Interview: Travis Ray of SOMETHING STRANGE at the Orlando Fringe Festival

SOMETHING STRANGE at the Orlando Fringe Festival is an improvised play based on Netflix's "Stranger Things." Each night, a small town faces a different mysterious or other-worldly challenge. I talked with producer/director/performer Travis Ray about the show.

BWW: How did you come up with the format for the show?

Travis: "Something Strange" began its life as a totally different show called "Tales from the Black Book." In 2014 I was working with an improv troupe called The Experiment, and we were workshopping different ideas for shows. It was the last week of September, and we were looking for a new concept to work on, so I pitched this idea for an improvised horror story for a Halloween show. I love horror, so it was a genre I knew I wanted to improvise in, but wasn't sure how to get there. We workshopped the idea over the course of a month and performed it for a few friends. After the performance the show sat for a while, until this year when I revised it to have a more specific time, tone, and setting.

BWW: How much of the show stays the same every performance, and how much of it is different?

Travis: Plots vary wildly, but we do always have a newcomer in town. The reason they are new to town is different with each show but it is helpful to have someone new because they give us a chance to do some exposition, we can have something terrible happen to them if necessary, and they tend to make for compelling protagonists. We also have a narrator every show who provides improvised monologues between acts. That role is pre-set before the show and rotates between three company members, so it has a very different feel every run.

BWW: A lot of jokes in the show are callbacks to little details mentioned earlier in the show. How do you keep track of all of those little details?

Travis: As soon as a the show begins we listen to each other very attentively. It is hard to tell what details are going to become significant later on, so we have to make sure we keep track of as many things as possible. With a cast of eight people we are fortunate enough so that if one person forgets a detail you can bet many of the other company members remember it, and will provide it as necessary.

BWW: How do you pace yourselves to make sure you finish the story on time?

Travis: It's certainly tricky! We keep an eye on the time when we are not in scenes, and our venue tech gives us a ten minute warning to let us know to wrap it up. After our rehearsal process, we have also gotten pretty good at feeling when an act or a scene has hit the appropriate length of time.

BWW: How long does it usually take for the story to find its feet?

Travis: After "something strange" occurs in the town our different plot lines start to pick up as the stakes get raised. When we do our first scenes we try to establish some very simple relationships with characters that feel a very specific way about each other and their town. That gives us something to work off of, so when things start to get weird in town we know how the characters will react and we can explore how this changes their relationship. Once we are doing that - exploring a changing relationship - the plot comes very naturally.

BWW: In the show I saw, the small town was faced with a pack of wolf-like human creatures. What other challenges have the town faced in the show?

Travis: We've had all kinds of challenges! Our opening was a show about aliens abducting citizens and replacing them with robots, we've had a mad scientist secretly experiment on people, and we've had man-eating rats that live in an arcade. It has really been a joy to explore so many plots!

SOMETHING STRANGE will be playing at the Blue Venue on May 23 at 9pm, May 24 at 10:30pm, May 26 at 10:15pm, May 27 at 11:59pm and May 28 at 2:15pm. For more information about the Orlando Fringe Festival, visit orlandofringe.org.