Every year, Out of Bounds honors the furthering of the improv artform's evolution in the form of the Well Hung Jury Memorial Scholarship.

The WHJM Scholarship includes a FULL RIDE for classes and an ALL SHOWS pass to the festival. This is a $250 value!!!

THE RULES
The Scholarship will go to the person who can submit the best new idea for an improv format. Submissions will be in text form only. There are no guidelines for what you submit. It's free and it's all about getting the wheels of invention turning. Please include your email address and name somewhere in the body of the email so we know who you are.

Entries are due August 11th.
Please email your entry or any questions you might have to the Jordan. Please do not send attachments. Just paste your idea in to the body of the email. Anyone in the universe is eligibe. You do not have to be a performer in the festival to participate.
A panel of pretentious and jaded WHJ members will go over and discuss the entries and announce a winner via email on August 15th.

THE HALL OF WINNERS
2009 - Valerie Ward A Murder Mystery Format for 6-10 Players
At the beginning of the show, the players will line up across the stage, each holding a placard bearing a number from one to X (where X is the total number of players). The audience is told that tonight, a murder will occur. The host asks a member of the audience to silently choose one player by number to be the victim. The audience member will write that number on a slip of paper and drop it into a hat, wherein X-1 identical but blank slips reside. Each player will choose a slip from the hat. The player who draws the number will be the murderer, and know his or her victim by number. No player should reveal at this time whether or not they are the killer.

Players discard their placards, and a suggestion is solicited from the audience of a location where all these people might be. The opening scene commences, and all players are on stage. It is a group scene, with a give and take between general hub-bub and individual conversations. Players will shift focus from conversation to conversation, revealing the reason for everyone being in this place, developing relationships, characters, statuses. At this point the killer is still the only person who knows who the victim will be. After a good five to ten minutes, when all players have established their characters, the lights will go out completely. All players freeze. The killer will "kill" her or his victim with a gentle signal agreed upon beforehand, then move back into the position occupied before the blackout. The lights come up, and there is a body on floor, killed in a way appropriate to the location and established world. After a few more moments of hub-bub and confusion, the scene is cleared.

From this point on, the victim comes on as a new character, the detective. The rest of the show is a series of scenes that shed further light on the victim's life, the character's relationships, and possible motives for murder. These scenes stem primarily from interviews that the detective has with each suspect/witness, which may break out into split screens, flashbacks, or other scenes as necessary. It is up to the murderer to reveal enough that he or she will be caught in the end. The murderer could reveal themselves to another character, more murders could occur to cover up the crime, etc. Other characters can try to help the detective if they think they know the killer's identity, or throw false clues and red herrings into the mix. The conceit of a murder mystery is really just a structure to add suspense to the real meat of the show, which will be developing the world in which these people moved, revealing their motives, relationships, and desires.

The show concludes with all of the players gathered back on stage and the detectives explanation of the crime, the methods and motives of the killer, and the grand reveal of whodunit.

The possibilities of style and genre are virtually endless- it could be a classic Clue style mystery, a Victorian parlor crime, a gritty urban crime spree, a murder in the midst of friendly adorable woodland creatures, a medical thriller in a hospital- it's all open to the suggestion at the beginning of the show.

If the killer draws their own number, there are two possibilities: either it was a suicide, or the detective did it.
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2008 - Jordan T. Maxwell for Our American Cousin: The Show Must Go On
They say that the equation for comedy is tragedy plus time.  Well, one of the deepest and grandest tragedies this country has faced in its history was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre during a performance of Our American Cousin.  That was over a hundred years ago.  The comedy equation is waiting to be solved.

The basic idea would be to find a copy of the script for Our American Cousin and perform the first act (or a cutting) as a fully rehearsed and polished version of the play with costumes, props, sets, the whole shebang.  Only when the lights go down, we hear a gunshot in the audience and someone shouting “Sic semper tyrannis!” followed by a large commotion near the back.  President Lincoln has been shot.

(Historically, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during the third act of the play, but since the play is three acts long and we want to get into the prov, we’ll fudge history a bit.)

This is where the improv comes into play.  The cast isn’t allowed to read the rest of the script past Act I.  And when the lights come back up on Act II, they basically have to continue with the show in character in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination, following the actor’s mantra of “the show must go on.”  So not only are they making up the rest of the story for the play, but also dealing with the trauma of what’s just happened as they’re also playing the actors playing the parts.

There are a few simple ways to embellish this, mostly drawn from Noises Off.  One would be to improvise a beginning section of pre-show business, wherein we get to know the “actors” (whom the improvisers are playing), allowing for seeds to be planted that can pay off later and getting to know these people outside of their parts.  And/or a section after the assassination of the actors backstage during intermission.  These would help flesh out the world, but aren’t entirely necessary if the group performing it wanted to maintain the verisimilitude of a night at the theatre.  In that case, you might have a bit of a pre-show meet and greet with the cast in the lobby of the theatre and have an actual intermission where the audience milling around is witness to the doctors taking Lincoln’s body from the theatre and random bits of business with the cast running in and out, trying to figure out what to do, etc.  A combination of the stage show and a more interactive “living theatre” box around it, a la The Opening format.

This would, of course, make a better one off event format than one that ran from week to week.  But a company of capable actor/improvisers could have a lot of fun with it…and help heal the century old wounds of a nation torn in two, of course.
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2007 - Jeff Britt for Wild Strawberries
Synopsis: This is a variation on the Hero's Journey, and it uses the formula found in the late Ingmar Bergman's classic film, Wild Strawberries.

The hero is taking a trip with a companion (by car, plane, boat, or whatever means possible) to some location where she or he is to be honored or rewarded for a lifetime (or at least a long time) of excellence in some field (that "field" can stem from an audience suggestion*). The resulting story unfolds as a journey in which the supporting players play people the hero meets along the way.

But here's where it gets nice and Bergmany: after every scene in which the supporting players say or do something that reminds the hero of some aspect of his identity or her storied past, there is a symbolism-heavy dream sequence which drives home the hero's personal revelations in theatrically exaggerated ways. By the time the hero is accepting the honor at the end, she or he should seem to be a significantly changed person from the surface-only praised master that he or she was at the beginning of the story.

*If the players wish to heighten the story's comic potential, they could lean the audience suggestion toward some less esteemed occupation, such as a gas station attendant or a cable guy.
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2006 - Kaci Beeler for Opening Night at The Burton Community Theatre
Synopsis: A group of improvisers learns and rehearses a community theatre-type scripted work as if it is to be performed just as it should. However, the improvisers are encouraged to take liberties during the performance controlling chaotic "accidents" and slips not previously planned or rehearsed that force the other actors to cover and or improvise their way back from the ensuing disparities and into the regularly planned show.