Otterbein's Mainstage Improv Troupe will take the stage April 23 with their latest show, Pentagranny.
Improv, short for improvisational theater, is a style of theater where the performance content is made up as the show goes on. There are no scripts or pre-written plot, only participants who make up their characters, lines and the story itself as they go along. Otterbein’s Mainstage Improv Troupe has been on campus since 2012, and they usually perform eight shows on campus per year. Their style of humor is based off of the Upright Citizens Brigade, but the jokes are targeted closer to home.
Ben Folts, sophomore acting major and upcoming president of Mainstage Improv, said, “For me, just because it's an improv troupe, part of what I love about it [performing on Otterbein’s campus] is the inside jokes that you can make with the people on the campus.You can make those specific jokes and everyone gets them.”
The trick to performing improv, said junior acting major and outgoing president of Mainstage Improv Steven Meeker, is to being able to listen and read a room.
“Especially in performance improv, you have to kind of read the room and read what other people are giving to you. If they’re coming at you with a certain emotional stake in hand, you need to either play with that stake or be in direct opposite of that but working with them to get to it,” said Meeker.
According to Meeker and Folts, one of the most important aspects of performing improv is teamwork. They need to be able to interact with others in order to make the situation believable.
“If you can be relatable and do a natural, this is everyday life and somebody can attach on to that, and if you're good at naturally harvesting realistic scenarios, even if it’s crazy. Like, if we are in a spaceship, as long as it’s about two people in somewhat of a relationship with each other but the funny thing about it is now it's in space, so it’s heightened in a different way,” said Meeker.
Folts also commented on the importance of not trying too hard when making a joke.
“The moment you take it on yourself to come up with something funny on the spot, it becomes too much pressure for you and the only things that come out are these half-formed jokes that don’t relate to anything else, instead of the final product being something the team has created together out of nothing that the audience found entertaining.”
The hour-long shows consist of two acts. The first act, called short form, is comprised of games that involve only a few members of the troupe, similar to those on the show "Whose Line is it Anyway." The troupe usually does not decide what short-form acts to perform until the day of a show, which makes every show they perform unique. The second act, which includes all members of the group, is called long form. Unlike the multiple activities in short form, long form is dedicated to one long situation.
Another thing that makes improv different from scripted shows is the interaction with the audience. Many of the games the troupe plays are based on a noun provided by someone in the audience.
“We’re not trying to show off our cool parlor trick of being like, look now we have pulled out this noun. It’s ‘we’ve all had our own separate lives, we’re all in our completely separate head spaces, let’s focus on these three things to get us in the same frame of mind so we can all exist in the same world we’re creating on the spot,’” said Folts
Mainstage Improv has attended the Tides of March at OSU in the past and performs in Uptown Westerville, but the members don’t see themselves moving off of Otterbein’s campus any time soon.
“I think getting a nice amount of time on campus, serving the community that we actually work for, is probably the best for us right now," Meeker said.
The show is free, and will take place April 23 at 8 p.m. in the pit theater in the Campus Center.
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