UMW Comedy Troupe to Improvise Again

By Danielle Velardi

It’s 10 p.m. on Thursday when a table of diners breaks into a rendition of “The Island of Misfit Toys.”  The musical patrons are UMW’s improv comedy team, The Undeniably Adjacent. Such outbursts—in this case a song from the Disney movie “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—are characteristic of the club’s weekly meeting.
The group’s first show of the semester will be this Friday, Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. in Combs 139 with no admission fee.
The show will be broken into three 30-minute sets, each based on a one-word suggestion from the audience. Ben Vigeant, class of ’08, started the group four years ago. The group has held auditions for new members every fall since the group’s inception.
Vigeant began The Undeniably Adjacent four years ago, and since then the troupe had held open auditions every fall semester in order to attract new members.  They come from different backgrounds, many of which do not involve prior experience in comedy.
Junior Kyle Dratwa, the club’s co-director, said he had never considered comedy before coming to UMW. Now, Dratwa said that he has discovered a love for comedy and performance arts.
“Improv comedy is one of the best ways [to get] into performance arts,” Dratwa said.
“Shy is not a word I would use to describe myself,” sophomore member Rachael Wonderlin explains. “Some members of the group are definitely quieter than others, but when we get on stage everything just clicks.”
Melissa Falkenstern, a  senior who is co-director of the club and the only remaining original member, said “You just need a good sense of humor, and you have to be comfortable in your own skin.” She then added,  “There is not one type of personality [in the troupe].”
Falkenstern said she plans to go on to graduate school for psychology after this year and hopes to find some way to keep up with improv comedy.