Improdrome – FREE Improv at the PIT Wednesday Nights

Theater kids. They’re weird. Every time you hang out with theater kids, it’s all inside jokes about stage-fight workshops and terrible British accents. Once, as a child I was roped into an acting class. We spent an hour “learning” how to fall down. I never returned.

Thus, it was with a great deal of foreboding that I attended Improdrome, a weekly FREE improv jam at the People’s Improv Theater (PIT), last Wednesday night. For those not familiar with the concept of “jam,” the idea is that any goober who waltzes in can get up on stage and participate in whatever is going on. Just put your name in the hat and you’re in.

The PIT is a rather welcoming establishment, with a big crowd for 11pm on a Wednesday. The MC pulled names out of hat and the selected audience members came down and improv’d a scene for about 10 minutes. Some of them were terrible. Some of them spiraled out of control. Some of them were hilarious. Then the MC surprised us all when he selected a newcomer for a three-person scene. To my abject horror, he chose me. I limped onstage nearly paralyzed, as my totally unfunny 24 years of life flashed before me.

Having no choice, I jumped right in. The audience laughed. Of course they weren’t so much laughing at me as at the antics of my scene partners. “But,” I reasoned, “there must always be foil or a straight man.” Before I knew it, the scene was over and I returned to my seat, where I finished my beer and enjoyed the sight of other assholes making fools of themselves. It’s rather like an orgy. You can just watch if you want, but there’s room for participation. And it’s never a bad time.

BONUS: Full bar

Improdrome at the PIT
Wednesday 11pm (Weekly)
FREE
People’s Improv Theater
123 E 24th St.(Between Lexington and Park)
[Kips Bay]

Photo Credit: thepit-nyc.com