THEATER

Tom Titus

Orange Coast College has 24 competitive sports programs, such as

football, basketball, soccer, water polo and volleyball. The theater

department is about to add a 25th.

Are you ready for some improv?

Improvisational theater, that is, as practiced by the OCC theater

students’ comedy improv team. After several rounds of what the college

terms “full-contact theater,” they’re good and they know it. And now

they’re looking for some competition.

“Our students are champing at the bit,” says Alex Golson, who heads

the college’s theater department. “I can’t hold them back much longer.

They’re issuing a challenge to actors from all other local colleges. We

want to take them on -- in theater sports -- on our turf or theirs.”

Golson explains that his students, the OCC comedy improv team, would

like to initiate some lively intercollegiate competition. Their goal is

to compete in comedy improvisation contests between schools, similar to

the quick-witted comics on TV’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

“I envision that each team will be comprised of somewhere between six

to 10 students,” Golson says. “The OCC team will be available to rumble

any Monday evening in March, April or May of 2002.”

The competition would be adjudicated by referees, yet to be

designated, and will be open to the public. Golson says his students are

working on a dozen to 20 improv games that could be used in the spring

matches.

“We’ll provide the other colleges with detailed rules and descriptions

of the games,” he says. “In fact, we’ll even help them prepare for the

competition. I’ll be more than happy to go over to any other college

campus with a small group of my own students, and we’ll host an improv

workshop or rehearsal prior to the performance.”

Golson says that any local colleges or universities willing to take on

the OCC improv players in a friendly spring joust can call him at (714)

432-5640, Ext. 5.

Speaking of OCC theater, the department has made a change in its

spring schedule. Lisa Loomer’s “The Waiting Room,” originally bumped to

make room for last month’s “Approximating Mother,” now is off the slate

completely.

In its place, OCC will present “North Shore Fish,” Israel Horovitz’s

play about workers at a faltering Massachusetts fish-packing plant. The

show was labeled by one critic as “angry, passionate, raw, funny and

sad.”

“It presents a remarkable combination of hilarity and heartbreak,”

says OCC instructor John Ferzacca, who will direct. “The show contains

adult situations and language.”

“North Shore Fish” will be staged March 7-17 in OCC’s Drama Lab

Theater.

Next up for the industrious OCC theater department is “Ten or Less,” a

series of student-directed plays, each running 10 minutes or less,

presented by the OCC Repertory Theater Company.

The program, which includes both material by recognized playwrights

and student-originated originals, will be presented Nov. 9-11 and 16-18

in the Drama Lab Studio Theater. Tickets are $5 and may be reserved at

(714) 432-5640, Ext. 1.

* TOM TITUS writes about and reviews local theater for the Daily

Pilot. His stories appear Thursdays and Saturdays.