Improv Troupe to Perform Friday

Mary Washington’s one and only improve comedy troupe, The Undeniably Adjacent, will host their first show of the semester Friday in Combs 139. As always, the troupe will perform three 30-minute long-form comedy sets. Each set will start with a one-word suggestion from the audience and build from there.

“Beginning this Friday, every other Friday we’ll do three shows a night for free based on an audience suggestion,” troupe director senior Kyle Dratwa said.

Long-form improve comedy is a brand of unrehearsed sketch comedy that builds off an audience member’s one-word suggestion. By the end of the show, the sketches usually morph into something entirely separate from the original starting point.

The troupe is using Friday’s show to introduce its three newest members, freshmen Mattson Fields and Chelsea Bicus and junior Elsa Lee. The new members round out the nine-member cast.

“I guess the primary reason we pick cast members is there are certain things you can tell about someone early on,” Dratwa, who has been a member of the troupe since his freshman year, said. “They’re agreeable, not nervous under pressure and good at telling stories.”

The troupe was founded in 2006 and has been performing regularly since its inception. Typically, The Undeniably Adjacent practice four hours a week and do an hour of warm-ups before each show.

“There’s not really anything to rehearse,” Dratwa said. “Either I will just select a word randomly or we just go into it, depending on what we’re doing,” Dratwa said. Before each show, Dratwa said that the troupe eats dinner together and does their warm up.

The longest-standing member of the group, Dratwa said he is drawn back year after year by a love of performing and group camaraderie. “There’s nothing quite like performing in front of an audience,” he said. “You also meet a lot of good people doing it. We’re all friends outside of the troupe.”