'Pocketful of Posies': A New Wave Garden of Delights

Doesn't matter if you've been to Prague.

Because, even then, maybe you still haven't seen Daisies, a Czechoslovakian movie from 1966, written and directed by Věra Chytilová? I hadn't seen the "madcap feminist farce" either, 'til about five years ago when my friend Shannon McCormick loaned me a copy with assurances of its brilliance and how I'd probably love it.

He was right: I loved it.
And, yeah, I think it's brilliant.

(What an incredible, vividly captured, wildly colorful, food-and-flower-filled romp!
Chytilová is a genius, a genius, I tell you! And so on.)

You like the idea of watching an engagingly filmed story about two young women who "embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them," you'll probably love it, too.

But, anyway:

Eventually, McCormick also lent this movie Daisies to his friend Elizabeth Brammer, who's a member of Gnap! Theatre Projects – the company that McCormick runs out of Salvage Vanguard Theatre.

So now you've got 1) the film-captured spirit of Chytilová running through the minds of two Gnappers who are always looking for interesting themes to base their continuing schedule of improv shows around. And you've got 2) those same people also digging the French New Wave classics of the 1960s – movies (excuse me: films) by Truffaut, Godard, and the tout le hipster monde of the time. And you've got 3) a vast, teeming community of talented improvisers just waiting, perhaps without even realizing it, for a chance to get their sweet Gallic ennui and hijinks on.

What else could possibly happen except this?

Reminder: That's Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm, through August 18.