Improv show planned as high-spirited event

By Taryn Gillepsie

An evening of “improv” is a night for the theater students to have fun with their audience.

The HCC Drama program is putting on a improv event Friday and Saturday, Feb. 12 and 13, at 7:30 p.m. each night in the Gallery Theater.

HCC students and staff get in free, as they do at all theater events. Adults are $10, seniors $8, and non- HCC students are $5.

The theater students plan to make it fun for the audience and to give some a chance to get involved.

“The audience gets to participate if they want to,” Maddox said. “We ask them to provide us with a setting, or a relationship between two characters. We even get a few brave ones and pull them on stage with us.”

Every show is different so you can come both nights and have a new experience each time.

“When we do improv, there is no planning and no script,” said Eva Carole, Hutchinson, who is an actor in the event.

“You just go along with what everyone else is doing,” Carole said.

The actors don’t have any script to follow.

They feed off of what the person before said and make it up as they go.

“We meet up and have practices but we aren’t rehearsing,” Carole said. “Rehearsing is repeating a script over and over to try and get it perfect, but what we are doing is preparing ourselves for the play. We just practice and play improv games with each other. We are exercising our improv muscles.”

When students participate in improv, they can stretch themselves.

“This is my first time being in an improv show,” Carole said. “It’s frightening when all you have known is memorizing scripts, but after you get into it, the improv, it can be very freeing.”

Theater improv is a live, changing medium for both the performers and the audience.

“You never know what is going to happen.” Maddox said. “It’s different and raw every time.”

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