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WHAT IS THIS
We are ten college students who stand on a stage with no script, no plan, and no idea what's going
to happen, and you yell things at us. A location. An occupation. An emotion. A household appliance.
Then we make up a scene on the spot using whatever you gave us, in the form of a game. Some scenes
are brilliant. Some are a car wreck. The car wrecks are usually funnier. It costs a dollar.
I'm Theresa Shutt, a junior in communications, three years in the troupe, and the webmistress,
which means I'm the only one who knows where the HTML book is. I'm also the one who does the
Southern accent in every scene where you yell "Southern accent," which is all of them. I'm from
Oklahoma. It's not an accent. It's just how I talk.
THE WHOSE LINE EFFECT
In the fall of 1997, 23 people came to our auditions. Then in August 1998 ABC started showing
Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Drew Carey, and suddenly everybody in America knew what
"Scenes From a Hat" was, and that fall 49 people tried out. This fall it was 58, for four spots. We
are not complaining. Our crowds went from twenty-five people and a dog (true story, the dog came
twice) to a full house and a line out the door. But we'd like to say, gently, that we were doing
this before it was on TV, and that Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie are not coming to our shows, so
please stop asking.
NEXT SHOW: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 10 PM
Our first show with all four new people. Doors at 9:40. Bring a dollar and
a weird suggestion. Last show (September 24) we got "a dentist's waiting room on the Titanic" and
Clayton has not recovered. Full schedule here.
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THE RULES OF IMPROV
There are a lot of books about this. These are the five we drill at every rehearsal, and the five
we break most often.
| 1 |
YES, AND. Whatever your partner says is true,
and you add to it. If she says you're on the moon, you're on the moon. You don't say "no we're
not." You say yes, and you just remembered you left the oxygen in the car. Accept, then build. |
| 2 |
DON'T BLOCK. Blocking is saying no to an idea, out
loud or by ignoring it. If your partner hands you an invisible baby and you put it down and walk off
to start your own scene, you blocked. Also you left a baby. |
| 3 |
MAKE YOUR PARTNER LOOK GOOD. Your job isn't to be
funny. Your job is to set up the other person so they can be funny. If everybody does that, everybody
looks great. If everybody goes for their own laugh, it's ten people drowning. |
| 4 |
BE SPECIFIC. Not "a car," a 1987 Buick with a
cracked windshield and a Garfield stuck to the window. Not "my friend," your cousin who owes you forty
dollars and drives a tow truck. Details are free and they make everything funnier. |
| 5 |
LISTEN. The hardest one. Don't plan your next
joke while your partner is talking. The best line in the scene is usually hiding in something
somebody said two minutes ago. |
THE TROUPE, FALL 1999
Richard Kozlowski
senior, theatre | Troupe captain. Can play any animal. Has played most of them. |
David Bergeson
senior, history | Our hoedown singer, and he can't sing. That's the point. |
Esther Coleman
junior, psychology | Queen of Questions Only. Has never once been caught making a statement. |
Brooke Turpin
junior, nursing | Plays every mom, every grandma, and one memorable Abraham Lincoln. |
Theresa Shutt
junior, communications | Webmistress, accent department, and keeper of the hat. |
Clayton Symons
sophomore, engineering | Sound effects genius. His door creak has been requested by name. |
Alex Hearn NEW
sophomore, business | Auditioned last year and didn't make it, came back, and nailed it. Persistence! |
Cecilia Rollings NEW
freshman, undecided | Did improv in high school in Tulsa. Fearless. Slightly terrifying. |
Cesar Harper NEW
freshman, music | Plays our keyboard for the musical games and makes up a tune for anything in about two seconds. |
Stacey Levenson NEW
freshman, journalism | Her audition party quirk was "thinks she is a vending machine." We hired her on the spot. |
Faculty adviser: Dr. Michael Zoller, theatre department, who comes to every show and laughs at
the wrong parts on purpose.
THE TWELVE-HOUR IMPROV-A-THON
Saturday, November 13, noon to midnight, in the union ballroom. Twelve hours of improv, no breaks
for the troupe (well, bathroom breaks), and you can come and go all day. Get people to pledge money
per hour, or just drop money in the bucket. Half goes to the campus food pantry, half to sending us
to a college improv festival in the spring. Last year we raised $1,860 and Richard fell asleep
standing up during a freeze tag at 11:15 p.m. and nobody noticed for a whole scene. Details on the
schedule page.
ROAD SHOW REPORT
On Friday, September 17, all ten of us piled into two cars and drove two hours to my old high
school. In the afternoon we ran a workshop for the drama class (they were better at freeze tag than
we were, it was humbling), and that night we did a show in the cafetorium for about two hundred
people, including my mom, my grandmother and my seventh-grade English teacher, who gave us the
suggestion "a parent-teacher conference in a submarine." The drama kids want to start their own
troupe. We were very proud and a little scared.
Pictures: my mom took two rolls at the road show. She says some of them are "artistic," which
means blurry. Coming soon.
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