By Faith Gonia
“A turkey is just an egotistical, oversized chicken,” confidently declared Anna Genna, one of seven actors in Westmont Theatre’s Holiday Improv Show. Organized by Sophia Orr, the unique production on December 8 allowed students from the department to try a new technique onstage. No lines, no preparation, no boundaries—the student actors, including MC Orr, created a hilarious night of comedy right on the spot.
The only concrete structure entailed seven different improv games, in which the audience had the joy of participating. As Orr guided the show along, they requested various themes, words, and genres from audience volunteers.
Actor Genna’s turkey remark resulted from a game called “Boo Yay.” Following Orr’s request for a holiday opinion, one student in the theater offered that the common holiday meal, turkey, is bad. Orr then assigned three of the improvisers to the pro-turkey stance, and three to the anti. One by one, the actors had to think on their feet and state an argument for or against turkey. The prompt sprouted countless witty statements, each erupting endless laughter from the audience.
My personal favorite game of the night was entitled “Replay.” Given a simple prompt, such as holiday dinner, the group of actors immediately created a scene, building off of each other’s lines and actions. To retell the sequence in its comedic glory is incredibly difficult. In a scene where a mother, Allyson Jezyk, tries to get her children to depart for a holiday dinner, she is greeted by her Uber driver, Sergio Macian, standing at the front door. Suddenly, Orr stops the actors, to “replay” the events, but with a twist. The scene must be done in a specific genre now: romance, as per an audience member’s suggestion. Thus, the actors replayed the scene with a completely different energy. Upon Macian’s entrance as the Uber driver, he takes on the role of a starry-eyed lover, enthralled by Jezyk. As the scene progressed, Macian made one of the funniest choices of the night—getting down on one knee and proposing.
One can credit Orr for the ingenious idea of the show:
“We were discussing in our theater class how [last year’s] Christmas show was great,” they explain, “but it took too much rehearsals and planning right before the end of the semester.”
Orr retells the idea’s creation: “A Holiday Improv Show would be a good solution, because improv is literally just coming up with things on the spot so it literally doesn’t take a lot of planning.”
Preparing for the show, Jeff Bengford’s Theatre class invited an improv coach to visit on several occasions. Orr then asked for those interested in an Improv show and gathered a group of actors excited to perform.
I have never watched an improv show before, but Westmont Theatre set the bar very high. Each of the improvisers, as well as Orr, demonstrated remarkable talent that I would expect in trained professional actors, not high school students. Wherever these actors go, I am sure that they will succeed.