OverReactors Improv is the group hug of USC’s improv comedy scene — an open organization looking to give students a look at what makes improv comedy special. It started as an all-inclusive answer to Toast, before blossoming into its own, strange entity.
“There were a lot of people who auditioned for Toast for, like, two spots. And there were about 20 people there auditioning,” Connor Brunson, fourth-year public health student said. “There was definitely a need there that wasn’t being met, so we filled it.”
As a result, OverReactors Improv has taken on an educational bent.
“Connor, Ryan and I decided … we’re going to start our own group that’s made for people who just want to get better,” said Kat LeeHong, fourth-year media arts student.
OverReactors started off as a practice group, called Jam, intended to include diverse forms of art: poetry, oration and improv. It focused into improv comedy and was eventually christened OverReactors. Inevitably, the fact that it sounds like “ovaries” came up.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Is it an all-female group?’ many times,” said Rebecca Shrom, fourth-year theater and media arts student and OverReactors president.
They started four years ago, and around two years ago they started actually performing, holding shows open to the public.
That hasn’t dulled their all-inclusive missive. The OverReactors have open practice Tuesday and Thursday nights, and when they say open, they mean it — anyone is welcome to come, observe and participate. Between 15 and 30 people come to any given practice.
They have auditions for every show, decided by the core five members. The rotating performance cast means that anyone can end up on stage, if they’re up for it. In addition to the core five, two to four more members will perform at any given show.
“The OverReactors exists to give people opportunities, because that’s why we created it,” Shrom said.
One of the things that inspires the OverReactors is improv’s unpredictability — it’s a highwire act of storytelling and comedy.
“Sometimes it’ll hit me two seconds before we go on stage for a show, 'We don’t know what's going to happen here! This could either be really great or really horrible, and we literally do not know what’s going to happen,'” Shrom said. “That’s really fun and really scary.”
That’s not to say that improv is inherently stressful — in fact, in its looseness, it can be freeing.
“It’s just a great way to blow off steam sometimes, because practices are at 10:30 at night, and oftentimes I’ll have the worst day ever and I’ll just be like, ‘Ugh, okay, [for] an hour I’ll act like a total idiot and people will laugh at me,” said Michael Hall, fourth-year history student. “It’s just a great ending to the day.”
The OverReactors members are incredibly passionate about their craft. The unique elements in improv comedy — the running jokes, the unexpectedly deep stories, the absurdist interludes that nonetheless have to be justified — all coalesce to make an activity like no other.
Though it can often be silly — as when “[Gabe Crawford, fifth year graphic design student] was dubstep, and it was the most annoying thing that ever happened to me,” according to Brunson — but at the core of every sketch is good, fundamental storytelling, and the jokes can come organically from that.
“The capacity to tell stories and appreciate them is at the core of improv,” Brunson said.
The OverReactors may be relatively new on the scene, but over its nearly four years of exposing countless students to what makes improv special, it has made an indelible impact.
“I think that improv, regardless of whether or not you perform, is just learning how to have fun with people, developing these relationships and really figuring yourself out and helping improve your communication skills,” LeeHong said. “I’m not the same person I was several years ago when I was starting the OverReactors. I feel like we’ve all very much improved as people.”
See the OverReactors' improv tips and tricks here: http://www.dailygamecock.com/article/2014/11/overreactors-tips-and-tricks