Bradley’s improv comedy troupe BBQ Kitten performed its first show of the spring semester on Feb. 18 in Neumiller Hall.
The show was titled “Anthony?!” and themed after all people named Anthony. According to Andrew Derdena, troupe president and show host, the theme was a tribute to one of the troupe members, junior Anthony Pollos, who is currently in L.A. for the Hollywood Semester.
The troupe members (referred to as “Kittens”) dressed up as any Anthony of their choice for the show, with some including Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Anthony “Tony” Stark.
The show ran on prompts taken from the audience, and although it was a small group of students, members of the troupe believe they made up for it with energy.
“I felt a lot of energy from both the Kittens and the audience,” Kristin Serena, stage manager of the troupe and a junior theater arts and psychology double major, said. “You could really tell that the audience was having just as much fun as the troupe was.”
The evening consisted of various mini-games with quirky formats, such as “Foursquare,” which had four Kittens rotating in a square with the front two acting out a separate scene, and “Freeze,” where two Kittens acted out scenes with one to the side “freezing” the scene, swapping one of them out, and continuing with a new scene based on how they were positioned.
Two examples of scenes created in the show both featured Gabby McMillan, Kitten and junior industrial engineering major, hitting a cowbell to change the scenario unfolding.
In one case, with two Kittens playing a kid and a Russian nesting doll, they had to switch places between characters and continue the scene where their partner left off. Another case was in the longest mini-game of the show, a five-chapter “movie” about a Bradley tour guide giving a tour to a prospective student and his mother. Here, McMillan paused the scene to give specific Kittens prompts on what their characters should do, including pretend-rewinds of their actions and expressing their feelings via slam poetry or internal monologue.
The show ended with several mini-games played by Kittens standing in a line, including creating pick-up lines for a rhombus and Edward Cullen from “Twilight.”
The show was free to enter but accepted donations outside of the entrance. As stage manager, Serena handles the troupe’s donations as well as general funds and booking spaces for rehearsals and shows. She said “Anthony?!” was an easier show to set up as it did not necessitate shirts (like the troupe’s end-of-year “death” shows) or props (like the troupe’s Halloween shows).
Meredith Drilling-Coren, the troupe’s new vice president, was in charge of making the list of games for the show alongside which Kittens would play – a responsibility normally handled by Derdena.
“This is usually our president’s job, but he asked me to do it this time, which I normally don’t do,” Drilling-Coren, a sophomore theatre performance major, said.
The troupe has two more shows planned for this semester on April 1 and May 3.
“I think as students, it’s really easy to fall into a mundane routine,” Serena said. “[The] same schedule of classes and workload for an entire semester can get pretty draining. Our shows are a great opportunity to break that up, forget about that mid-semester stress and laugh at some fun characters.”
BBQ Kitten holds open rehearsals every Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. in Lydia’s Lounge, or in front of Bradley Hall with weather permitting.
“I love open rehearsals because it really focuses on our motto that ‘anyone can come, anyone can play,’” Serena said.
Derdena stated that he also has plans for the troupe to have weekly improv lessons to strengthen their skills ahead of the next show.
“It really started us off strong for this semester and I think we can only go up from here,” Derdena, a senior creative writing major, said.
For more information on the troupe’s events, check out their Instagram.
