You’re formally invited to possibly the worst wedding reception you’ll ever attend at Confetti and Chaos interactive theatre performance as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this April.
On a stopover in Sydney for just one night back home before she’s off on the road again within the next hour once our call is done, Monique Lewis-Reynolds shows no sign of burning out. “It’s been a bit of whirlwind craziness,” she admits with a laugh.
Lewis-Reynolds has been travelling everywhere from Adelaide to Brisbane, the central coast, regional South Australia, and – in the next few weeks – Melbourne, for the upcoming Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). “Everything’s sort of amped up a little bit this year.”
Confetti and Chaos
- April 16 to April 21
- Oaks on Market Hotel, 60 Market Street Melbourne
- Buy tickets here
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After bringing the improvised theatre show Confetti and Chaos to the Comedy Festival for the first time last year, performance company Interactive Theatre International (ITI) is putting all the aunts and cousins and grooms and bridal party on the road again for another run of festival shows at the MICF this year from April 16 to 21.
While a comedy show and a wedding reception might be something you’ve experienced before in their individual states, Confetti and Chaos is the radical combination of the two as the ITI actors improvise an immersive wedding reception that includes the bride, the groom, a gate-crashing auntie, and – of course – you.
Lewis-Reynolds, who is performing in the show in a kind of balancing act that requires the actor to switch between two “complete polar opposite” characters, will be playing mother-of-the-bride Lyn and uninvited auntie Mel.
And as if juggling two characters isn’t enough for one performance, there’s the added extra of juggling whatever curve balls the audience – who themselves are as much a part of the performance as the expert actors – throw at them.
But curveballs don’t faze Lewis-Reynolds. “I think my experience has been that because I’ve been doing it for so long, you are very comfortable embodying that character that it doesn’t matter what anybody says to you,” she says. “As long as you are completely truthful in answering back in, in the scope of that character, you can never get it wrong.”
Sometimes, the actor tells me, it goes so far from not wrong that it’s the audience member that gets it so right. “What people say, you’d never script them,” Lewis-Reynolds says, a laugh on her lips. “I often come off the floor and go, ‘Oh, I should go and pay that person because they just gave me comedy gold.’ And they didn’t realize they even did it. They weren’t even trying to.”
Regardless of the odd attendee stealing a moment of the show, it’s clear who the real stars are. What sounds like most people’s worst nightmare – performing as a character in front of a room full of strangers and all without a script – Lewis-Reynolds and the cast of Confetti and Chaos pull it all off with the believability of a real-life wedding reception.
Audience members can’t help but get swept up in the fun of make-believe of Lyn and Mel and the other crazy family members ruining what should be the best night of bride and groom’s life. The amount of fun generated from this cast of chaotic individuals hints at what just might be your best night of the MIFC.
If you’re after a completely original kind of comedy show this April at the Comedy Festival, interactive theatre performance Confetti and Chaos is one to be sure not to miss.
You can buy tickets to the show here.
