Happy New Year!
New Years are GREAT for Improvisation Comedy! This New year show was one of my favorite improv shows I’ve been involved in in a long time! Such great talent onstage, and such an delightful audience!
How to Make a Great Show
One trick to doing a great improv show is start with a great cast, and we had exactly that! Veteran Society cast members Will Rubio, Kelly Lohman, Ali Kinkade, Zanon Schmidt, Eric Artell, myself- Lincoln Hoppe were rounded out amazing special guests Maclain Nelson, and Miranda Parham.
“My favorite part of any show is when I make eye contact with someone and we have this beautiful, collaborative moment where we both know exactly what would heighten the scene that we’re doing.”
No Script!
Any improvisation show means no script! That’s part of the fun. Part of the challenge. And mostly, this risk is what yeilds so great a payoff when a show goes well. Audiences often can’t believe it’s all made up.
We started off with a simple, but fun game called “Boo Yay”, and then did several quick games, including “Pillars” involving 4 awesome audience volunteers. I’m always amazed by the bravery and sometimes excitement of our volunteers! Its amazing! (if anyone has pictures or video of our volunteers, please let me know and I’ll include them!)
“So many fun moments! One that stands out is the “I have a secret” scene between Will and Miranda, such fun innuendos and entendres, and when Will talked about cleaning the gene pool – I cracked up!!Love this group!”
Directors of Doom!
Ok, so there wasn’t too much doom involved (except for a post apocalyptic kids TV show brought to you by Kelly Lohman and cast), but I like the doom-inspiring sub-head. I digress.
We had a special ‘director’s section of the show, which was possibly my favorite part. Each cast member was able to direct a scene and impose any limits, restrictions or suggestions on the cast for that scene. This made for great teamwork of cast and directors working together to deliver great entertainment to the audience.
To me this added magic that no improv games could add. Just the sheer whims and personality of the director controlling the stage for 2-5 minutes a pop. Did I mention the post apocolyptic kids show? Ahahaha!
“My favorite show moment was also an unspoken agreement. I walked in as a “Zombie” in our children’s show because that’s what the host, Ali, called for. She was telling Eric to shoot me. I was going to be a special guest police officer before she said that so just decided to do both – hoping Eric would also stick to his guns (pun intended). Anyway, I came in as a Zombie then said, “just kidding kids, you all know me, I’m officer . . .” And that’s about when Eric shot me. That’s exactly what I was hoping would happen and one of the reasons I love this group so much – knowing what we’re gonna do together, before we do it. “
The Musical
Usually during our shows, we improvise a 20-40 minute narrative musical based on an audience suggestion.
This being our New Years show, we invited people to share a few New Year’s Resolutions, and built a 30 minute musical for Nathan… whose New Year’s Resolution, as he told us, was ‘to eat a vegetable in 2019″. Now that’s the stuff drama’s made of!
“I loved Eric’s broccoli monster in the musical “Bruce Lee and Broccoli”. I laughed so hard when he dubbed himself Brocco Lee. I am so delighted that this group uses their very clever brains to make silly, fun jokes as opposed to mean jokes. Society shows are always guaranteed to be joyful!”
So after Ali and the cast asking him several questions to give us information we could work in, we made up a musical following Nathan’s 2019 journey to eat one vegetable. There were villains, brothers, Dungeons and Dragons, girlfriends, martial arts, pressures, high drama, forgiveness, mended hearts, and last but not least: a stalk of broccoli.
Nathan, thank you for letting us share your hefty and life-changing New Years Resolution during our show!
Here’s a little video look ‘behind the curtain’ at Ali and the cast grabbing information about Nathan for the musical. We take all this information, and then make up a musical on the spot. (I couldn’t film the musical because I was playing the guitar and piano for the musical 🙁
Woo-hoo!
I’m so grateful to all who attended the show in our packed theater in Newhall, California at the Main! People came from all over California, and from other parts of the world as well. Probably not just for us, but we’re glad they came anyway.
You can GET TICKETS for our NEXT SHOW NOW!
If any of this sounds fun, or crazy, or you just feel you need to see it to believe it, we’ll see you at our next show!
Also, if you have any pictures or video you’d like to sumbit for us to possibly use on this page, post to our Facebook page and tag us on for to any social media #SocietyComedy !
Here’s at little into video on our group! Enjoy!
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