Cheap Seats The Game Show Show rounds up sordid tales, local celebrities, and actual prizes

Welcome to Cheap Seats, where every Thursday we’ll talk to folks behind the scenes of the stage events opening around town, in order to give you a flavor of the productions that won’t be found in any of the promo materials.

The Game Show Show, Bartell Theatre (July 22-25, 29-31)

Promo pull quote: “The Game Show Show is an Interactive theater production that goes behind the scenes of a taping of a live game show where the audience gets a chance to be the contestants on the show, The Capitol Squares.”

What it’s really about: The Game Show Show, presented by WhoopDeDoo and Stage Q, is a show within a game show. One half of the show is devoted to a few lucky audience members competing in a Hollywood Squares-like game show that features local actors impersonating famous celebrities (like Jack Nicholson, Whoopi Goldberg, Betty White, Bob Dylan and, uh, Sue Sylvester from Glee), with a different center-square local celebrity (like Madison CW's Emmy Fink, Nitty Gritty owner Marsh Shapiro, and others) every night.

Meanwhile, the main action of the play takes place behind the scenes of Capitol Squares, as the audience witnesses the goings-on during the commercial breaks and before and after the show. “There are always these sideline stories that go on that you never really see [with the real game shows], so all our actors will be portraying all the little soap opera things going on,” writer/director Michael Bruno says. “You never see that stuff because game shows are highly edited, and all you see is the contestant winning or losing and getting the fabulous prizes. You don’t get to see the real drama that goes on backstage.”

Fun fact: Bruno conceived of the play with partner Tony Reitano after the two of them spent some years in the trenches of actual Hollywood game shows in the ’80s, working as actor-contestants—people who help in the pilot stage of game shows—actual contestants, question writers, and contestant coordinators. So a lot of the material in the show is taken from Bruno and Reitano’s real life experiences. “We said to the actors, these are the sort of things that happened or we saw that were pretty funny, and then had the actors improvise from that,” Bruno says. “Like the host who is trying to get in the pants of his assistant even though he’s married, who treats his assistant badly when his wife’s around.”

Best reason to try it: The Game Show Show has the potential to actually pay you to be in attendance: Sponsors like Mt. Olympus in Wisconsin Dells, Willy Street Co-Op, Shamrock Bar, Marcus Theaters, and others have all put up gift certificates for the competing audience members to win. All you have to do is take a test beforehand—right after the doors open—and you can win free swag. “For 20 bucks, you get the opportunity to win thousands of dollars in prizes,” Bruno says. But if you don’t want to participate, the show isn’t all audience interaction. “We’re not going to drag you up onstage if you don’t want to come up,” he added. “If you want to just sit back and enjoy it, no one is going to bother you.”