Arts

Miley Cyrus and Harry Potter Dine at First UTB Show of the Year

Under The Bed started the night with one of their more familiar games, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Always a crowd pleaser, the game requires one actor to leave while the audience members suggest characters for each “dinner attendee” to play. While the audience members know the performers’ characters, each actor attempts to figure out the character she is portraying through hints dropped during the “party.”

Under the Bed (UTB) is Andover’s student improvisational comedy troupe.

“I played Miley Cyrus in it! I think Teddy [Lasry ’16] and Miles [Neumann ’15] guessed well. I was tipped off pretty early, so I got to make a bunch of Miley jokes. [‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’] is definitely one of my favorite games,” said Paige Morss ’17, a new member on UTB this year. Lasry played the character of Harry Potter, and Neumann played Borat.

“The whole fun of ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ is for the audience to watch you suffer through the process of trying to guess your character. It was lot of fun, and all the newbies got to play around,” said Lasry.

Another audience favorite was “Line in My Socket,” a sketch involving three performers who acted out a scene inspired by phrases suggested by the audience. Prior to the start of the show, two of the performers collected different words and phrases written by audience members on pieces of paper. Sitting offstage, Andrew Vallejos ’14, Co-Head of UTB, instructed the players to read one of their lines and incorporate it into the scene.

Inspired by the word “crack,” Gabe Braunstein ’16, Rob Irvin ’15 and Jack Shumway ’15 acted out a scene as two little boys who stepped on “the crack on their mother’s back.” Irvin entered in the middle of the skit as “the mother with the crack on her back.” Braunstein and Shumway’s on-stage dynamic, combined with Irvin’s quick wit, greatly amused the audience.

“We came out [and] did what we needed to do. I think we had a great audience. The audience affects the show a lot,” said Vince Mocco ’15, a member of UTB. “We came out with a lot of energy and finished it off well, especially considering that we have a very young group this year since a lot of Seniors left last year.”

UTB welcomed six new members to the troupe this year. Morss, Lasry, Scott Diekema ’14, David Gaetano ’15, Julian Otis ’16 and Ellie Simon ’15 all performed in their first UTB show.

“I thought that for a high school group they were fantastic. They were almost at the caliber of some adult improv troupes I have seen, which was really impressive. They were spontaneous, while staying relevant to the game and keeping the scene moving,” Ethan Brown ’17 said in an email to The Phillipian.