Laughter filled the Black Box Theater today during the final Hairy Details improv performance of the year. Talented actors performed skits and jokes that they created on the spot based on words supplied by the audience. Theatre senior Max Reiter, theatre juniors Matthew Paskiet and Hannah Cairo, theatre sophomores Emma Ridley, Hannah Ostrov, Jay Jennings, Monti Cerabina and Kelly Fleming, theatre freshmen Azure Marné Kordick, Lexi McCain and Maddy Stillman, digital media junior Christopher King and communications junior Bennett Morgan participated in today’s show. It was put together by club sponsor and theatre teacher Brad Bartfield. To prepare, the students practiced improvisation after school.

“People find it odd how we have rehearsals for on-the-spot comedy,” Morgan said. “The rehearsals are about tuning the brain to a certain aptitude of adaptability and flexibility, to think spontaneously and understand where a partner is going with a scene. That’s basically all there is to improv. Each skit was based on improv games the group practiced after school.”

The show started off with the improv game “Tap In.” In this, two actors start a scene based on a word provided by the audience. As the performance goes on, other actors tap in and replace the previous ones, becoming different characters and changing the scene. A story about two people arguing over a banana (the word supplied by the audience) evolved into a tale of purchasing fertilizer, a teenage girl missing her friend’s birthday party and numerous individuals including the Easter Bunny applying for the job of being a fairy godmother.

The next improv game put on was “Story Story Die.” In this one, King, Morgan, Jennings, and Ostro created a story based on three words from the audience. Each would give a line, and if they messed up they had to act out their death at the cause of a fourth word. The audience erupted in laughter as they watched the story of the “Red pasta Shop from North Carolina,” (based on the words North Carolina, pasta, and tomato.) The story was about a pasta maker’s wife Deborah and the misadventures involving her dress that was made of pasta and tomato sauce. In between non sequitur chapters of the story, the actors who slipped up acted out various deaths at the hand of a lamp. Jennings burned to death from the heat, King was electrocuted and Ostrov collapsed from blood loss after cutting off her hand when it was superglued to the lamp. Morgan was the last actor standing.

The third improv game was “Serious Scenes.” Here, two actors started a scene based on the word “schedule”. If one of them elicited laughter from the audience, they were replaced with another actor. The result was a story about a wife who could not accept a month other than January, who had to deal with her husband forgetting her birthday and having affairs with the calendar delivery girl and a woman named April. The actor performing changed every line as the audience erupted in laughter. This was followed by “Sit Stand Kneel,” an improv game where the Reiter, Paszkiet and Ridley alternated between sitting, kneeling and standing. Here the audience roared in laughter as they saw the story of a surfing in the parking lot and super healing powers.

The show concluded with one final improv game, “Armando,” where one actor told a true story and the rest created a skit based on it. Using the word “snow,” Jennings recalled a trip he took to Maine where his father hit a cherry blossom tree with an All-Terrain Vehicle. This birthed a series of skits about Frosty the Snowman, Maine overflowing with snow and spreading over the whole United States, multiple visits to a pizza shop, and a countless number of other skits. The show concluded at lunch’s end, when the performers thanked everyone for coming.

“We got a lot of laughs and that’s always a good thing,” Paszkiet said after the show ended. The show today was the last performance the Hairy Details club is putting on this school year. They will start performing again in the next school year. If you would like to join the club, you can sign up to audition at club rush next school year.