Improv show turns ten

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The advertisement from LT’s website for the show (lths.net).

Taylor Schmitt, Website/ Social Media co-editor

So ____ You’ll ____ X: Fill in the ____ performs Thursday Sept. 27, Friday Sept. 28 and Saturday Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. with an additional show at 3:30 p.m. on Friday Sept. 28 in the SC PAC. The show celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, with a cast of 25.

“It’s a blast to be in,” Mike Kuehl, the show’s director, said. “It’s super fun. You have no lines to memorize and it’s zany by nature.”

Improv is the portrayal of a scene without rehearsal or a script, Kuehl said. The show lasts about an hour and a half and consists of mostly short form improv games interspersed with long form improv plays. Short form improv is smaller, structured games with different rules that try to trip the actors up, while long form is when the actors attempt to create a five to ten minute play off of a phrase.

“We come together and play fun games; it’s a lot of thinking on the spot and committing to the character that you’ve decided to build, which makes it so special—that commitment to just jump all in with these people,” Kate Coleman ‘19, a cast member, said. “[We’ve known] some of the cast members forever and some you just met a couple months ago and you have to work as a team.”

The show wasn’t always organized the way it is today, Coleman said. When she joined for the first time three years ago, the show consisted of only one long form team, rather than the two in the show this year. It was also divided into two acts, with the short form games first, followed by the long form play for the second half.

With the start of this year’s show, Kuehl celebrates a decade as the director, he said.  

“The class was booming and we were getting good responses from the stuff we were doing in the improv classes,” Kuehl said. “I thought it would be fun to do [a show] with theater kids because we didn’t have anything like it.”

This year is also the first time theatre board is promoting a later show before the curtain of another. Before the Improv cast takes the stage, Alyssa Frey ‘19 will be performing a monologue from the upcoming show “House of Blue Leaves,” which opens Oct. 18.

“We hope that the audience will get a little taste of our upcoming season,” Frey said. “The Improv show is awesome, never fails, and I was really happy to be a part of it.”