2008 Woodie Awards
Ubiquitous They delights with new lineup
David Lev
Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: A&E
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Junior Clayton Weller ran up onstage and began dancing around excitedly.
"We're very happy, because you exist!" he screamed excitedly.
And well he should be. Weller's outburst signaled the start of the Ubiquitous They Improv Troupe's show at the Tacoma Actor's Guild. This was one of their first performances of the year, exhibiting some of the interesting new aspects of the troupe.
"We try to make you laugh by making stuff up. But we need your guys' help" Weller explained to the audience.
Audience participation is a large part of how UT works. Before the TAG show, junior Tom Dewey came out and asked audience members to write down lines to be used in a game. This turned out to work very well, as surreal phrases like "What Cheese bricks?" and "I'm addicted to romance novels" caused raucous peals of laughter when they were ably worked into the scene at hand.
Every game played by the troupe involved soliciting suggestions from the audience. Occasionally, the UT member soliciting suggestions combined two suggestions into one, creating such bizarre suggestions as "newspaper grass" or "unicorn Fight Club." The troupe then somehow had to convert the suggestions into almost coherent scenes.
Several of these new scenes were featured in new games, starting this semester. One involved audience members picking plays out of a bag. One player had to read lines from one of the randomly picked plays, while everybody else had to follow stage directions from another play. The effect was incredibly bizarre but remarkably funny.
There were plenty of old games as well. A particular favorite was Newtonian Physics, where one player moves the others around and is the only one that can stop or change the direction of their movements. The effect is incredibly humorous, especially when it results (as it always seems to) in what Weller referred to at the TAG show as "man sandwich."
A lot of UT's humor revolved around homoerotic humor. This is somewhat normal, as improv is a very physical form of theater, and the current troupe is mostly male. Man-to-man collision is therefore fairly frequent. Several UT members even intentionally incorporate homoeroticism into their comedic style.
"We're very happy, because you exist!" he screamed excitedly.
And well he should be. Weller's outburst signaled the start of the Ubiquitous They Improv Troupe's show at the Tacoma Actor's Guild. This was one of their first performances of the year, exhibiting some of the interesting new aspects of the troupe.
"We try to make you laugh by making stuff up. But we need your guys' help" Weller explained to the audience.
Audience participation is a large part of how UT works. Before the TAG show, junior Tom Dewey came out and asked audience members to write down lines to be used in a game. This turned out to work very well, as surreal phrases like "What Cheese bricks?" and "I'm addicted to romance novels" caused raucous peals of laughter when they were ably worked into the scene at hand.
Every game played by the troupe involved soliciting suggestions from the audience. Occasionally, the UT member soliciting suggestions combined two suggestions into one, creating such bizarre suggestions as "newspaper grass" or "unicorn Fight Club." The troupe then somehow had to convert the suggestions into almost coherent scenes.
Several of these new scenes were featured in new games, starting this semester. One involved audience members picking plays out of a bag. One player had to read lines from one of the randomly picked plays, while everybody else had to follow stage directions from another play. The effect was incredibly bizarre but remarkably funny.
There were plenty of old games as well. A particular favorite was Newtonian Physics, where one player moves the others around and is the only one that can stop or change the direction of their movements. The effect is incredibly humorous, especially when it results (as it always seems to) in what Weller referred to at the TAG show as "man sandwich."
A lot of UT's humor revolved around homoerotic humor. This is somewhat normal, as improv is a very physical form of theater, and the current troupe is mostly male. Man-to-man collision is therefore fairly frequent. Several UT members even intentionally incorporate homoeroticism into their comedic style.
Be the first to comment on this story