Comedy show makes students laugh
PDF Lauren Barnes, Assistant News Editor
Jeremy Ledger, Contributed to this story
Lewis University students can always use a good laugh here and there between the academic school year and extracurricular activities. Over the summer, Kristin Schumacher, Director of Student Development and Leadership asked the student workers in the SORC office: “What would students like to do or see?”
Colleen Hennessy, a graduate assistant and supervisor for SORC, and Sophia Barakat, a supervisor and student worker for SORC, stumbled upon a company called Laugh out Loud on the Internet.
“We went on YouTube to look them up, and we started laughing,” Barakat said. “Then we realized if we started laughing at these comedian actors, then how could the other students not? We also looked at their great ratings and spoke with one of the company’s agents, who was amazing at answering all of our questions. So we gave them a shot in coming to Lewis and to entertain the students for a good laugh.”
Laugh out Loud has a home theater in Schaumburg, right outside of Chicago, and they have been there for five years now. They have around 30 actors who go by the group name “Chicago Comedy Company.” The different actors rotate doing shows in the theater and gigs on the road. With the shows on the road, there isn’t a certain time limit, because they can do performances anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours or even longer. It all depends on what the customer wants.
“Most of our shows are all improvisation,” said Sayjal Joshi, one of the comedian actors from the Comedy Game Show night. “We do games, and there is structure within the improv, but all of the action in the show is improvised, and we also use some of the audience members as volunteers.”
Some of the improv shows, to name a few, were the spelling bee, marshmallow storytelling and rap battling. The spelling bee involved three student volunteers. The students were on one side of the stage, and the actors and one instructor were on the other. The instructor would ask the audience for hard words relating to certain topics, but neither side got through any of the words the audience shouted out.
During the marshmallow storytelling, the audience gave the actors a topic. If they couldn’t keep the story going, a marshmallow would be shoved in their mouth and they had to try to continue the story.
Finally, the rap battle was probably the most popular, based on the audience reaction. The audience gave the actors topics to rap about, and one was eliminated each round until there was only one actor left. There were many more shows and plenty of action involved in all of the improvisation throughout the night.
The Comedy Game Show on Sept. 7 was definitely a “Laugh out Loud” experience for all the students present.
About the Author
Lauren Barnes is the Assistant News Editor for the Flyer. She is a fourth year student majoring in Multimedia Journalism and Radio/TV Broadcasting with a minor in Public Relations. Barnes hopes to break into the entertainment industry writing about celebrity news.
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