to play creatively and find a way to adapt the games for an online production. "We had to get rid of all the mental boundaries about what 'can't work' or 'won't work,'" Wales stated. "We had to work collaboratively and learn together about how we could adapt the games and create an engaging virtual performance." The hard work and adaptiveness paid off: Impulse XIV was very successful, with a strong viewership and very positive feedback from audiences.

As the YP season drew to a close, Wales and YP Company Artistic Director Dani Baldwin agreed that the graduating seniors of Impulse! deserved a special opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments in a truly unusual season. "We felt it was important for these Seniors to have some joyful closure on their time with Impulse and the YP Company," Wales said of the graduating class, many of whom are moving on to study theater in some capacity at colleges and universities across the country. "It's so hard to say goodbye over a screen, but laughter seems to make the departures and unknowns a bit easier to work with. I couldn't be more excited for this group to laugh together again."

Impulse XIV: Bonus Level! is recommended for ages 7 and up, and will perform live for one weekend only, July 23-24. These online performances will be free to watch, but donations are encouraged to help offset the production costs. Donations can be made online at octc.org/donate.

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