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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Something Out of Nothing

A Comedic Community

INstandup

Every Thursday, we create a world out of essentially nothing. All we need is a one-word suggestion. Then, we’re off.

The word is “dingy.”

I decide I’m at home watching television in the basement. I sit on a chair center stage and look wilted. I pretend to blow my nose. I breathe only through my mouth to emulate the voice of a congested 10-year-old.

“I hate having to stay home and watch ‘Madeline’,” I announce to my scene partner, who enters after me.

Now it’s his turn. Who is he to me, this sick kid sniffling in a basement?

He makes a choice. He decides he’s my good friend. He’s upset I can’t play.

I make a choice. His name is Blue Lagoon, and he’s imaginary.

Throughout the show we cut back to see Blue Lagoon and me travel through stages in my character’s life. Our audience follows the pair, laughing at the antics that can be expected from going through one’s life with only an imaginary friend by their side.

Eventually, my character goes off to college and lets her imaginary friend go. The audience whimpers an “aww” as I tell Blue Lagoon the end of our friendship has come.

We share a final embrace, and then he dissolves. It’s heartbreaking, and everyone in the room feels it.

None of us could have predicted the story of Blue Lagoon. It was a something made out of a nothing.

At the beginning of our shows each week, we inform the audience about the temporary nature of improv comedy.

Everything they’re about to see—the whole show, all of the improvised scenes—is created and only exists in this space. They will see it now for the first time ever and then never again.

The same goes for us. At the beginning of the hour, we don’t know where we are going. It’s our job to find the funny in the show as it happens. When we explore a world built by our scene work, we can find the oddities and heighten them together.

However, this requires a great deal of trust in each other as people and players. On stage, you have to be open to every twist, choice and progression. You have to say yes and rely on your scene partners to back you up.

The trust I feel with my improv group is among one of the most magical things I’ve felt. We found it through drills and exercises in practice, playing together in shows and by loving and caring about each other full-time.

But an improv show is an intimate journey for everyone involvedaudience included.

They supply the suggestions that are the marbles in the Rube Goldberg device. The word “sneeze” shoots down a tube and hits the first domino, an inaugural scene in the nurse’s office.

That domino hits the next, and we’re at the zoo. And the next and the next and the next.

Then, we can peek in on the world we make together.

After the show, everyone in the room is made closer by the experience of seeing something born, grow and eventually end. It’s a special, ephemeral thing.

Performing taught me trust, openness, confidence and honesty. I learned to live life the way I exist in scenes: taking each moment as it comes and reacting with emotional truth.

Improv comedy is one of the only collaborative art forms I have ever encountered that can do that.

I am forever grateful for the experiences I have had making somethings out of nothings, and for the people who have helped me make them.

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