Hazardous Material

Actors Ian Bowater and Paul Deblinger were thrown together as a pair of deranged vaudevillians in Little Green Pig’s striking production of The Changeling last May. In what they’re billing as a “one-man show,” the two return to the boards with their own material for an improvised evening of comedy, comment, and autobiography. While running lines last spring, the pair realized that both were writers who had done improv overseas, Bowater as a part of a long-running comic double act in London, Deblinger during his years in Prague. Both revered the is-nothing-sacred comic sensibilities of the late, great National Lampoon. “Our view of the absurdities in our culture and our lives linked up pretty well too,” Deblinger says. Their first public evening of improvisational work is based on current events and developments in their own lives, some comic, some serious. “We’ll be breaking the fourth wall—and some of the furniture,” Bowater cautions. “But not always for the laughs,” Deblinger adds. —Byron Woods