Improv Club was founded just last year by Ms. Denise Howard of Admissions. Ms Howard is an accomplished actress; she majored in Theatre and Music, and performed at various venues in both her hometown of Portland, Oregon and the area around Kent, including The Brookfield Theatre for the Arts, which regularly hosts Ms. Howard’s improv troupe, The 17 Debacles.

‘Improv,’ short for ‘improvisational theatre,’ is a performance in which people improvise their acting as they go along. “It teaches you spontaneity and how to think off the cuff–it may be useful when you’re doing interviews later in life,” says Ms Howard. But first and foremost, improv is fun.

Ms Howard created the Improv Club, which meets every Wednesday at 7pm in the Actor’s Studio this year, because she had done improv throughout her own high school and college years. Noticing Kent didn’t have an Improv Club, she attended the Club Fair in 2015 to recruit students for one.

Carl Worth ‘17 was integral in starting the club, she says, “I saw a young man during the New Student Orientation who was very dramatic and animated… and he later ran the club booth at the fair.” She also credits Elizabeth O’Hazo ‘17, Michael Pryor ‘18 and Isabel Lieser ‘19 for being her “funniest” students as well as students who would show up consistently to every weekly club meeting.

Improv club now is an open club where students are welcome but not required to attend. “There’s no pressure,” says Club President O’Hazo, “it’s a fun club.” If you are interested in trying out improv, simply show up to a club meeting. “Currently, there’s about 45 students on our mailing list,” says O’Hazo, “But not everyone turns up every week, apart from the ten or so most dedicated.”

Last year, the Improv Club hosted a show in Mattison Auditorium where they invited Ms. Howard’s troupe The 17 Debacles as well as the audience to play improv games. Ms. Howard hopes for the members to continue meeting and practicing, to the point where the club can “sustain itself without adults, enough to have their own show at the end of the year,” as well as hold long improv sessions without her around. “At the moment, they become derailed easily without me,” she says, “But they’re getting better at that. They’ve come a long way.”