Thud
“Oh my God!” Jimmy Murray yells when landing on the ground after taking a soar through the air, weightless for a moment.
“Reverse!” the referee, Philip Boyne, calls.
The rules of the game require Murray to replay his actions backwards.
A moment’s pause.
“Forward!” Boyne calls.
Murray’s size ten feet paddle against the floor, slide through the air and land again as he says “Oh my God!”
Murray, a junior in marketing and film, said he was like a “little packet of energy,” during the improvisational exercise.
“I went light on [Murray]. I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to injure [Murray].'” Boyne said. Boyne is a sophomore in physics, and is also president of Comedic Improvization Alliance, an improv club on campus.
John Fowler, a junior in computer science, said he was amazed Murray did not get hurt during that stunt.
“I know how to fall,” Murray said.
Murray, Boyne and Fowler, along with Andrew Williams and Travis Pomeroy, participate in CIA and work at ComedyWorx.
In the beginning
According to Pomeroy, a senior in electrical and computer engineering, he started doing stand-up at 14. The location: wherever his mom would drive him on a Saturday night. He even won a few talent shows. He took the workshops at ComedyWorx because he “just wanted to get involved in it.”
Fowler decided to get involved with ComedyWorx after what he said was “a divine intervention.” He was having dinner at the Taco Bell in Talley one night. He got up and left his table for a minute. When he returned, a flier for ComedyWorx had “magically appeared” on his tray.
Fowler then took the workshops, and unlike Pomeroy, he was able to attend them for free.
When Williams, a senior in history, started improv comedy, he was used to scripted performances. He was the lead in a musical that “was incredibly serious.”
“I got into improv because I thought it looked like it would be fun,” Williams said.
The humor starts here
“My mom’s probably got the best sense of humor I’ve ever seen,” Fowler said.
Fowler and his mother would joke around when he was growing up, and that stemmed him wanting to be involved in comedy.
“Lately, ‘Arrested Development’ really does trip my trigger,” Fowler said. “It’s a lot of word play, which is something I’ve been trying to do lately.”
They all enjoy watching “Arrested Development,” but it is just one of many influences.
Murray said he has been influenced in part by Wayne Brady, because like Brady he tries to combine his love of music and improv.
Pomeroy, however, finds inspiration elsewhere.
“My grandma is the funniest old lady I’ve ever met,” Pomeroy said.
He said he had a conversation with her “last weekend” about picking up women “and she was trying to give [him] hints.”
The inside look
“People can get very upset in the improv world,” Fowler said. “It shouldn’t be that way. Improv is a happy thing.”
According to Williams, though, “no matter what you’re doing, you’re going to have egos.”
Fowler said improvisers have large egos because they are insecure about their material. They are constantly making up material on the spot, and are always worried it isn’t going to be funny.
He said it would be great if an improviser’s characters were decided “by the food they ate that day.”
Pomeroy’s characters would be “very crunchy, very hard and crisp. They knew who they were in life, and there’s nothing you could do in life to change them unless you mashed them into a creamy substance called peanut butter…and a doctor of pepper.”
Pomeroy said he has a tendency to talk in an Italian accent and blames it on his love for Italian food.
When Fowler asks him if he has a girlfriend, Pomeroy draws an improv tear on his face. Boyne jumps out of his chair, races over to Pomeroy and begins to rub his shoulders in support.
“I trust that whenever I cry [Boyne] is there to be by my side,” Pomeroy said.
Stealing characters is a common activity in comedy, according to the group.
According to Pomeroy, “there are so many cool people at ComedyWorx that if you did steal one of their characters and you told them, ‘I stole your character. What are you going to do about it?'”
“Their reaction would be, ‘Well, don’t suck at it,'” Fowler said.
Pomeroy said people tend to believe the people working at ComedyWorx “must be wise-cracking 24-7.” However, when a person joins the team, they say “these guys are boring.”
“They do nothing but crossword puzzles before the show,” Pomeroy said.
Pomeroy said he has a reputation at ComedyWorx of using “cuss words like commas in grammatical sentences.”
Fowler and Pomeroy agree that Pomeroy has “sexual turrets.” Meaning he “talks about females” in senses that may not be deemed appropriate.
“But I mean well,” he said.
Boyne said that the players can go from being crude backstage and then put on “a spanking clean show.” He thinks the reason they can do a clean show is because they are dirty offstage.
“It gets it out,” he said.
“It’s harder to keep it clean, to keep it out of that gray area, and it’s more fun,” Pomeroy said. “The more challenging it is, the more fun it is overall.”
“Improv is the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Fowler said.
Williams thinks every professor should be required to take improv classes because “it would make them all a lot more interesting.”
“So many people out there don’t think of being engaging like that,” Williams said.
Fowler exhibited his signature bit, which is getting up and storming out of a room like he is mad.
“I stole the bit,” Fowler said.
“I would say the bit is rightfully yours, at least in the circle of CIA,” Boyne said.
Pomeroy said Fowler leaving the room gives him a sense of power, but Fowler insists that is not his intention.
The balance beam
Balancing ComedyWorx and the everyday requirements of being a student can be tough. According to Pomeroy, his teachers would say he ignores school. Williams, though, is only taking 12 hours, so he balances it “fairly well.”
Others sacrifice the social aspect of college life, such as Boyne, who said he dropped his social life completely.
“Our social life is each other while we’re at the club,” Fowler said. “It’s very addictive, especially when you first start.”
He spends about 21 to 25 hours a week at ComedyWorx.
Pomeroy said he believes that it is all about managing one’s time.
Fowler pointed out that Pomeroy is “signing up for almost every show for a month… because it’s great.”
While they all want to do improv either professionally or for recreation after graduation, they realize they are “not pioneers of this,” according to Williams.