“Itty-Bitty Improvathon” draws around 30 audience members for show, includes improv games

From left to right: (Back row) Mason Lockwood, Sarah Stepp, Claire Horacek, Joshua Nikodym, Chipper Banks. (Front row) Jason Church, Mi-Ree Zwick.

Photo credit: Dylan Buechler

By Dylan Buechler

The Curtain Club’s Itty-Bitty IMPROVathon on Saturday night brought students and community members to the Janzow Campus Center for a student-cast improv show and other audience-involved games. Curtain Club President junior Jason Church said the event from 7 to 11 p.m. was a new version of an improv event hosted every fall semester.

The cast planning a scene. Photo: Dylan Buechler.

“The Itty-Bitty IMPROVathon is a shortening of what we usually do in the fall, where we do a Mini-IMPROVathon that goes from 7 p.m. Friday night to 1 a.m. Saturday morning,” Church said. “But there wasn’t really a weekend that lined up well, and we still wanted to do a long improv night.”

He said that limited building hours moved the IMPROVables from their usual location in the Borland Center’s Black Box Theatre to the Janzow Campus Center. “Because Janzow is open 24 hours, we are able to be up here as long as we want,” he said.

The games played by the cast during the show were Two-Line Vocab, Timeline, Oscar-Worthy Moment, Hand of Midas, and Happily-Ever-After.

Junior Nathan Sollberger was picked out of the audience to participate in a round of the Two-Line Vocab game. He had fun participating, but he said his favorite part of the show was seeing freshmen participate.

“It was cool to see a couple of freshmen that I know better really getting into it,” said Sollberger. “Like one of them in particular, Mason [Lockwood], I’ve gotten to know him over the semester. It’s cool to see some of the freshmen starting to become their own, really fit into the roles and be confident, you know. Confidence is an issue that a lot of people have, but to see them perform while they’re confidently and creatively becoming their own person through that, it was pretty cool.”

Sophomore Emma von Kampen participated in improv for the first time, and she said she enjoyed watching the show and participating in the games.

“I loved it, I thought it was fun,” she said. “This was my first time doing stuff in the scenes. It was a little scary, but it ended up being really fun.”

The audience gathered for the first hour show. Photo: Dylan Buechler.

Nancy Stepp, who is sophomore Sarah Stepp’s mother and a Lincoln resident, attended the event and recounted her favorite game from the show.

“I think the scene where they had to do a certain line, and they could only say certain words [for Two-Line Vocab], that was my favorite,” she said.

Nancy Stepp said she enjoys bringing other community members along to IMPROVables and other Concordia events.

“When I’m coming for Christmas at Concordia, I’m bringing a friend from town,” she said. “And the Wind Symphony concert a week ago, Professor Cody’s grandparents live in Lincoln, so I brought them to come to the concert.”

The cast of the improv show was junior Jason Church, junior Sarah Stepp, junior Claire Horacek, junior Mi-Ree Zwick, junior Joshua Nikodym, sophomore Chipper Banks and freshman Mason Lockwood. Around 30 people attended the hour-long show, with more students trickling in to play games later that night.

The Curtain Club holds improv nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 to 10 p.m.