More Details About How We First Met
Quotes & Highlights
- "A romantic night of improv" --Contra Costa Times
- "Art Imitates Love" --San Francisco Chronicle
- "A nationwide phenomenon" --Oakland Tribune
More Information
<p>Forget the movies, a concert or a night at a club. Instead, consider the international romantic comedy hit that has been enchanting audiences around the world. Whether for the first date or the fiftieth, How We First Met is the ticket to an unforgettable evening that will be talked about for many months to come.</p>
<p>How We First Met tells the real life love stories of everyday Americans in a performance that's entertaining, inspiring and just plain fun. Whether married for decades, newly dating, straight, gay, conservative or liberal, couples come together to celebrate the hardships, the humor, the tenderness and the triumph of falling in love. In the age of reality TV, which often deals with humanity's worst personality traits, this performance highlights some of the best moments life has to offer. And the stories that are told come straight from the audience.
After being chosen to participate, couples are seated on a couch at the side of the stage and asked a series of questions, including how they met, when they met, the details of their first kiss and at what point they knew the other person was "the one." With each answer, actors improvise scenes from the couple's love life, often embellishing the story as it's told, to the delight of the audience and the couple themselves. Musicians improvise tunes, adding to the drama.
"The guest couples are usually the ones who enjoy it the most," says the show's director Jill Bourque. "Part of the fun is watching them as they react to their love life being portrayed on the stage. And the stories are often not what one would expect."
Like the couple who met in a Dungeon and Dragons chat room in the mid-1990s. She was in her mid-30s, married with two children in the San Francisco suburbs and not very happy. He was an 18-year-old living in his parents' basement in the Midwest. They formed an alliance in their online game world, talked on the telephone and gradually got to know each other. She decided to fly out to the Midwest for a meeting. His parents were with him at the airport when she ran up and gave him his first ever kiss. The woman divorced her husband, married her young lover, and they now have a design business together.
Another starring couple, a seemingly conservative pair from Orange County who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, told a story about their first date that sent the audience into hysterics. They had gone to the movies and were headed home. In those days, when a boy took a girl home for the first time, she usually would introduce him to her parents. As they were driving, his date was obviously very nervous. "I have to tell you something," she said. "My parents are going to be at my house playing bridge with another couple. And they're nudists, so don't be surprised when you see them without any clothes on."
Another year, a radio station sales executive called Bourque and said he was thinking about proposing to his girlfriend. "I rigged it to pull their names out of the hat, something I usually don't do but couldn't resist in this case," she says. As the history of their relationship was acted out, Bourque noticed that the man kept fingering his pocket to make sure the ring was still there. At the end of the story the actors did a tableaux of someone getting down on his knee to propose. Then the sales executive did the same. She said yes, and the audience went wild, shrieking and crying in a real life drama that brought down the house.
Like the sales executive, some couples are eager to have their stories told. Others would rather just sit back and enjoy the telling. Both ways are just fine. In previous years, two couples were usually chosen. The name of one of them was drawn from a hat during the performance. The other was pre-selected by e-mail and phone in the weeks before. This year will be different. Each potential couple -- there will only be one finalist -- will fill out a card and be interviewed at the beginning of the evening about why they should be chosen. Audience members will vote with their applause.
Whatever the stories portrayed on a particular evening, the formula for How We First Met has proved a success. It was the brainchild of Jill Bourque, a 30-something San Francisco entrepreneur, who trained as an actress at the American Conservatory Theater and took a class in improvisation "by mistake." Intrigued by anecdotes of how couples met, she created a performance called How We First Met to stage on Valentine's Day in 2001 and had so much fun she was encouraged to do it again.
The following year, after the Twin Towers fell, Bourque decided to expand the show. "After 9-11 everyone was feeling so fragile, and I wanted to do something to make them feel better. How We First Met is a feel-good show, and I thought it would be nice to get theater companies around the world to do it," she says. Bourque networked throughout the improv community and posted messages on improv message boards to find those willing to participate. That year the show was performed by troupes in 12 cities around the world, including Tokyo, Melbourne and Toronto.
Although Bourque usually plays host of the show, along with directing the performance, she didn't really understand how people feel about their stories being told until she and her husband were the chosen couple at a performance in New York.
"It was funny how involved I got in the story. I totally enjoyed it," she says. Bourque met her husband at a roof deck party in San Francisco. They lived four blocks apart but had never seen each other. It took a friend to bring them together. Now they have two small children but are still busy helping to bring other people's love stories to theater stages across America and hopefully to a permanent home at the Purple Onion in San Francisco.</p>
