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The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Seriously Bent hosts fourth annual ‘Eat My Improv’ show

Seriously Bent, Suffolk’s hilarious and outrageous improv team, hosted their fourth annual “Eat My Improv” competition in the Modern Theatre Saturday.

Captains of the Seriously Bent team, seniors John MacGregor, Stephie Kay, and Zach Barker, were the Master of Ceremonies for the evening. As expected, their chemistry was on point and every time they stepped out on stage to introduce the next group, they always found a way to make people laugh.

The event featured shows from other improv groups from around the Boston area including, Sarah Lawrence’s Feral Christine, Northeastern University’s New and Improv’d, Emerson College’s Stroop Wafel, and a few other groups as well.

All of Seriously Bent’s improv shows are entertaining with their elements of sex, human abnormality, personification, role-playing and storytelling — this event was no exception. It was interesting to see Suffolk students working with students from other schools to put on a show for the Suffolk community.

Courtesy of Seriously Bent Facebook page

Jacki Mancini, a freshman at Suffolk, referred to the show as, “incredibly hilarious and something everyone in high school and older can enjoy.”

“I’ll be honest,” said Mancini, “I’m a real sucker for sexual innuendos. I have to say I liked the group’s content because they know what college kids really laugh at. I liked it when they got the crowd involved; it showed how well they can improv.”

For those who have never been to an improv show, an improv performance is a comedy show that generally works by having people come up on stage and interacting with the audience. The group on stage will ask the guets to shout out things such as verbs and nouns that pop into their heads. The performers choose one of those words and use it as a theme for a skit, an indicator that signals the actors at random to move on to a new skit, or it can have an impact on the type of character being portrayed.

Throughout the show, the audience was constantly laughing and clapping, whether it was at a skit where a father was disciplining his kids for listening to a lying teacher to something as risqué as a doctor fornicating with her patient.

The skits are awkward, crazy, original, and above all they are always different which is exactly what makes improv unique. It does not matter if you’re someone who has never attended an improv show before or has attended a dozen, you will always be enticed to return. The proof lies in the faces of the veteran audience members who are always coming back to see what the improv members have up their sleeves.

Abu-Ghazaleh Yazeed, a freshman said that he has been to a few improv events in the past. He considers the event to be a “good show” and that the event deserves four out of five stars, favoring Sarah Lawrence’s Feral Christine’s witty performance.

Yazeed is not the only one who thinks the show deserves four out of five stars. Eleanor Dungan, another freshman, gave the show the same score. It was Dungan’s first improv event and she said she “enjoyed it” and found it to be “very funny.” Although she enjoyed the overall event, she thought some groups were better than others and that of the performers, Feral Christine was the best group along with Seriously Bent.

As expected, Seriously Bent’s chemistry was on point, and every time they stepped out on stage to introduce the next group, they always found a way to make people laugh and get the audience involved. They even found a way to make people laugh while announcing their win at the New England regionals College Improv Tournament over the summer in June 2014. Due to their win, they are traveling to Chicago to compete on a national level.

To ensure their trip to Chicago goes smoothly the Seriously Bent team needed to raise money, so they hosted an auction during the event. There was an open auction and a silent auction as well. The open auction was for two tickets to Improv Asylum and the crowd loved it. People kept raising their hands to be the lucky bidder to take home the prize.

The auction ended with the tickets selling for fifty dollars, one lucky bidder, and a room full of disappointed fans who lost the auction. Although only one person won the auction, anyone can still see great improv performers at Suffolk for free.

Seriously Bent performs weekly during the semester at 10 p.m. on Thursday nights in the basement of the 150 Residence Hall.

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About the Contributor
Katherine Yearwood, Staff Writer
As a senior at Suffolk University, I major in Communications with a concentration in print journalism and a minor in sociology. I have worked with The Suffolk Journal since 2015. The stories that have been the most electrifying to write are the ones where I am working with people who inspire me or the ones that allow me to call attention to social justice issues on or off of Suffolk's campus.

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Seriously Bent hosts fourth annual ‘Eat My Improv’ show