Westfield students hone acting skills through improv league
By Mark Ambrogi
Westfield High School junior Lilly Wessel has performed in theater since she was a little girl.
However, performing in the ComedySportz High School League has been a whole new experience for her this school year. The league features comedy improv competition between teams. Members are awarded points by the audience for the ingenuity and humor.
“I like how none of it is planned and every single match is completely different,” Wessel said. “You have no idea what to expect.”
She said it’s much different than performing in a play or musical.
“It’s a different setting and set of skills,” she said. “It’s fun to experiment with it. I feel like I’ve gotten more bold with my choices on stage and creative with my responses.”
This has also been the first year for senior Jacob Carroll in ComedySportz or any type of acting.
“I love being able to do goofy things on stage and get away with it,” Carroll said. “It’s so much fun. We’re really a family here. I love everybody and love performing. I did ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (in March) and that was a blast.”
Sophomore Alexa Zavaleta also is doing the improv for the first time.
“There are a lot of first-year people but we’ve adapted really nice,” Zavaleta said. “You really feed off the energy from the audience. People don’t really know how hard it is to do it off the top of your head.”
Zavaleta said it helps with her acting.
“It helps you get into character and think about the choices you might make and where scenes can go,” she said.
Junior Cooper Tennent said the experience has absolutely made him a better actor.
“You always come up with different characters and do different things than you’ve ever done before,” he said.
Tennent, who serves as co-captain, is in his third year with the team.
“It’s way different than theater where you go by a script,” he said. “Comedy improv constantly changes and it’s so unpredictable. The audiences’ suggestions really make it exciting. ComedySportz is my favorite, then the musicals and then the plays.”
Junior Jonny Robinson, who played the Beast in “Beauty in the Beast,” is in his second year with the improv group.
“I enjoy the interaction with the crowd and making people laugh,” he said. “This hones your sharpness and quick you are with responses. It helps being less nervous in public.”
The school doesn’t start its ComedySportz competition season until after the March musical since Rhonda Adams, the school’s director of theater, runs both and many of the same performers are in each.
Adams said the tryouts for ComedySportz team are in September.
“We start workshops with the pros at ComedySportz in downtown Indianapolis October through January, every about two weeks,” she said. “Some schools will then start their season at the end of January.”
There are winners in each match, but Adams said it’s more important the audience has fun.
“The competitiveness is to get the audience involved rather than the detached side of when they are watching a play,” she said.
Westfield will have its final ComedySportz match at Center Grove on May 20.
Each match has a referee, who assigns the points with help of the audience.
Fishers High School English teacher Jon Colby, who directed Fishers’ musical “Peter Pan” in March, serves as one of the referees. Colby, who has performed with ComedySportz and Second City in Chicago, runs improv workshops.
“In some rounds, they each play a game and the audience votes on applause,” Colby said. “The audience gets to be final vote. What’s cool is you think the home team is going to get the vote but sometimes the other team knocks it out of the park and the audience (rewards them).”
