Comedy at its finest with RSC's Austin Tichenor
Comedy at its finest with RSC's Austin Tichenor
The Reduced Shakespeare Company is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to comedy. This group mixes history, comedy, and Shakespeare into a fast-paced improvisational show that keeps the audience laughing. Read how co-artistic director, Austin Tichenor talks about where the idea for the show came from and his experience making audiences laugh around the world.
o 
Where did the idea of this show come from?
The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) is the show we were born to write. My fellow co-artistic director Reed Martin and I have written ten plays for the Reduced Shakespeare Company, where we’ve comically abridged American history, all the great books, Hollywood movies, the complete world of sports, and the Bible, and all of those scripts have used comic techniques from silent movie slapstick, Marx Brothers banter, cartoon silliness, stand-up, and improvisation skills dating back to commedia dell’arte. We couldn’t wait to make a misspent youth watching Monty Python and the Three Stooges the background to and research for a stage comedy.
o Describe how it feels to perform all over the world for different audiences.
Part of what we satire in all of our shows is how each of our subjects is taught. We’ve all had that one boring teacher who really doesn’t dig the subject matter they’re teaching, and it turns out that’s a global experience. Jesters told the truth to power, and making fun of the pedantic and the powerful is still the number one job of the professional Fool.
o Which show would you say was your favorite performance and why?
We were performing The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged) just outside Boston, and in Act One I ran around the audience to get people to share what they’d like for Christmas so we could update the lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas.” Most people shout out they want a puppy or an iPad or the latest Taylor Swift album, but this one woman said she wanted ten more years of being cancer-free! I was stunned, and she explained that just that day she’d found out that her cancer had gone into remission. The whole audience burst into tears and the theatre bought the woman champagne at intermission. Making an entire roomful of people laugh all evening and then suddenly cry is the greatest job in the world.
o How did it feel to get the Guinness World Record for the highest theatrical performance on an EasyJet flight from London to Verona?
EasyJet Airlines, the UK’s largest airline, asked us to perform our abridged Romeo and Juliet on-Bard on their morning flight from London to Verona as part of their larger campaign to make April 23 — Shakespeare’s birth-AND-death-day — a national holiday. It was thrilling to be asked and very cool to rehearse onboard an actual plane in the airline’s training facility. It was an honor to provide live on-Bard entertainment and set a world record while doing so! And yes — I will never stop making that on-Bard pun or trying to make the hashtag #ShakesOnAPlane trend.
o You each have a unique talent and background that you use when performing with this group, how did you come across the RSC?
I was asked to join the Reduced Shakespeare Company in 1992 by two college friends, one of whom was the RSC co-founder. We look for actors with vocal training, physicality (including stage fights and clowning), musical skill, and improv experience, but we also want to discover what Stupid Human Tricks they know. We have several dozen actors who’ve toured with us in both the US and the UK, and we always try to tailor the scripts to incorporate each actor’s particular skillset. That element of spontaneity and idiosyncrasy is key to the appeal of live performance so we always like to play to our actors’ strengths.