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Focus on The Funny

Local improv team perks up Pike's Perk.

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Focus on The Funny

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Contributed by: Viola Horne on 5/12/2008

Improv Colorado performed their first show last Friday night to a packed house at Pike's Perk on South Tejon. And while the audience of over 60 people were mostly friends and family of the newly-formed troupe, they sure seemed to enjoy themselves.

Starting out the evening with a free-form game called Freeze, the troupe showed off their quick-thinking with high energy and lots of twists. Even though this was the troupe's first show, they displayed a level of trust that comes from lots of rehearsal time. And they were obviously having fun.

After the free-for-all Freeze, two performers, Viola Horne (that's me!) and Dan Lannin, the troupe's founder, took the stage for a round of That Darn Bell, a game where the performers act out a scene but the MC, in this case, Marc Lowe, can ring a bell and the performer must change the last line uttered. This game evolved into very funny scene involving mother-in-laws and the Grand Canyon.

Other memorable games included Scott Nowlin, Vivian Magruder, and Jeremy Goodall in Three-Headed Genius, a team of three performers, uttering one word at a time,who make up one wacky expert, Lowe and Goodall in Movie Director where the director, in this case Dan Lannin, gets to yell cut and add a layer to the already zany scene, and Clue, where performers act out a scene from a murder, one at a time, to three "detectives" who have been waiting off-stage, the gimmick being that the charade time gets cut in half for each additional detective and the only words are in gibberish. Story, Story, Die was a hilarious game where each member of the troupe got to tell a story until the director unexpectedly pointed to another performer, who had to pick up in mid-sentence, or even mid-word, to finish the story line without making a mistake. Nowlin and Zack Harris, the troupe's youngest member, kept the story alive and the pace competitive.

The energy was high, the scenes hilarious, and the audience responsive. Pike's Perk employees were pleasantly surprised by the sheer number and the amount of laughter coming from it's upstairs loft. They said it was a record for a Friday night performance. Hopefully, it will be the start of a long run for Improv Colorado.

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