Knox College Improv Club

O and V,
where did you go?

This past weekend I was at my sister's college.  It was the first time I had spent multiple days there so I really didn't know what to expect.  Considering that it was a liberal arts school, it actually lived up to a lot of the stereotypes.

But anyways, this post isn't really about that.  Will I write about it at another time?  Maybe...

I want to take the time in this post to review a performance I saw at Knox College.  My sister is in an improv club there.  What do I mean by Improv Club?  Well, I'm not talking about people playing jazz music and doing improv solos for hours.

I'm talking about something more along the lines of Whose Line is it Anyway? - people go up on stage with no prior planning and perform scenes given certain parameters.  This is done with various games played.  For instance, they did a mock Q and A panel where they have three improvers (is that what you call them?) on stage and they pretend to be experts on some topic (topics are chosen by the audience) and then audience members shout questions at the experts and experts respond to the questions.  I'm sure you can see that humor ensues.

The whole show is a series of games somewhat like that.  Some of them are really creative.  One I remember is that there are two people who pretend to be audience chosen roles driving to an audience chosen destination and four people sit cross legged in front of them and pretend to be radio stations singing songs about an audience chosen topic in a certain genre.  The people driving have a conversation and turn to said radio stations during the conversation.

But anyways, I guess this review is going to be more like just dishing out praise (which I've noticed I've been doing a lot lately).  Basically, this show was phenomenal.  I was really damn impressed at the talent that was on that stage.  They were all really funny too!  I couldn't help but to laugh out loud just about the whole performance.  And really just the shear creativity of the performers for on-the-spot performing is just astounding.  There was a scene where it was supposed to start with "Once upon a time," and it turned into a scene with a father trying to make up to his daughter for forgetting/losing the bedtime story.  It was really just impressive the shear talent of these performers.  If I lived in the area, I would go to all of their performances.  It was pretty amazing.

Really, the only drawback to the performance is that it was kind of long.  Many of the people in the back lost interest after awhile and left.  It was about two hours including the "pre-performance" which was similar to the music troupe Stomp...only with way less props.  That was pretty cool as well.

But yeah, in the future they should try to keep their show closer to an hour and a half.  A lot of the reason why it was so long was because the size of the club has drastically increased since the previous year so they don't know how to handle the shear number of performers.  My suggestion is that they split the show up into two nights (if it's possible and if they can get enough people to show up to both nights).  If they do two nights of an hour and a half, they will have ample time to fit everyone in without making the audience sit through a long duration.  You might be thinking that two hours isn't that long.  However, it does feel longer when it's a series of short skits instead of one long movie or play.

As for myself, this performance also made me a little depressed.

"Why?" you may ask.  Well, I suppose it's pure jealousy.  I've never been able to act and to watch these guys partake in such an expressive form of acting really made me wish I was talented like that.  Also, just the shear creativity of some of these kids just really made me think of how uncreative I am in comparison.  The idea that not only do they think of some of these ideas but also that they do it at moments notice?  Holy crap! You could give me a million years to try and think of something and it wouldn't be nearly as funny as some of these skits I saw this weekend.

I also got a chance to meet quite a few of the improv club members this weekend before the show and you could see each of their personalities just shine on the stage.  When I think of this, it makes me think of what would shine through if I tried doing this and, well, even if I were a good actor, what would probably happen is a male version of Bella Swan.  The people on this stage are really interesting people.  They're pretty incredible.

Overall, if there is anything like this at your school, you should check it out.  It's a lot of fun to watch and you will get quite a few laughs as the performers put themselves into these various situations.