The Saint Mary's Student Government Association (SGA) hosted a performance by The Humor Artists, a tri-campus comedy group, Monday night, which included four Saint Mary's students.
Ashley Chaveriat, president of SGA and a performer with The Humor Artists, shared that the improv group's work is divided into two categories: short-form work that's done entirely on the spot and longer segments that take around a week to prepare.
“For short form, we prepare nothing. We just play games and we assign who's going to be in the games, but what we say is completely up to the audience,” Chaveriat said.
Chaveriat added that the long-form team is audition based.
Saint Mary’s students described what initially made them interested in joining The Humor Artists.
“I came to a Humor Artist show at Saint Mary's when I was a sophomore and thought, ‘This is so funny and I want to be doing that,’” senior Caroline Dutton said.
Freshman Genevieve Le Leux, who participated in improv as a kid, shared that she saw the opportunity to join the group advertised at the Saint Mary's club fair.
Dutton shared that the group does improv shows around once a month in Washington Hall and also performs in dorms. She added that the group creates a show with pre-written and rehearsed sketches each spring and fall.
Monday's performance consisted of a variety of skits, during which the artists developed scenarios individually or together, incorporating engagement from the audience. Audience members were frequently asked to choose the genre of the skits, which included romance and drama.
Pick-up and break-up lines were also frequently incorporated into the skits, such as a health-themed line, “Hey girl, I think I’m sick. I need you to nurse me back to health,” delivered by Dutton.
Dutton shared that the group also performs games called “stand-then-delivers,” which she referred to as “STDs.” Topics for the games on Monday included history and video games centered around sometimes explicit themes such as “what is sex life?”
Describing these games further, Chaveriat said, “We played a bunch of different games today, scene painting, cut to that and four square are our notorious ones that we play often. Then we have another moderator after we play the ‘STDs.’”
Four square includes a variety of prompts and scenarios done with pairs in a group of four. Two performers are at the front and two in the back, sharing a common phrase with each other.
Performers interacted further with the audience via filler games, during which two audience members were picked to finish a phrase by each artist at random times. Audience members could also volunteer to have their text messages read and used to assist in the skits.
The last game played with all members was “freeze,” which entailed two different actions being picked by audiences for two initial artists to perform. Anytime a different artist wanted to participate, they would clap one of the two performing artists’ hands and replace them, creating a different scenario.
Saint Mary’s performers hoped that seeing improv shows like these would encourage more students to get involved with the group.
“We only have people audition once a year. So, we have our activities fair here and the activities fair at Notre Dame … We want everyone to come up because either they can find out about our shows, and come watch them as an audience member or they can join … Anyone that's hesitant to join, no matter what school you go to, I would just say just do it,” Chaveriat said.
Le Leux shared her hopes that students in attendance were able to take a break from stress at these performances, saying, “I hope the people who came had fun and were able to have a laugh, relieve stress, and then learn about our group as well."
