The Daily Campus

Issue date: 2/10/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Matt Lin Agents of Improv performers brought laughter to the Student Union Theater on Monday night.

Student audience members and Agents of Improv performers worked together Monday night to bring laughter to the Student Union Theater.

"Improv is completely off the rack; it's unexpected, it gives you nothing!" said Alex Meleg, an 8th-semester ecology and evolutionary biological studies major and member of the Agents of Improv.

The students and the performers constantly fed off of the audience's ideas for entertainment.

"This is the first time I've been to an improv show," Jeff Varughese, a 2nd-semester exploratory major said before the show. "I don't know what to expect, but I'm prepared to laugh."

And laugh he did.

The show was kicked off by Scott Colleran, an 8th-semester biology major who served as the show's master of ceremonies. As the audience got comfortable, the Agents began with some short-form improv which usually takes the form of games with set rules for how the scene will proceed. One game called "moving people" had two volunteers control the body movements of the improvisers while they created dialogue to compliment their movements.

"I really like the games at the beginning, especially the 'four squares of emotion' one," said Colleen Mellow, a 2nd-semester math major.

This game had a different emotion in each "square" and each time an improviser moved to it, they had to use that emotion to continue the conversation. This piece became quite the side-splitter when it involved the emotion "horny" and the act of eating a cheeseburger. The second half hour consisted of long-form improv, which includes a more extensive development of plot and characters. This portion covered all the bases of unpredictability, ranging from the ever-popular teenaged angst - complete with controlling parents - to misunderstood, brooding artists whose play involved zombies eating each other, to the even more peculiar tale of the bungee-jumping pet turtle dressed up as a fairy.

Lisa Delcegno, a second semester theatre studies major and an Agents of Improv performer described how nerve-wracking it is to be there. "The hardest part for me is finding a good idea to start off with, because once you have it, you can all build on it but if it's bad and it falls flat, that's when it gets scary."

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