im·prov/?im?präv/
Noun, informal
1. The type of acting done by Saturday Night Live cast members before they get a call from Lorne Michaels.
2. Silly games you play at middle school drama camps before they teach you how to really act.
Before I arrived at “House Party,” Dirty South Improv Comedy Theater’s latest interactive comedy show, these definitions comprised the extent of my knowledge about the art of improvisation.
But once the show started, it didn’t take very long for my understanding to change.
As soon as the cast — John Reitz, Meg Eason, Sarah Eldred, Vinny Valdivia and Brandon Holmes — bounded onto the stage, my nervous anticipation became excitement.
The fourth wall was immediately broken as the performers polled the audience to see how many people had been to a DSI show before.
In the crowd of about a dozen, a show of hands assured me that I wasn’t the only newbie.
I quickly realized that the show was going to be like no party I had ever attended when it started out with a game called “Do-Rap.”
In the game, the performers were faced with the challenge of improvising a rap based on randomly selected one-syllable names shouted out by the audience.
Starting out with the easily rhymed name “Lee” and progressing to the trickier “Stef” (rhymes for this rap included “base-treble clef” and “Hef,” as in Hugh Hefner), the game ended before any two-syllable names got thrown into the mix.
The highlight of the evening for me was the first improv scenario, where Valdivia and an audience volunteer acted out the relationship of a Burger King employee and boss upon the suggestion of an audience member.
Playing the less than intelligent employee (not totally unlike Charlie Kelly from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), Valdivia’s act of retrieving a Whopper for his boss from the same kitchen he accidentally set ablaze made me double over in laughter.
The stunned audience volunteer could only respond meekly to this act of bravery by saying, “I think you deserve a raise.”
Audience participation, which often governed the topic of the improv, played a vital role in the show’s direction.
From choosing the country of origin (Sweden) for subtitled foreign films to challenging the improvisers to make puns about movies about shoe horns, the audience steered the improv from the hilarious to the strange (Did I mention someone brought up shoe horns? I had to Google what those were).
With a different set of “guests” every week, DSI’s “House Party” will include fresh songs, sketches and audience interactions to create the weirdest house party you’ve ever been invited to.
“House Party” will run Saturdays at 9:30 p.m. until the end of October. General admission is $10, student admission is $8.
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