Chances are anyone who has attended freshman year at Stanford has encountered the work of the Stanford Improvisors, known as the SImps for short. Stanford’s only improvisational performing troupe, the SImps performed their winter showings last Friday and Saturday night brewed an uncalculated mastery satisfying loyal fans and those less familiar with the group’s work.

 

To start the show, the SImps tackled SuperScene, a formula allowing student choice to whittle down from an array of improvised scenes, each directed by a SImp, until the “winner” performed the final scene, capping off the show. Among other plots, the billing included a drama-suspense-thriller about an eavesdropping telephone operator in WWII America and a 1930s French circus stirred by infidelity. The show ultimately finished with a musical between two aspiring high school musical stars auditioning for a part in “High School Musical Stars.” After each of the scenes played out, the audience voted by applause until one by one, a winner was reached. The Oscars should be chosen like this.

 

While spontaneously scripting their own scene, the improvisers took cues and the sporadic line from their directors who, like handlers in a horse and pony show, took the improv and comedy out in strides. The scenes developed in turn, usually escalating in stakes and silliness, with the director pausing and changing plots and lines. The ripe scenes pleased the crowd with refreshing comedy, but the real joy came from watching the fumbles and recoveries. The audience sympathized, reveled in the awkward and absurd and relished the rewinds and do-overs. And the direction was as funny as what became of it. The show progressed, and the audience found itself reluctant to cast a vote that would eliminate any of the superb options. The jaunty performances, so tightly wound but delightfully turbulent, had everyone suspecting the group planned the scenes and reveling in the fact that they didn’t.

 

As the scenes developed, the players’ respective talents grew to fit the scene. Max Sosna-Spear ‘11 ended the show on a high note, as his lyrical acumen strung together several impressive songs with lyrics as fixed and mawkish as any Broadway melodramedy. Graduate student Mathias Crawford’s narration of the bizarre circus, interspersed with cuckoldry, spiked the fabulous accents with a sense of sarcastic irony that kept the audience in stitches: an inside joke for the whole crowd. Chris Young ‘10 scored the show with his improvised piano work. From what must be a fully stocked repertoire of genres and tunes, Young simultaneously followed and guided the improviser’s inclinations, almost instructing the audience what to feel and what to expect.

 

But of all these entertainers, one stood out as the crowd favorite, motivating plots and bringing an unmatched playfulness as a genuine scene-saver. James Mannion ‘13 is the funniest male on Stanford’s campus. Somewhere between his accents and composure, Mannion proved himself an asset to any scene he can slip into, commanding roaring laughter with even obvious lines or kitschy body movements.

 

With no scripted lines or pre-planned plot, the SImps rely on each other to keep the show going and the audience interested, and Mannion certainly embodies the SImps at the top of their game – responsive and supportive.

 

The second installment of the show, “Spontaneous Broadway,” had several SImps propose musicals to the producer-audience based on their spontaneous renderings of songs extracted from the musical. The performers conjured up lyrics against Young’s tunes with only the title of a song to go on; the audience provided fake song titles before the show, which were then drawn out of a hat and ranged from the soulful “Meatloaf Monday Blues” to the tale of licentiousness in “My Lover’s Name is Jose.” Before each number, the SImp would cue in Young as to the tone of the song and the plot of the musical. By audience vote, “There’s a Fire in My Loins,” an aria by Lindsey Toiaivao ’13 from the ‘”musical” “Amazon on Top,” received the most funding, and the full-length Broadway show commenced.

 

A 10-minute pause to workshop the play and the land of women resumed, revealing a structure to the play but the substance undecided. The female ensemble played against a male trio in what seemed like an endless upstaging, leaving all its players winners. The songs satisfied the audience’s anticipation as the players grappled for harmony and humor. With only their eye contact, the improvisers communicated their hopes and needs for the scene. There is beauty in the struggle. They continually raised the stakes in this tale of the Amazon women and patriarchal invaders, suspending the play on the verge of cultural and sexual collision – the audience grasps at the next scene, yet to be determined.

 

But the best was that when the audience knew the improvisers had faulted, the performers acknowledged it and threw it back to the audience, inciting even greater laughter. Those beautiful moments of nonplussed short circuits spark into obvious “Aha!” moments that neither script nor plan could produce.