Sometimes credited as the first-ever "reality-play",[3][4] each performance features a new, unrehearsed actor in the protagonist role of Johnny Utah, reading their lines from cue-cards delivered by a production assistant.[2]
How it works
At the start of the show, audience members who wish to play Johnny Utah are called on stage and put through a quick faux-audition. The winner is then selected by audience Applause-o-meter. A cue card assistant (cast member) leads Utah around the stage throughout the play and shows him or her the lines on laminated cards. Some have said that the winner is frequently a "ringer," because the person chosen is often a good actor and always fits into the wetsuit. The play is an over-the-top, action-packed comedy.[2]
The show played at the La Tea Theater in Manhattan. It previously played at Charlie O's Lounge in the Hotel Alexandria in downtown Los Angeles,[8] where much of the movie took place, and premiered on October 1, 2008, at the V Theater at the Miracle Mile Shops in Las Vegas.[9]
Producer-Director Eve Hars brought the show to Chicago's New Rock Theater, where it ran from March to October 2010, and reopened for a short spring run in 2011.[10] The show's longest run to date is in LA/Hollywood, where it opened in 2007[11] and closed June 25, 2016.[12] Hars stopped paying Keeling while she continued to produce the show, on the grounds that Keeling created the show without permission from the creators of the original film so the play was not entitled to copyright protection. Keeling sued Hars, and in 2015 the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Keeling, finding sufficient originality in Keeling's play for it to be transformative use and entitled to copyright protection.[13]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.