Last week’s ImprovFest featured 7 schools and spanned the course of 2 nights. On Friday, the schools that performed included George Mason University, George Washington University, and Georgetown’s two teams, the Improv Association and GUerrilla Improv. Saturday night featured New York University, Ohio State University, Duke University, Columbia University, and once again, Georgetown’s Improv Association, the hosts of the event. Each team took a turn on stage and improvised ridiculous, hilarious scenes for the audience.
Improv Fest occurs annually. “It’s something Georgetown’s been doing now since the start of the team in 1995, so it’s part of the tradition and legacy,” Alex Mitchell (COL ‘18), who has been a member of Georgetown’s Improv Association for three years, said. “The main point to doing it is to get to see the other teams, see how they’re doing improv, because every improv troupe does things differently. So it’s an opportunity for us to really actually dive in and see what other schools are doing around the country.”
The Georgetown Voice covered the Saturday show, which featured the non-local schools. Each team performed for about 20 minutes and displayed their different forms of improv, and throughout the different performances, the audience could not stop laughing. There were differences in techniques between the different teams, some going for short-form, which is more focused on games and relies heavily on input from the audience, and others, including Georgetown, doing long-form improv, which focuses on the characters they create and a repeated storyline. In both cases, the performers generally ask the audience for a word to start out with, and have their following skits center around that word.
ImprovFest appears a much more fast-paced show than other improv shows at Georgetown. Because there were multiple teams performing, each team had only 20 minutes to make an impression, and it felt like the audience was more invested with each team for the short time they performed. “The pacing is quite different, the cutting is quite different. When you’re up there for only 20 minutes, energy has to be high, and especially when you’re closing out a show, you are trying to keep everybody with you,” Megan Howell (COL ’17) said, another member of the Improv Association (full disclosure: Howell used to be a member of The Voice). The different groups were definitely able to achieve this high energy between the audience and the performers.
When Georgetown came on last, they were greeted with abundant cheers. Maybe the pressure was on after having to follow so many good teams and to finish out the night, because the GU team finished strongly and were far from overshadowed by the other schools. “One important thing that we like to focus on is maintaining energy with the crowd. So, a really important way of doing that is to cut at the right time, and then to keep the momentum going,” Howell said. The skits were clever and lively, and every single one was met with laughter from the audience.
It was a great night overall, and definitely worth going to see all those schools perform. The show was dynamic, and watching each person on stage try to catch the other members off guard was hilarious. It’s always good to support on-campus performing arts groups, and our Improv team is really talented, so everyone should go watch one of their shows sometime. They’re funny, witty, and energetic, and going to a show is a cheap, fun way of spending a weekend night.
