This past Friday, Emory’s improv troupe Rathskellar hosted its second improv show of the year, and if you’re anything like the Emory Spoke journalist who attended the show (me), you must have not known they already put on a show this year. The improv ‘artists’ started the show early in order to give the audience ample time to celebrate the Halloween season, but why would they care, it’s not like fans of improv have lively social lives to tend to. Additionally, the show was hosted in White Hall 207—this was because they knew they wouldn’t be able to fill out White Hall 208.
The show itself started at 6:38pm, a clear disrespect towards the punctuality of the audience members. You would think that if they were eight minutes late, maybe it was because they were putting on luxurious costumes to improvise in. Wrong. The costume department for this show clearly had $2.72 to work with and used it all on stale Publix cookies. The costumes were Mario Party themed, but the poster was “To Catch An Improviser” — I’m not sure why that is but it makes me think less of them.
They played a handful of improv games, none of which made me feel anything besides a confounding sadness. Despite Emory being a dry campus, you need to show up high off of something in order for it to be funny. I went to the bathroom half way through to huff spray paint and when I came back someone was doing an accent. At first it was Southern, then it was British, and it somehow morphed into Patois. Nevertheless, it was consistently bad.
The performers within Rathskellar are all very unique people, but the chemistry they had was nonexistent. I can tell they’ve all made out with each other and are all scared to address it so instead they just ignore it for the worst. This was especially apparent between Donkey Kong and Mario—I’m positive they’ve hooked up before and DK wanted something more out of it but Mario just wanted a friends with benefits vibe.
The cast themselves are all such characters that I can sum each of them up in one sentence.
Callie Duggan (27C): I like that one of the presidents of Rathskellar is a woman; unfortunately she’s as good at improv as Hillary Clinton would be.
Seth Weinfield (27C): I’m sure in ten years he’ll tell his coworkers that he could’ve done comedy if he really wanted to pursue it, which would be the funniest joke he ever told.
Jack Pierce (29C): He made SEVERAL sex jokes throughout the show, I saw an Amish couple walk out because of him.
Anand Colby (29C): Everytime he asked the audience for a suggestion I swear he would say something that the audience didn’t say at all.
Tess Kassinger (27C): She’s too pretty to be doing improv, why is she here?
Alan Foeder (29C): Explicitly said “I don’t think that we should judge things based on color” and I just don’t think politics should be involved in an improv show.
Kyra Bomberger (28C): Her portrayal as a young woman experiencing the heartbreak from a female friendship at a trampoline park was grounded in reality and awe inspiring; however, she didn’t have the grippy socks on so it was mid tbh.
Francis Marquez (28C): Clearly a Smosh fan.
Alazare Atlaw (29C): An obvious diversity hire—how did someone actually funny get into Rathskellar?
Morgan Schatmeyer (27C): Morgan is a complex character that I cannot merely sum up in one sentence; she is the next best thing in comedy and she will have her name in bright flashing lights when she stars in a one woman show that will trump anything this lousy comedy group has ever conceived;truly the group’s Shane Gillis
All in all the show wasn’t good at all and it was offensive to the sanctity of comedy as a whole. And to think I found their scripts backstage and it actually wasn’t improvised at all.
This article was paid for by Rathskellar’s Morgan Schatmeyer.
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