Curtains open at 7 p.m. all
three nights
When Aaron Crutchfield arrived at
Northeastern Junior College several years ago as the new theatre professor, he
brought with him a love for improvisational theatre. He has shared this passion
with students since that time and the result has been some hilarious
entertainment for those who get to see it. On this Thursday, Friday and
Saturday, April 11-13, at 7 p.m. nightly, the theatre department at Northeastern
will present a totally improv show entitled “Who Ate My Homework Anyway?” The
show will be held in Corsberg Theatre inside the E.S. French Hall on campus.
Improvisational
Theater,
sometimes called just improv, is a form of theater where most or all of what is
performed is created at the moment it is performed, with little or no
pre-planning. In its purest form, the dialogue, the action, the story and the
characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation
unfolds. In some forms, one or more of those attributes might be decided on
beforehand while the others are created in the moment.
Students performing in this
spring’s production will include Dan Powell, Ashtin Hulse, Alex Mercier, Jasmine
Smith Lenz, Hallie Doyle, Miriam Scharff, Elijah Adlesperger, Bryce Johnson, and
a few other support cast members providing music, sound and lighting
assistance.
According to Crutchfield, the
show will be similar to the TV style shows you see occasionally that use improv
to entertain. Whose Line Is It Anyway would be a great example. “I will be
hosting and introducing many of the scenes,” Crutchfield says. “We do structures
like an ABC skit, a rhyming song competition, and somewhere we answer the
audience’s questions from the perspective of zany characters. All in all there
is nearly an hour and a half of fun.” Structures, he says, is what improv actors
call scenes.
“The training for our cast has
focused primarily on the power of yes or agreement,” notes Crutchfield. “When
two or more people begin a scene, it will only really gain momentum when they
accept each other’s ideas,” the director explains. The actors have to play off
of one another for the scene to go anywhere. Failure to do this results in a
lull and the hilarity of it does or does not work. When the actors do play off
of one another, the scenes can go any number of places in creativity and
storyline, which is what makes improv so entertaining.
“ We have also been practicing
making up stories and creating unusual machines with our bodies,” laughs
Crutchfield. “But, you’ve got to see this to conceive it, and the only way to
see it is to come to the show!”
The “Who Ate My Homework Anyway?”
show is $5 admission at the door. Students, faculty and staff showing a current
id will enter free.
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