With the riff of a piano, four comedians excitedly ran onto the stage of the Shapiro Campus Center Theater. On Saturday night, Improv Boston, an improvisational theater company based in Cambridge, came to campus to put on a hilarious comedy show. The show was hosted by Student Events and was well-attended by an equally excited crowd. The troupe played several games that engaged members of the audience, either by asking for ideas from the crowd or by calling up volunteers to the stage. The performance had the audience laughing from start to finish.

In one of the first games, the troupe asked four student volunteers to come on stage and sit in a row of chairs. The point of the game was for the members of the troupe to tell a story and ask the volunteers one by one to finish sentences from the story with the first thing that came to their mind. For inspiration for the theme of the story, Corey O’Rourke, a member of the troupe, asked the audience for something they could buy for $100 or less. The first answer that an audience member screamed out was “drugs!” to which the audience laughed and O’Rourke humorously responded to by saying, “young man, come talk to me after this show!” After asking again, they received the answer “a really small library” and made that the theme of the story. After several hilarious on-the-spot responses from the volunteers throughout the course of the story, O’Rourke ended the game by exclaiming to the audience “this is what happens when you take drugs.”

One of the most popular games from the show involved two student volunteers joining with three of the troupe members. The participants stood in a line at the front of the stage and, despite being five people, were supposed to be portraying one person — a doctor. In the game, each participant could only say one word at a time, and so had to finish each other’s sentences. Per the crowd’s suggestions, the doctor’s name was Dr. Planet and he was an expert on trees. The audience asked questions about trees for the “doctor” to answer. The entire crowd seemed entertained as the five participants humorously attempted to answer their questions using only one word at a time. A running joke throughout the game was that Rosena Cornet, another of the troupe members, had trouble thinking of words on the spot and would attempt to end every sentence by simply saying “Trees!” 

Toward the end of the show, Improv Boston decided that they wanted to prove to the audience that everything they were doing on stage was truly improvised. To do this, they got the initials of two audience members — L and R — and each member had to come up with the name of a game starting with those initials and make up the rules for the game. 

It was very impressive how quickly the members of the troupe were able to come up with imaginary games. The troupe asked the audience to vote for which game they would actually play and the game that won was entitled “Looney Rascals.” The game saw the troupe portraying a skit in a Jell-O factory—per the audience’s request when the troupe asked them for a location in which they could find lots of mischief. Whenever a member of the troupe rang a bell and shouted “Looney Rascals!” the troupe sang about what was happening as opposed to acting it out.

The group ended the show with pick-up lines about objects, which of course, were suggested by members of the crowd. It was spectacular how quickly they were able to produce such hilarious lines. Some of the most memorable lines were about a pebble — “Are you a pebble? ‘Cause I’m gonna skip you,” a microwave — “Are you a microwave? ‘Cause I want to push all of your buttons,” and a trampoline — “Are you a trampoline? ‘Cause you look way more fun than you are.” To conclude their performance, the troupe asked the crowd to describe their college experience in a short sentence, to which a student shouted “really bad food!” The group then proceeded to sing a humorous song about bad food. 

Improv Boston was an absolute delight. Through their humor, along with the participation of several audience members, they managed to put on an extremely memorable show.