İviki eftan

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İviki eftan (Algaz: loud theater), often just eftan or eftani, is a form of improvisational theater originating in what is today the Algazi Union. The style emerged as a variation of Sortein śalwadan ápjapwa, but with greater emphasis on audience participation. Historically perceived as low-brow and rowdy, eftan today is widely practiced and has had substantial influence on Algazi comedy, theater, and cinema.

Development

Śalwadan ápjapwa was originally practiced by wandering theater troupes; as the style grew in popularity, these troupes increasingly expanded into the Algazi countryside and even incorporated Algazi members. Algazi actors and audiences, however, often had a much greater willingness to break the fourth wall and engage directly with each other, perhaps emulating the participatory, group-based nature of Algazi folk music. What emerged was a custom of audiences reacting out loud to events of the play, even shouting suggestions at characters. Performances were increasingly improvised, with scripted plays giving way to rough storylines shaped by the audience's direction; the original Sortein stock characters largely evolved into archetypes or tropes, while the bawdy humor and subjects remained. As the degree of participation (and the general rowdiness of audiences) grew, troupes increasingly incorporated emcees or mediators that served to keep the audience in line, narrating the play, soliciting feedback, selecting from among suggestions, and signaling the audience when to respond and when to remain quiet to allow the actors to speak.

As a result of its origins, its often crude subject matter, and the raucousness of its performances, eftan was largely stigmatized and relegated to the rural lower classes. By contrast, śalwadan ápjapwa in its original form enjoyed a higher status than in its native Sorteic when it was reintroduced to Algazi society due to its foreignness and social themes. Successful Sortein troupes were often scouted by agents of Algazi merchant families, who would sponsor performances and even permanent theaters in their home cities, attended by elites and the masses alike.

By the mid-19th Century, eftan had largely fallen out of favor with the proliferation of new forms of mass entertainment, and was increasingly relegated to the realm of folk culture or nostalgia. Renewed interest began in the 1920s and 30s, however, as experimental and left-wing actors and playwrights saw eftan's participatory nature as a traditional precedent for more radical techniques and practices they developed. This ultimately led to a resurgence of eftan in the years following the Great Ekuosian War, with the style positioned as a bridge between traditional and contemporary theater and subject to a great deal of new variations and innovations. eftan today is a highly varied and quite popular form of entertainment that has had substantial impact on Algazi culture as a whole.

Modern Eftan

Eftan today is largely performed in theaters by professional actors and comedians, many of whom also work in film, television, and other forms of theater. While eftan is still largely associated with comedy,a great deal of genre mixing is not uncommon; many eftan performances can take on serious or dramatic elements, while many works in other genres will incorporate elements of eftan. Emcees often play a much larger role and exercise greater control over when the audience and their engagement, though some performances maintain the more chaotic nature of historical eftan. Theaters commonly host performances that explicitly vary in tone, subject, matter, and intended audience, from highly-controlled family-friendly matinees to chaotic and bawdy late night shows. Many others experiment with the form itself, such as inviting audience members to replace actors in order to handle a situation differently; introducing random elements outside the control of actors, the audience, and the emcee alike; dividing the audience into rival groups, or pitting the audience and actors against each other; or by performing scenes of a story in reverse chronological order.