By Claire Wallace, news staff
Comedy group NU & Improv’d took to the stage in AfterHours Tuesday night for an hour of sketch comedy and fast-paced banter centered around the theme “Spring Fling.”
Tamara Knell, a third-year theatre and film production double major, has been a member of the troupe for the last two years and performed in the Spring Fling show.
“I love it,” Knell said. “It’s what I want to do. My favorite part about performing is the adrenaline. It’s just fun. I love making people laugh.”
Throughout the evening, the troupe engaged the audience by taking suggestions of words, locations and celebrities to use as a basis for their skits. At one point, they even called an audience member onto the stage, where they proceeded to interview her about her life and went on to act it out.
The group started the evening by asking members of the audience to shout out two letters and used the suggestions to create fake movie titles that they then acted out. Titles included “Ice-cream Sunday” and “Cool Bros.”
“I thought it was really funny,” said Sheli Goldstein, a first-year undeclared student. “It was also a good de-stressor from all of the work.”
The improv troupe performs every month in AfterHours and invites other student groups and clubs to come to their shows.
“They came to perform at a club I’m in before and they were pretty good, so I decided I would check them out again,” said Madeline Cohen, a first-year psychology major.
NU & Improv’d performed old classics they do at every show, such as the bit “Sex With Me” in which audiences members call out words and the team compares them to sex. This skit seemed to be a crowd favorite: both Cohen and Goldstein said it was their favorite part.
The group ended the show by doing a 15-minute freeform skit based on two words given to them at the beginning.
Christian Miller, a third-year business administration major who has been on the team for two years, said that he thinks his group excels at longer-form acts.
“We have the most fun with that because the sort of improv that we like to do is discovery improv,” Miller said. “We kind of just figure things out as we go along.”
That seemed to be a consensus for most of the members of the team.
“I like the montages,” said Knell. “The kind of freeform improv that we played at the end is my favorite.”
NU & Improv’d Spring Fling, which filled every seat in AfterHours, was also used as an advertisement to get students to buy tickets for the “Improv Beanpot.” The tournament, happening at Blackman Auditorium April 8, will feature teams from Boston University, Suffolk University and Northeastern. The team gave a convincing plug for the event at the end of their performance and based on the excitement from the audience, their next performance will likely be a popular one.
