Cover to Cover

From Austin Improv Community Wiki


A performance of _Cover to Cover_.
A performance of Cover to Cover.
The _Cover to Cover_ blackboard, showing the book title and the chapter assignments.
The Cover to Cover blackboard, showing the book title and the chapter assignments.


Cover to Cover was a longform show inspired by the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys young-adult mystery novels.

Show Structure

Cover to Cover opened with the audience suggestion -- for this show, this meant that an audience member came onstage to pick a book off of an onstage bookshelf. The cast had come up with a collection of plausible-sounding Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys titles, and created a set of book covers with those titles on the spine. Ideally, they got a child in the audience to pick the book, but defaulted to picking an adult theatergoer if necessary.

Each performance of Cover to Cover opened with a classroom scene. One of the directors (Julie or Audrey) would play the schoolteacher, and most of the performers for the night would play middle-school-aged versions of themselves. A few performers sat out this section; they would be either flex players or play the protagonist (in the case of Nancy Drew) or protagonists (in the case of the Hardy Boys). Each performer got a turn as the lead.

The teacher would assign chapters to the students for a book report. Then, each 'chapter' would open with the student working on their book report, and then transition (à la "Typewriter") into that student narrating the next chapter of the story. The teacher would narrate the final chapter of the story -- this chapter would begin and end back in the classroom, and would close the show.

History

After its mainstage run with Gnap!, Cover to Cover had a special benefit show on 12/5/11 for the Austin Children's Shelter.

Media

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