Tag: improv

Improv troupe will perform last show for year

By Orion Wright, Transcript Correspondent

When you take your seat at a Babbling Bishops show, the lights are down and the curtains drawn but the crowd is already laughing.

“They’re really funny,” sophomore Jack Bouman said. Before the Babblers cracks a joke, the audience is already giggling from memories of past performances and the anticipation of the gags to come, according to Bouman.

The Babblers are nearing the end of their performance season as the semester draws to a close. They have a practice every week and shows throughout the semester. They are currently approaching their nal performance of the academic year, and for multiple senior Babblers, their last performance at Ohio Wesleyan.

“[Improv is] an unscripted play . . . you have to put yourself in a situation without any prompting. The best way to describe it is adult make believe,” senior Babbling Bishop Hayden Knisley said.

The Babblers agree that everyone does improv for different reasons. Dane Poppe, another senior member of the troupe, finds improv to be a valuable tool for emotional release. “You . . . bring everything in with you. What you’re going through becomes part of your improv,” Poppe said. “It’s good for my mental health.”

Knisley agrees. “I put a lot of myself into what I do. [Improv] lets you exaggerate and personify your emotions,” Knisley said. For him, fully embracing one aspect or emotion can help to understand what it means and how to deal with it.

Personal therapy isn’t the only reason to do improv comedy, however. “I just want to make people laugh,” Knisely said.

But what is improv really, besides adult make-believe? “In improv, the art comes from the conglomeration of your ideas and everyone else’s, in a big mess,” Poppe said. “I enjoy the chance to make art on the spot and . . . make new things with other performers.” In other words, the opportunity for collaboration in performance is what sets improv apart.

Every Babbler has their own favorite memory of a performance – a sketch they pulled off that rises above the rank and file for them. Poppe recalled a scene-within-a-scene, described by Knisely as “very inventive,” in which they played merchants in a mall peddling ant farms.

“All of the other scenes took place in the ant farms. Whenever we thought there might be a lull in the scene, we would just shake the ant farms and they would have an earthquake.”

The Babblers hope to shake things up at their nal per- formance of the semester on Thursday, April 20 at 9:15 p.m. in Milligan Hub There will also be food trucks and a magician in the Stuy pa.rking lot from 7:30-9:00 p.m.

Well-known improv group visits campus for Slice of Life

By: Holly Krampitz, Transcript correspondent

 

Photo courtesy of missionimprovable.com.
Photo courtesy of missionimprovable.com.

If one were to enter Stuyvesant Hall on April 19 he or she would probably hear German accents, adults acting like dinosaurs and lots of laughter.

Campus Activities Magazine’s entertainers of the year, Mission Improvable, performed at Ohio Wesleyan on Sunday as a part of Slice of College Life for prospective students.

Mission Improvable is an improv group that has been traveling all around the world for the past 15 years. These comedians act as agents and incorporate the audience as co-agents for their “missions.” There are four main agents who travel around that switch out every few years.

Mission Improvable was brought to OWU along with mentalist Chris Carter, for the Slice of College Life events. Both acts were recommended by the Student Involvement Office, according to Laurie Patton, senior associate director of admission and events coordinator for the Office of Admission.

“It seemed to me that students really enjoyed the performances,” Patton said. “The acts were professional, entertaining, funny, and engaging.” Students on campus helped agents identify unspecified objects, act out an unwritten Shakespearian play and make up scenes for the agents to act out.

Prospective student Katie Paull attended the show and said it was the highlight of her weekend. “I couldn’t stop laughing during the show,” she said. Students were encouraged to actively participate in the show and a few even got a chance to be on stage with the performers.

The actors in Mission Improvable seemed to have a lot of energy and are very conformable being on stage. One of the agents, Sherman Edwards, joked that his biggest fear is having his pants fall down.

“It’s better to be confident and wrong than shy and right,” Edwards said. Edwards originally wanted to be a doctor and even took pre-med classes. He eventually realized he just wanted to wear a lab coat and decided his real passion was in comedy. Another agent, Matt Garard, always knew he wanted to be an actor.

“Odds are we won’t see our name in lights, but just the fact that we get to do what we love for a living is very cool for me,” Garard said. The actors in Mission Improvable chose improv because they like how spontaneous it is and that anything can happen.

“It is never the same twice,” Garard said. “You never know what is going to happen, which is kind of a thrill for me.”