Parker McCann
Staff Writer
The Improv Club held its first meeting of the year this past Thursday, with around 25 people showing up to watch and participate.
“It’s the one place in the world you can be something you’re not,” said Nathan Dobbs, a senior social science education major from Atlanta. “You can let loose, and it’s a lot of fun.”
The Improv Club was created and led by Dobbs. It started last fall and meets every two weeks on Thursday nights.
Getting started was the group’s first goal, and now Dobbs hopes to get a team together to hold events on campus. “That would just be grand,” Dobbs said.
The meeting started with the “Question Game,” which is like a battle of words between two people, but everyone must speak only in questions. For example, “Did you get that shirt on clearance?” and a possible response could be “What’s your name again?”
The next game was “World’s Worst.” Four people stand in front of an audience, and someone shouts the world’s worst something to be acted out. Then one or two of the people standing step forward and act it out.
One round was “World’s Worst Piñata,” and one actor stepped out and said, “Bro, I think we’re hitting a baby.”
After “World’s Worst,” they played a new game called “Director’s Cut.” Three people perform a scene, and one more person stands to the side.
The person to the side is the director and has to say something about the scene. At one point, there was an infomercial for a hacksaw, to which the director said to make it more like a horror film.
The next game was “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” Two people cover their ears and watch two others perform for about a minute. Then the two try to figure out what the others were doing and copy the scene the best they can.
After that was “Newscaster,” in which two people act as news reporters and describe a news scenario. Another two people act as a reporter and bystander and act the situation out.
The last game the group played was “Freeze.” Two people start a scene, and a member of the audience yells “Freeze” and the two stop moving.
The audience member who called freeze then has to switch with one of the actors and change the scene entirely from the pose that the previous person was in. At one point, the actors were talking about Botox, then it turned into a dance party, and then into the participants doing the wave.
There are a few rules for the Improv club meetings.
The first is: “Never say no,” or, in other words, don’t reject a scenario. It’s seen as rude and hard to follow up.
The second is: “Not every scene is comedy.” It’s OK to have serious or romantic or scary scenes.
The third is: “Don’t run over people.” This means both physically and verbally; don’t talk or take over someone else’s turn.
The fourth rule is: “No cuss words.” If someone swears, he or she has to wear a banana suit.
