Director Candice Clasby’s Improvisation for Theatre, Film, and Television class kept the audience in Bronwyn Dodson Theater involved and at the edge of their seats on Friday, Dec. 15.
Brandon Leyva-Lopez, a film major who hosted the event, felt the event went well and believed everyone hit their notes and their spots.
Clasby was also quick to heap praise on her students after the show whom she notes the majority are non theater majors.
“I was super proud of all of them. The majority are non theater majors, so coming into it they didn’t know what to expect from taking an improv class.”
Leyva-Lopez, the host for the show, appeared in the beginning to inform the audience what was in store for them. He explained the show would entail 30 plays being performed in a very short amount of time and that the audience would decide what play would be next by shouting out a number from one to 30.
“It’s gonna be a bit crazy, a bit wild, and awkward at some points so enjoy it,” Leyva-Lopez said, and with that the show started.
The show consisted of around 20 actors all in white shirts performing multiple short skits that lasted anywhere from forty-five seconds to a couple minutes long. The humor was witty, clever, and downright weird.
The second skit of the night entitled “Manifest Destiny” had one actor asking audience members who wanted one of the one dollar bills he had in his hand. Some in the audience immediately put their hands up in hopes of leaving the theater an extra dollar richer than they had entered.
One man in the audience raised his hand insisting that he wanted a dollar and was immediately awarded one. The next to want a dollar was a young boy who the actor made bark like a dog before he was able to collect the dollar.
This would set the stage for the rest of the night — the play would need the help and enthusiastic support of the audience to go on.
“I like the energy and the vibe. When everything is hitting right and the crowd is into it, the event becomes a lot more fun for us and our nerves just dissipate,” Leyva-Lopez said.
Leyva-Lopez said one of his favorite pieces to perform was a skit called “The Mans Movement”. It entails him and another male actor sitting across from each other at a table talking very seriously in monotone voices giving each other compliments on their hair. The actors both performed the piece with straight faces and practically no emotion.
As for Leyva-Lopez’s favorite piece to watch, it would have to be a performance from Yaxaira McNear-Echeverria who acted out a very bold and erotic scene that had the whole audience gasping, cringing, and in hysterics.
The skit depicted McNear-Echeverria in one seat, meant to be the backseat of a cab, with another actor depicting a cab driver seated in front of her. She played a woman who loves cab rides as the skit was entitled “Cab Addict”.
“Cabs make me automatically regal,” McNear-Echeverria said during her performance. “Someone out there exists solely to serve me,” she said as she was practically in ecstasy in the backseat of the cab.
The skit went on with the cab driver oblivious to his passenger behind him getting immense pleasure from being driven around. Nervous laughs could be heard throughout the audience and the two actors received a big applause for their performance.
“I thought that was really, really amazing just how far these students were willing to push themselves to explore and see how far they could take it,” Clasby said of McNear-Echeverria’s performance.
The night was a success for those who love clever and zany humor.
“For it to have this good of a turnout was encouraging and I think now that the word is out of how kind of wacky the night can be and fun it can be even for people that are not actors, I think it’s gonna continue to build semester by semester,” Clasby said.