Laugh Lessons: Neuqua Valley Students Improvise

Being funny isn't always required to make people laugh. Sometimes the quiet and reserved character helps get the laughs, but often it takes a team effort.

That was just one of the lessons students at Neuqua Valley High School learned when a member of Second City visited the school Thursday.

Edmund O'Brien spent the afternoon working with drama students from Neuqua Valley, teaching them games that build the improv skills needed for situational comedy. At Second City, the games are used to build a tighter ensemble.

"The thing about improv, it's like a sport," O'Brien said. "The more you do it, the easier it gets."

Being the funniest or loudest in the group actually can work against the goal of making people laugh, O'Brien said. 

"Sometimes if you just present what is the truth, it's funny," he said.

O'Brien had the students participate in a variety of improv games, asking groups of students to participate. One group took on the character of the principal, with each student a different physical part of the principal. Another game asked students to become an electric machine. And, another had students build sentences into a story, starting with the beginning and the end and then filling in the blanks.

Christina Anker, the drama club sponsor and a teacher in the English Department, said improv teaches students to work together to focus and tell a story.

"It's a great metaphor for what we teach at Neuqua Valley — listening, responding and creating together," she said.

Anker said students asked that an improv focus be added to the drama club. One of the students who requested the addition was Nicholas Keenan, 16, a junior at the school.

Keenan said he doesn't have a lot of time to participate in many activities because he has a job, but drama and improv club, "allows me to do what I love."

Another student, Elliott Litherland, 17 and a senior, said that having O'Brien visit the school was great. He said he enjoyed being able to work with someone experienced in improv.

"They (Second City) have destroyed their limits," he said. "That's what I strive to do. That is what acting is all about."