An improv group walks into a bar…
“Someone give me a situation where you’d need to impress someone.”
“First date,” an audience member might call out.
And then they’re off, playing a game called ‘Devil on my Shoulder’ where a woman blurts out increasingly inappropriate comments to her unsuspecting date thanks to her personal ‘devil,’ another improv member.
Another game sees members link their arms together to form a ‘three-headed monster’ that must field questions on an audience-suggested topic – orgasms, for instance.
Shenzhen’s Zip Improv Comedy Group has a rotating cast of around six to eight performers that includes newcomers and veterans alike. That, on top of encouraging the audience to participate, makes each of their shows unique, even if the games stay the same.
Inevitably, some jokes fall flat. But the group has a knack for turning mishaps into material.
A chuckle-worthy one-minute skit, for instance, levels up to laugh-out-loud when the participants have to re-enact it in 30 seconds, followed by 15 and then just five.
Since its first show last September, the ever-evolving Zip lineup has performed at bars like The Brew, Evil Duck, Magma and Beer Nuts U, improvising mainly in English with a smattering of Chinese games.
Zip's last performance took them across the border to Hong Kong, while their next show (September 2) precedes their upcoming entry into a local competition: as part of the Nanshan Theatre Festival contest ‘I’m in Shenzhen,’ Zip will be performing at the Nanshan Experimental Theatre at 2.30pm, September 17 and 24.
Why check them out, or support them in their bid for glory? As longtime Zip member Steven Grunthal writes,
“ZIP is something special… It is a scene – a game – that sways between the Chinese and English languages, like a conversation overheard on the LuoBao Line. It is old-school classic improv games, incubated at a start-up in Guomiao Xincun, fermented at a brewpub in Shuiwei, infused in baijiu at a shop in Baishizhou, reinvented as a multilingual, multicultural version of an old game – suddenly – new. Every time.”
Watch a performance by Zip (starts at 15:15) and Chinese-language group Heiyo (VPN off):
See event listing for Zip’s next show.
For more information about Zip, add ‘StevenGrunthal’ on WeChat.
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