ASAB Mission Improvable
By: Holly Feng
Issue date: 11/18/08 Section: News
|
Two members of the improvisational comedy group, Mission Improvable, entertained students in Ground Zero last Tuesday evening.
Monahan and Casey are two of six members in the group, which has been touring since 1999 according to their official Web site.
Director of Student Activities and Organizations Tracy Henderson said their act was similar to the television show "Whose Line Is It Anyway."
"This is completely based on the audience," Henderson said about the show. "They don't have (a) set act or jokes."
The comedy act was made up of seven games: Blind Line, Slide Show, Moving Bodies, Speed Dating, Half Life, Clamps and Three Things.
In the Blind Line, Monahan held out sheets of paper randomly with lines of dialogue from audience and cooperated with them into the chosen location: the zoo.
In the second game Slide Show, Monahan and audience members posed the photos while Casey was describing the picture.
Freshman Sara Cisneros, who laughed as she volunteered in Slide Show, said the improv was better than usual comedians because they used people as volunteers.
During Moving Bodies, two audience volunteers were in charge of moving the comedians' bodies like action figures.
"They were really funny and they kept everybody entertained," said senior Tasha Irvin, who was a volunteer in this game.
In the fourth game, Speed Dating, audiences came up with weird adjectives and occupations. The duo then portrayed these people in a speed dating situation with more audience volunteers.
When it came to Half Life, the comedians did the same exact scene in half the time of the previous one to make the game faster and funnier.
In Clamps, which was likely the most painful game, the comedians put a clamp on their faces if the audience didn't react.
In the last game, Three Things, Monahan had Casey guess words using his body language.
According to Monahan, they never do the same show twice.
"We may put the same games but the suggestions are always going to be different from the audience," Monahan said. " … We really enjoy the interaction with the audience."
Monahan also said that the key to improv is listening.
"We do our job by really listening to each other and listening to the audience as opposed to trying too hard to be funny."