On Friday night, students filed into the Stevenson Union arena to enjoy a night of free pizza and comedy at antics improv’s first show of the term: Your Worst Nightmare.
The back wall of the show was covered in audience submission of their worst fears, ranging from funny, like “men who work at Home Depot” to downright terrifying, like “being trapped under the ice.”
The theme of audience participation continued throughout the night. Actors asked for audience recommendations when creating stories and enacted scenes from random audience members’ texts.
One of the highlights included a game called Four Squares. The game included creating a series of different scenes with different actors, all from audience suggestions, and then actors ran around the stage switching places with each other.
There was an evil brother-sister duo, two students trying to live in Shasta, a Pokemon ball, and two people living in the Baroque period. Joseph Whitney, a new Antics member, considered it his favorite activity of the whole show.
“I did like getting mixed up in four squares… screwing up is just always enjoyable… there’s sort of something to the frantic energy,” said Whitney.
Natalie Trowbridge, the audience member who lent improve her phone to read from during the performance, said she would recommend coming to the show to her friends.
“It was funny…it was fun… They got a free pizza,” Trowbridge said.
Beyond the free pizza and the fun atmosphere, the show serves another purpose.
The show worked in part with the SOU food pantry. The group mission statement is “comedy for change” and they try to do their part to help student or community in all of their shows.
Andrew Zucker, one of the top 3 captains of the antics improv, acknowledged how antics is a comedy and improv club but also helps out students.
“Food security is a… big issue here on campus and the SOU food pantry is a great resource for students who has some food insecurities to go and receive ten items a week… With so many students we need to keep it stocked so we offer early admissions to our show for anyone who brings non-perishable goods…”
In the past, the group has hosted Senator Jeff Golden to perform with them.
“We really started to delve into what we meant by comedy for change during our show winter last year, A Capital Act, where we had the state senator Jeff Golden come in and improvised with us… Afterwards students had a chance to talk back to senator Golden about how he represents SOU… we realized pretty quickly as using improv as sort of that conduit to connect people with important resources was the niche that we could fill”
This time, antics chose the Queer Resource Center Coordinator Alex Slyvester, who is glad to use events like this to reach out and introduce herself to the new students on campus.
“I think its really important to be involved in multiple realms of students lives on campus and also queer and trans student are everywhere so I think it’s important to show queer and trans people participate in theatre” said Slyvester.
“… its a really good way to meet people who might not be coming into the office on their own”
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