CLAYTON - Present Elevation is leaving the Big Apple to bring the production of "The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It" to the Clayton Opera House July 7, 8 and 9.

Present Elevation started as an improvisation company and later evolved into a theater group. This will be the first time the nine members will be performing a full-length play. The group has been together since October 2003 and started performing improvisation shows in New York City in May 2004.

"It's coming together well," said Elizabeth A. Carr, co-producer. "I'm so excited to bring it to the opera house because when we were there last summer, we were all like, "This is such a great theater to do this show in!" Ms. Carr graduated from Immaculate Heart Central High School, Watertown, in 1997 and from St. Lawrence University, Canton, 2001 with a bechelor's degree in speech and theater. Following college, she completed a two-year program at the New Actors Workshop in New York City. Ms. Carr works full-time as a teacher's aide at Quality Services for the Autistic Community Day School in New York City, and acts/produces weekends, nights and any other chance she gets. "This is what makes trying to have a profession in the arts difficult," Ms. Carr said. "Most of us end up with two full-time jobs. This is also what makes the successes so worth it."

This is not the first time Ms. Carr has accompanied a theater group to Clayton. In summer 2003 "The Good Doctor" by Neil Simon was performed with some of the same actors who will appear in this summer's production. Ms. Carr's Two Feet Productions made it all possible.

Sam Reich, director of Don Nigro's "The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It," says he believes the play is extremely intelligent and funny. "It's just wild," Mr. Reich said. "It hangs in this gap of time - we don't know when or where it takes place." The play is about a haphazard group of Shakespeare performers, with the Curate as the centerpiece and master of ceremonies. "The play is a delightful mix of Shakesperian and modern language, as the actors stumble in and out of their roles," Mr. Reich said. "This does the job of making a classically funny play funny to a contemporary audience."

Because of the questionable setting, the actors are allowed to take elements from comtemporary and Elizabethan drama to incorporate into their costumes. Thus, there will be corsets and jester crowns, jeans and top hats. "We have genuinely dedicated and talented actors," Mr. Reich said. "They're absolutely in tune with each other and create moments that you wouldn't see on Braodway." Mr. Reich is a professional actor, producer and director.

Randall E. Middleton, New York City, plays the clown in the show, providing comic relief. The character seems to be a failed stand-up comedian because the jokes always go over or under overyon'es head. "It's nice to come back to Clayton, which is a beautiful space," said Mr. Middleton, who also acted in "The Good Doctor." "New York City is going to be sort of unbearably hot and sticky." According to Mr. Middleton, the group had a great turnout for the last show it performed in Clayton, with the opera house full almost to capacity. "Beth (Carr) is doing a lot for us up there right now," Mr. Middleton said.

After all, it is beacuse of of Ms. Carr's hard work and dedicateion that the production is in her hometown of Clayton. "She's been doing an incredible job," Mr. reich said. After the Clayton show, the group will perform "The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It" in New York City.

Improv, when used in theatrical terms, can be a bit ambiguous. It's a warm-up technique, a route for actors to better find themselves "in the moment." And it's also the source of some durable comedy traditions, including Chicago's Second City, which ultimately begat the sketch mania of "Saturday Night Live" and the popular New York enterprise, the Upright Citizen's Brigade.

But there's more to improv than that, as the fledgling troupe Present Elevation proves nearly every Monday night in a small performance space at the New Actors Workshop in Manhattan. "It's completely different every time," says Kathy Hendrickson, chief administrator for the Workshop, who formed the group last year with several former students, of whom five appear regularly. (The current lineup includes a sixth graduate of the two-year program who is on leave from the ensemble, having won a role on the teen-oriented TV series "The O.C."). "The highs are really high and the lows are really low. When you have a great performance, it's nothing that scripted theater can give you," Hendrickson says.

Each show, which usually runs an hour, begins with the actors in a circle, in darkness - a signature of the Russian theater tradition in which the actors honor each other before acknowledging an audience. Music begins, provided by an off-stage combo led by saxophonist Charles Waters and guitarist Eddie Weiss and which often features guest musicians from the downtown jazz and classical scenes.

As the pulse continues, the actors break into spontaneous movement - a measured yet random-seeming dance. In a moment, a pair or more of the performers will initiate a narrative. There could be dialogue, or it could be a pantomime. The theme could rise and fall right there or recur throughout the evening. The action could be funny - predatory giant vultures prey on lost hikers, with campy sound effects - or could spin toward the introspective. Much of the pleasure is in watching the transitions, always triggered by collective movement, and in trying to read the minds of actors who aren't quite sure what's next.

As Hendrickson explains, the whole shebang is based on the teachings of Viola Spolin, the Chicago drama guru who invented the "theater games" system for training actors and whose concept of "transformation of relationship" underpins Present Elevation's approach to improvisation. Spolin's son, Paul Sills, was a founder of Second City, where the film and theater director Mike Nichols first made a name for himself in the 1960s. Both men, along with George Morrison, began the New Actors Workshop 16 years ago. In its way, Present Elevation's long-form improv scenarios are another link in a long tradition.

"It's a continuation of what we'd been doing in classes, playing games," says cast member Josh Ruben, 21. "But we didn't want to do what everybody else out there was doing and just add on to that comedy scene. So we started this exploration of a new long-form style and ended up with something brand new, but with classic roots. We're focusing on relationships between characters, seeing and feeling and doing. We put out our antennae and literally feel for what's next."

Ruben comes from an arts-intensive family; his sister is the rising singer-songwriter Rachel Yamagata. Present Elevation offers a creative break from the actor's day jobs, working commercials and voice-overs for cell phones and sandwich chains. "This is my therapy," he says.

The music adds another element to the shows, which are staged in an informal setting. On a recent evening, Waters and Weiss were joined by a violinist and a cellist, who helped create an ambient soundscape that was by turns ethereal and expressionistic - like a vivid dream suddenly interrupted by the ringing of an alarm clock. This performance, too, was wholly improvised, drawing from jazz technique, and yet another implication of the term "improv."

"We're still getting a grasp on the process," says Hendrickson, who launched the weekly shows in May, after months of rehearsals and workshops. The troupe takes off for a brief tour after this Monday's performance and returns to regular gigs Sept. 13. "I'm shocked that we always have a group of people at the shows." (Read the review at Newsday.com.)

Improvisation as performance is much maligned. That has less to do with the form itself than with the performers. Improv is also seen as good training for serious theatrics, or as a quick laugh a la "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Those multiple and overlapping perceptions need not be so, as demonstrated by the graduates of the New Actors’ Workshop who perform weekly as the improvisational troupe Present Elevation. The five actors and three musicians display an impressive grasp of ensemble work.

The genesis of Present Elevation’s premise is about as pure as it gets. The troupe takes the "Transformation of Relationship” game from Improvisation for the Theater, Viola Spolin's classic work on the art of improvisation, as the performance’s inspiration. That inspiration is appropriate; one of the New Actors’ Workshop’s founders is Paul Sills, Spolin’s son and the greatest living apostle of her work.

The performance started in the dark in one of the school’s classrooms - a nice touch that added an aura of intimacy to the proceedings. As the group huddled together, the actors took their audio and visual clues from one another, as well as from the three musicians (reed player Charles Waters, guitarist Eddie Weiss, who also played bongos, and guest violinist Katie Pawluk). This talented trio of improvising musicians did more than augment the scenes. The musicians occasionally became part of them.

As the show progressed, the ensemble's fealty to the letter and spirit of Spolin's game became apparent. Originally designed for two players, "Transformation of Relationship" mandates that "players must 'let it happen,' not meddle." Ideally, "the spontaneous changes that appear are seemingly endless," Spolin wrote. "Some transformations bring dialogue along with them, some are silent, (the) Where has great clarity, props instantly exist, and physicalization is strong."

Present Elevation achieved these objectives. Recounting the various scenes does disservice to the group’s collective and individual abilities. One of the opening scenes, that of two married couples sharing a bedroom with each other and an active dog, was brought back at the end. By doing this, the actors demonstrated a sense of dramatic arc and an attention to detail, as they remembered characterisations and situations from the previous scene. Others, such as an extended one concerning Siamese twins and their cruel brother, one featuring a pair of peeping toms, and another about a trust exercise gone awry that became a movement piece, are worth remembering. A few, though perhaps not as memorable, still merited watching just to observe the actors at work.

Scenes that were acted out through movement only showcased individual members’ acute observational skills. If any one of the players felt lost, or if a scene began to veer out of control, the audience would have been hard-pressed to notice.

Though rough in places, Present Elevation is more than a pleasant diversion. The weekly performances offer audiences an opportunity to see hardworking actors hone their skills as they begin their journeys to bigger and better things. (Read the review at OffOffOnline.com)