Shouts echoed from the Blackbox Theater Friday, March 20, but it was no cause for concern; instead, it was the Drama Queen’s first improv show of the year. March 16-20 was Arts Week, organized by the Archer Council of Artists, featuring exhibits in every medium, from photography to ceramics to an a cappella performance by the University of Chicago Ransom Notes.
To conclude this week, the Drama Queens put on an improv show to showcase performing arts at Archer. Stella Leland (’26) said they were looking forward to putting on an unconventional show.
“We decided on doing improv so it could be a little more interactive, like a lot of the other art classes’ exhibits have been this week,” Leland said. “We practiced coming up with scenes on the spot. The actual lines we’re saying are definitely not planned at all, but the different categories of improv or different ways of starting a scene we planned, and we practiced those.”
Improv, or improvisational theater, requires actors to create stories with original dialogue, characters and settings. Juliet Lukas (’27) said the Drama Queens had been practicing various improv activities in classes leading up to the performance, and if she had not practiced this skill, she would not have felt as confident during the performance.
“We’ve just been doing a lot of improv exercises in class, and we’ve done multiple different ones to narrow down what we’ll do today,” Lukas said. “Since it’s improv, we don’t prepare for it, so we act on the spot, and it’s really fun because in these improv scenes, you don’t really know what’s going to happen.”
The group performed multiple types of improv, including an alphabet improv activity, in which each actor had to say a line that started with the sequential letters of the alphabet. Another activity had actors pick up prewritten sticky notes with random scenarios throughout their scene.
(Photo credit: Phoebe Casparian)
KJ McPherson (’26) emceed the event and dealt with controlling the audience. For many of the improv activities, she asked viewers to come up with a scenario or relationship for the other Drama Queens to act out. Prior to the show, Leland described the overall plan for each scene.
“There will be a few different improv exercises, and different people will be doing different scenes,” Leland said. “Some of them require a bit of audience participation, and some require a little more, like writing lines to give to the actors without any previous knowledge. They just have to work it into the scene on the spot, but there are a few different variations, a few different prompts that we’ll have. Hopefully they all go well.”
Although she said it can be scary to act in front of an audience, especially in her first year as a member of the Drama Queens, Phoebe Gustafson (’27) said how her peers perform impacts how she performs.
“Improv is pretty fun, as long as you’re comfortable with the people you’re doing it with and confident that they can listen,” Gustafson said, “and you, as a group, are able to listen to each other’s ideas and build off of them, rather than trying to dominate the improvised storyline.”
Gustafson said she’s noticed the audience loving it when she acted with an accent or incorporated current news into her improv scenarios. Although she said improv is not always easy, she trusts her castmates to have her back no matter what scenario she comes up with.
“It is a little bit nerve-wracking, just because you have to make everything up, but it’s also always fun, because I’m doing it with these people,” Gustafson said. “I’m in class with these people who are friends of mine, and that I think gives me confidence, because I trust everyone — and it also spreads to the audience. When I know it’ll be clear that we’re having a good time, I think that will shine through, and the audience will be able to have a good time as well.”
