Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010

Happy to be called 'Idiots'

Comedy group hits 100th revue

Most people don't like to be called an idiot. But Matthew Krevat, 43, is an exception.

"I'm proud to be an idiot," he said. "I have people at work who know I'm an idiot. They'll introduce me to people and say, 'This is Matthew. He's an idiot.'"

And he's not the only one. Show up at 7713-51 Lead Mine Road some Wednesday night and you'll meet a pack of them called Raleigh's Village Idiots, an improv comedy group that has been around for more than a decade and recently marked its 100th revue.

The group performs once a month but members get together regularly for rehearsal.

"It's a good energy burner," member Romni Rossi, 36, said during a recent rehearsal. "This is our release."

That was a common sentiment that night among the Idiots. The general feeling is that they get together once each week to throw off the shackles of ordinary life for something a little more, well, idiotic.

That certainly came out in the warm-ups. Standing in a circle, the Idiots motioned spastically with their hands, chanting phrases and uttering odd noises - like the kinds you might hear coming out of a crashing computer. Improv is short for improvisation. It's about being ridiculous, spontaneous and impulsive. Very little is planned beforehand, and the results, needless to say, can be unexpected.

After the warm-ups, the Idiots took to the stage to go through a variety of improv scenes. In some, they would be given secret motivations to choose from. For instance, a member might be told to imagine that another smelled bad or had tried to kill his or her dog. The scenes became more complex as the night went on. In one, most of the Idiots got on stage and had to tell a story. One Idiot would start, then Krevat would point to another and he or she would have to pick up where the last left off. If anybody screwed up, he or she "died" and was kicked offstage. This continued until only one remained.

As director, Krevat critiques the Idiots' performances and gives them pointers.

"Don't worry about trying not to die," he told one Idiot. "Dying is fine."

Krevat wouldn't be with the group if it weren't for the intervention of a celebrity "has-been" years ago. Krevat has done improv most his life, but from 1995 to 1997 his day job took over and he quit doing comedy. A chance meeting with Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the 1978 version of the television program "Battlestar Galactica," helped change that.

Hatch and Krevat met after a series of odd events at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1997. It's a bit complicated, but the short version is that Hatch serenaded Krevat's wife and Krevat returned the favor by trying to steal Hatch's. It was all in good fun, though, and the two started chatting. Eventually the topic came around to Krevat's improv history and the fact that he had quit. That didn't sit well with Hatch. He went into a tirade exhorting Krevat to go back to his passion and never give up. Krevat heeded Hatch's words and joined the Idiots shortly thereafter.

"He's the reason why I do comedy," Krevat said. "Thank you, Apollo."

The latest performer to join is 23-year-old Alexa Ortiz. She's considered an Idiot-in-Training, or Half-Wit for short.

When she's not at the North Raleigh theatre, she's a nurse at WakeMed in Raleigh. She has been with the Idiots only about two months.

Ortiz has done improv before, but her first public performance with the Idiots was Nov. 20, the group's 100th comedy revue.

She's happy to call herself an Idiot.

"I've made a fool of myself on stage before," she said, "so I'll be happy to do it again."