Something magical happened at the
Trident on Friday evening. A group of Boulderites got a big shiny mirror held
up to them, and it wasn’t unpleasant at all.
It is difficult to imagine what
happens at Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fantastical Inquisitorial Probe without
having experienced it, largely because it is so dependent on the audience of
any given night. That, of course, is the genius of the show. I have never
witnessed two performers who were more responsive to the ever-changing nature
of their audience. But audience is not the correct word.
When you attend this performance, you
become a “like-minded explorer” in an anthropological study of your own
culture. As time-traveling, delightfully Victorian
scientists, Cecily and Gwendolyn are there to investigate your thoughts and
behaviors, which they do through some extremely entertaining audience interaction,
and to draw conclusions about the society that you are a part of, which they
offer back to you with the sharpest and kindest of wits.
This premise would already be
enough to produce some highly entertaining performances, but what takes this
show from funny to valuable is the fact that the two performers truly are
curious about their “subjects”, and want to inspire in them that same spirit of
inquisitiveness, investigation, and appreciation for their own culture.
Part long-form improvisation, part
community-building exercise, C and G’s Fantastical proves that theater arts
have the power to do more than just entertain modern-day audiences – they can
open our eyes to the parts of ourselves that we can be proud of, the parts that
can help us towards a happier world.
-- Katrin Welch
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