Improvation

Last night we went to a friend's 50th birthday party. All in all it was a nice affair and I got to see a lot of people I had not seen for a long time. At some point in the party they herded us all into a largish room and prepared us for the "entertainment". They had engaged an improv. group to act out various parts of the birthday girl's life. The actors polled the audience and then acted out their interpretation of the stories and anecdotes put forward. I couldn't watch and had to escape at some point. This disturbed me so much that it took some thought to figure out why.

Firstly the invasion of privacy that came along with this really bothered me. Each one of the stories are clear in the teller's mind and when these actors try portray them they lose so much of their meaning, just like a bad movie based on a good book. Secondly, they just weren't that good and so it sort of turned into an 80% copy of something that really happened. Like a grainy xerox of an unclear document. I was embarrassed for the actors. Ugggh, I still shudder at the thought. I told bwo if she ever did something like that for me, it's over between us.