pHAMILY
pHamily is our improvised one-act play. We take one performer and, with your help, create a year in the life of that person and their family. The person is randomly chosen by the audience, the character is created by the audience and what happens to the family throughout the year is determined by the audience. Think of it as a choose your own adventure play, where you are doing all the choosing. Along the way we will ask you questions to help decide things, and show you flashbacks to random points in the family's history. We promise that by the time you are done creating this show, our family will make YOUR family look sane.
SATURDAYS • 11PM • $10 • Run Time: 1 Hour • Rated: PG-13
To order tickets by phone call 773-732-5450
REVIEWS
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! CRITICS CHOICE! In its latest improv experiment, pH Productions tosses dysfunctional family dynamics into a blender with generous helpings of madcap character work and anything goes goofiness. Long-form improvisation at its most intelligent, pHamily is sufficiently rule bound to provide structure but democratic enough to accomodate equal input from its rotating eight member cast. The troupe's use of one-on-one interactions to drag the skeletons out of the family closet is refreshing in a form where the quest for an overarching theme often eclipses basic scene work. Less effective is the show's editing mechanism, whereby performers periodically break character midscene to ask the audience leading yes or no questions. The ensemble was probably having too much fun with the evening's premise — a librarian with a Byronic streak seeks a date for the annual librarians ball with the help of his precocious son — to fuss much about the form. The production rollocks along at a pace that speaks well of the troupe's collective sense of rhythm. - Nick Green