Speech Students Take their Improv Skills to the Public
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Improv members Kelly Scherbring (12), Emily LaRosa (12), Adam Andregg (11), and Ben Litterer (12) act out an Improv in which they discover “Grocery Heaven” staffed by Olivia Neuzil (11), playing as “Hey-sus.”
You’re walking down the freezer aisle of Walmart when all of a sudden you hear two high schoolers playing Marco Polo in the baked goods section. That’s when you feel a tap on your shoulder. You spin around to find a high school girl carrying way too many carrots. She asks you if you have any carrot recipes. Suddenly, a teenage boy asks you how many Kardashians there are.
It may sound like mayhem, but it’s what went down on Nov. 20 in Manchester’s local Walmart.
West Delaware’s Improv team, under the direction of Tina Ostrander, was sent to Walmart to people watch.
“They went out for thirty minutes, were assigned aisles, and told to interact appropriately with people,” said Coach Tina Ostrander. The whole goal of the night was to watch people, to develop characters and, in the end, to mimic the absurd reactions that the students received from people.
In order to get these reactions, the students were told to act out of the ordinary.
Junior Adam Andregg walked straight to the meat aisle, grabbed a fifty dollar brisket, and proceeded to ask anyone near if it was okay for a vegan to eat it. This drew strange looks from other shoppers.
Junior Olivia Neuzil went to the frozen section to buy ice cream, but then she realized she didn’t have enough money. “I looked at the whipped cream, and I was like, ‘$1.25? That’s doable,’” said Neuzil. The lady at the counter gave the junior a weird stare as she opened the whipped cream immediately after purchasing it. Neuzil proceeded to stroll about the store, eating the whipped cream by using the lid as a giant spoon.
After the thirty minutes, the students were instructed to return to the school, where Ostrander was waiting with improv situations.
According to senior Emily La Rosa, the Improv members acted similar to the people they saw in Walmart, mimicking the “body movements of a young child, an old man, or a worker who hates his life.”
Ostrander believes the students developed some different characters that improv students will use at future district and state speech competitions.
I am Tyler Salow and I am a Senior. I'm also the Webmaster of the Inklings, and no, that does not mean I am a spider. I am also involved in anything that...