“I torched a bakery, for sure. Never considered bakeries beautiful, myself. They’re cesspools of human society.”
That was one of many lines from the Blank Slate improv team that had me smothering laughs so that I wouldn’t disturb their process.
I felt like I was intruding on a secret gathering in the prop-laden improv practice room. From my scratched-up leather armchair in the corner, I watched the team practice in the space between five couches that framed the room. The couches, dusty and floral with cushions that had sunken in the middle, looked like they had been looted from my great grandmother’s attic.
“Pick a seat, Sam, but choose wisely,” senior computer science major Caleb Adkins said as I came in, indicating the comical number of seats I had to choose from.
When even their furniture made me laugh, I knew I was in for a fun evening. Cardboard and wood theater sets lined the walls behind the grandma couches, and suspicious stains (coffee? paint?) littered the green carpet at my feet.
They were having fun, and from my spot in the corner I felt like I was having fun with them. I was experiencing a form of escapism even in the practice room; that environment was cultivated by the team.
The first Blank Slate show I attended was during Union University’s Scholars of Excellence weekend. College and high school students filled every seat in the chapel. The team stood elevated on a stage with spotlights pooled around their feet and a full audience at their disposal. After having survived another difficult week, I settled into the seat beside my roommate and let the comedic escapism settle my problems for an hour or two.
That craving for reverie was the only similarity between my first improv show and this practice. Tonight, I was not part of the audience. I was the audience.
Even in PAC D-8, the improv team played through their games the same way they would in the intimidating chapel scene. It looked like kids playing pretend but more grown up somehow. They reminded me of when I would play with my siblings in the living room floor. At the same time, they were an intentionally structured group.
After each interaction, they analyzed: where were you in the scene? Who were you? What was your relationship to each other? They acknowledged where their scene dragged, and they talked through it together.
They paused to be certain they were on the same page in the scene, but they didn’t need to. They stepped into the middle of the room, and without discussing it beforehand, they seemed to step into the same scene together.
“[During call-backs] we try to get them in games to see how they mesh with the team,” Adkins, captain of Blank Slate, said about their process of choosing a new member. “And Matt Randall was the shining star of it all.”
Although 23 people came to the first audition, the improv team seemed to know in short time who would make it to the finish line. Matt Randall, a sophomore film studies major, is the newest member of Blank Slate Improv.
“After [the last] audition,” Randall said, “they emailed me the same night and told me I’d been accepted.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “So you just kind of knew right away?”
“Yeah, yeah. They emailed me like, an hour afterwards. It was great,” Randall said.
He seemed to fit in without a hitch. You could tell me that Randall has been on the team for years, and I would say, “Oh, yeah. You’re right. Matt has always been here.”
“Call-backs ended,” Adkins said, laughing, “and we all looked at each other like, ‘Okay, so Matt, right?’ There were a bunch of really phenomenal people at call-backs as well, but I think Matt stood out as somebody we really wanted on the team.”
Watching Randall interact with the rest of the improv team brought me back to that sense of escapism. For two hours at the end of a long day, I could laugh as the team “sat” in an “office,” standing on tiptoe to talk to each other over their “cubicles” (a scene Adkins later described as “so much fun”). For the stressed college student, a sanctioned 2-hour laughing spell is cathartic.
“[Improv] made me really nostalgic,” Randall gestured as though to describe a scene on the table between us. “[Everyone] tells you, ‘Do your best but just have fun.’ Improv is the only thing where that’s true.”
“I enjoy how cohesive we are,” Adkins said, describing the Blank Slate team. “Doing improv with them has been such a joy. They’re so kind and cooperative, and we all communicate so well at this point. It’s been great to have their friendship in that regard, even outside of improv.”
Follow Blank Slate Improv on Instagram @blankslateimprov to see their upcoming show dates.
