On Friday night, the University of Rhode Island’s improv club, Rhody Ridiculousness, had their first performance of the semester.
“It was the biggest troupes and biggest crowd we had, people had to pull up chairs tonight which is the first time that ever happened,” the club’s vice president Ella McNally said.
During the show the performers put their unique spin on scene prompts and audience suggestions in their Improv showcase. In between scenes and when prompted the room was full of audience members yelling out suggestions for the performers to act out.
“Building trust with your scene partners outside of the games helps you read each other’s energy,” McNally said.
Club treasurer Dan Farnworth said that stepping out of your comfort zone is one of the funniest things that can happen in improv.
Club secretary Lea Ricci said that even if something goes wrong it can be okay. Club president Lauren Gardner followed up and said that it’s important to go with the flow and to not be afraid of failure when performing.
The performance was split up into different scenes requiring different amounts of audience input.
In the slideshow scene, two cast members gave a mock presentation with three other cast members acting as the slideshow itself. Before the scene an audience member came up with the subject of “interpretative dance” for the slideshow to showcase. Cast members contorted and froze as the presenters tried to explain what was happening in their slideshow.
“My favorite one tonight was definitely ‘pyramid,’” McNally said.
In the “pyramid” scene, cast members are added and then removed gradually as the performance evolves, rapidly changing storylines and tone.
“It’s a really fun simple game but you never know what you are going to get,” McNally said.
Some scenes had an element of surprise for some of the cast members. In a “family secret” escape room scene, four cast members were given secrets by the audience that were hidden from the other members. As the scene unfolded, the performers began to figure out what everyone’s secret was.
“It’s always a really fun one, especially when you can see the contrast between the little and big secret,” Ricci said.
The scene “sit stand kneel” is a scene where three cast members are either sitting, standing, or kneeling and it changes during the scene. This arrangement caused a more physical form of comedy to be showcased.
“My favorite thing to watch is ‘sit stand kneel’ where a lot of the comedy is derived from someone standing and then someone deciding if they’re going to kneel or sit while juggling a scene,” Farnworth said.
The large audience impressed some cast members in many ways.
“The recommendations were amazing and it was really nice to have a crowd that was excited to be there,” McNally said.
With the first performance done, the troupes will begin to focus on the upcoming events for their club. The troupe has its second show of the semester on Nov. 8 in Memorial Union’s Atrium 1 stage at 6:30 p.m. It will be hosting open rehearsals on Nov. 12 at 7 p.m.
“Check us out next semester.” Gardner said. “We’ll be doing auditions again, so if anyone wants to join, feel free to audition.”
More information can be found on the URI events page and the club’s Instagram page @rhodyridiculousness.