Theatre News

Live Tweeting: Our longest-ever Twitter event at 50-hour London Improvathon – #wosimprovathon

Fifty hours of non-stop improvised comedy kick off at 7pm this evening as the fifth annual London Improvathon gets under way at Shoreditch’s Hoxton Hall. Aptly themed in the run-up to this summer’s sporting spectacle in east London, the subtitle for the “2012 BC” event is Tales from the Greek Games: 50 performers, 50 hours, 25 episodes – and Whatsonstage.com will also be playing our part in this Olympian effort.

We’re partnering with the show organisers for a marathon “live tweet” event – our longest ever – which will run from just before 7pm tonight (11 May 2012) when the show commences to just after the final curtain call at 9pm this Sunday (13 May 2012).

Throughout the event, a small group of the performers will be continuously tweeting from behind the scenes, giving updates on how the show is going, how the company are feeling (from adrenaline highs to fatigue-fighting lows) and all the backstage gossip.

Theatregoers are also encouraged to tweet between the episodes (each lasting 1 hour and 45 minutes) on the #wosimprovathon hashtag, with all hash-tagged comments pulled into the live-tweet coverage on this page. And Whatsonstage.com journos will also be popping in to Hoxton Hall during the event to give our perspective.

The London Improvathon company includes improvisers from around the world including the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Greece and Holland. Core members include Canadian improve legends Mark Meer and Donovan Workun, Oliver Senton, Pippa Evans, Ruth Bratt, Sean McCann and Fascinating Aida’s Sarah-Louise Young. Showstopper: The Improvised Musical‘s Adam Meggido directs all 25 episodes.

The London Improvathon is presented by The Sticking Place in association with Die-Nasty and Seabright Productions. Episodes start on every odd hour throughout the weekend (7pm, 9pm, 11pm, 1am, etc). Each episode lasts 1h40m. There is a special “family episode” at 11am on Sunday.

Tickets for The London Improvathon cost £12.50 for an episode and can be booked on 020 7478 0100 or online at www.improvathon.co.uk. Please also follow @Whatsonstage and @theimprovathon for all the latest Twitter updates from both!