In the Westco Café Friday night, the crowd of fans clapped and cheered as the enthusiastic team ran up and took their places. The audience had come not to see your average sports team, but the comedic and witty improv troupe, New Teen Force (NTF).
The team of six launched the show by asking for a topic or, more specifically, “something that’s awesome.” When an audience member responded with “pants,” NTF broke into a skit about a mailman’s uniform that had “flair,” and from there the ideas continued to flow.
The following skit mocked overly supportive parents, taking the concept to a whole new level. The proud parents, portrayed by NTF members Jessica Richman ’04 and Sascha Stanton-Craven ’04, encouraged their daughter, played by Molly Gaebe ’07, to continue to try out for activities she repeatedly failed at, like the school softball team and the Olympic Javelin team, featuring a stellar performance by Jon Golbe ’06 as the human javelin.
“I didn’t do it, but I thought I could!” said Gaebe, eliciting the supportive cheers of her parents.
In a humorous change of events, when Gaebe finally achieved success by persuading McDonalds’ CEO to change the company name to “Happy Burger Place,” Richman and Stanton-Craven reneged their support, forgoing their “Way to Go!” signs for ones that read, “You look fat today!”
NTF also touched on more serious topics, such as cigarettes and divorce. Absurdly comparing nicotine addiction to being forced to build rockets by NASA, NTF poked fun at the tobacco companies and approached smoking in a completely light-hearted manner.
“I’m going to run down to the medical cen- well, obviously I’m not going to run,” said Nate Baumgart ’06 in the skit, while smoking an imaginary cigarette and almost coughing up a lung.
The divorce theme began in a skit featuring Mary Campion ’07 as a daughter trying to break-up her parents, played by Golbe and Gaebe, because all of her friends’ parents were divorced. This positive view of divorce recurred in following skits.
“You get twice as much love because they [parents] don’t love each other,” Richman said in a later skit.
“It [the divorce theme] was funny and sad. It touched home. There’s pain in comedy,” Stanton-Craven said.
A relatively young team, NTF has no juniors, two sophomores- Baumgart and Golbe, and two freshmen- Campion and Gaebe. The two senior members, Richman and Stanton-Craven, work particularly well together resulting from their outside friendship and experience. In one memorable skit, Richman and Stanton-Craven stood on an imaginary corner discussing the risks of STD’s, Special Transportation Diseases.
“I liked it when it was just Sascha and I being dirty sisters, because that’s what we do at home,” Richman said.
According to NTF, the team members were not the only stars in the packed café Friday night.
“The audience was great. They were way responsive. It was great to see new faces out there,” Stanton-Craven said.
“It went well. There was a general electricity in the air,” Golbe said.
As evidenced by their laughter and applause, the audience enjoyed themselves as well.
“It was a lot funnier then I expected it to be, and I’m usually a pretty tough critic about these things,” said Ben Levinger ’07.
Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of the NTF show was the team’s ability to keep jokes running throughout the show. Even though the show consisted of multiple skits, allusions to earlier skits were made, resulting in a cleverly unified performance. Consistent with this unity, the evening ended as it began, with the Post Office and mailmen as a source of inspiration. This time, in addition to the previous “flair,” NTF added Jesus into the equation.
“Neither rain, nor snow, nor hail, nor crucifixion…” Baumgart said, adapting the popular slogan.
From mailmen, to human javelins, to smoking, divorce, STDs and all the way back to mailmen, the NTF comedy improv team treated the excited Westco Café to a night full of laughter.
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