Electricity filled the WestCo Café before the first deathmatch of the year at Wesleyan, which turned out not to be a deathmatch at all, but a harmonious dual improv show featuring Desperate Measures and New Teen Force. Despite the false advertising, a huge crowd filled the intimate space, generating an animated atmosphere.
“I’m excited,” said Jack Reilly ’07 before the event. He was not only a spectator but a member of New Teen Force. He riled up the crowd by personally greeting everyone at the doorway before the show.
The night commenced with Desperate Measures taking the stage and performing a rehearsed song and dance routine with “gay people dance” as the main lyrics. It was a good way to pump up the crowd for the rest of the night’s events.
Desperate Measures then started the real improv with a game where one central idea was played out in two scenes across town. The audience responded with occasional rounds of thunderous laugher. The group members did not laugh too often, but sometimes jokes from the other members were so funny that even the performers couldn’t help breaking out into a small chuckle.
The next game, titled “One to Five,” started out with one performer acting out a scene that took place in the jungle, a suggestion from the audience. One by one, each member of Desperate Measures jumped on stage, each time creating a new scene inspired by the body positions of the previous one. Once it reached five performers, they exited the scene in the opposite order they entered, returning to the previous skit each time. The concept baffled many of the audience members, but the performers did a great job with the most complex game of the night and never seemed to slip up.
After that, they requested three lines from the audience for a new game. The first line, “When I woke up this morning I found a condom in my vomit,” began the two-person skit. The second suggestion had to be used once, and the scene had to end with the third line given by the audience. The resulting skit evolved into a mother teaching her daughter about sex in odd ways, like adding condoms into her vomit and dildos on her playground. The audience especially liked this skit, and the interesting path to its predetermined final line, “I absolutely love horseshoes.”
For the last game, Max Goldblatt ’05 narrated slides posed by the rest of the group members from his son’s bris, a Jewish circumcision ceremony that happens to males eight days after they are born. The rest of the group fell into bizarre poses as Goldblatt was given the difficult job of creating some sort of story from each slide. One slide consisted of the young boy recovering quickly after his bris, to the shock and surprise of the rest of the party including his crazy sister, who was on the outskirts of most of the slides.
After this game Desperate Measures exited and New Teen Force jumped, danced and rolled on stage to live drum music. They started out their portion of the show by showing off their new temporary tattoos, including one on Jon Golbe ’06’s butt.
They performed free form long form improv skits, working from one central idea and continuously coming up with new improvised skits.The original idea came from the audience and the subsequent skits often followed a plot line, though some were for quick laughs.
Their story lines varied from a child molester being accepted into the neighborhood to re-enacting parts of childhood and school days.
“New Teen Force was able to come up with tons of situations and plot lines from only one idea given by the audience,” said Julia Kessler ’08.
The night ended with Desperate Measures coming back on stage to join New Teen Force in a rousing game entitled “Butt Fuck.”
This game consisted of one performer being the butt while the audience screamed out famous personalities that ranged from Elvis to Golbe. The members of the groups enacted butt fucking the famous personality with gestures, words and facial expressions. This joint endeavor got the warmest welcome from the audience and ended a hilarious night of comedy.
“[I like the idea of] a night of improv,” Julia Cheng ’08. “I love how they worked together at the end,” said
All and all, the combination was a huge success and lacked any traces of a death match, the only disappointment of the night.
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