The 5th Wall

Saturday night I had the pleasure of EmCeeing ENMU-R's fund raiser for an art scholarship called "Unleashed." There were two really cool things about the evening. One is that the Comedy Improv troupe I have been working with for the last 3 months finally got a chance to be on stage.

There were moments since we began of triumph and failure. The imoprovers always work hard, but comedy, especially impromptu, is not an easy thing to pick up. I don't think if you are not funny then you never will be, but to train yourself to be funny? Most comedians will tell you they were little goofballs their whole life.

But The 5th Wall, Johnnie, Arnie, Chris, Monica, Bekha, Gigi and Loyce stole the show. They were funny and the audience loved them. So kudos to them for pulling off a tough task.

They had the stage for a half hour in which they did three skits. The first was a version of the dating game where one of the troupe left the building and the audience picked who the contestants would be: rock stars, morticians, sky divers, whatever they wanted. Then they brought the improver back in and his job was to figure out, by questioning, who each was.

The second was "the paper game." Before the night started, one of the troupe got audience members to write words and phrases on paper and fold them up. They were collected right before the improvers hit the stage. The audience then choose a profession and scenario and the improvers, each time a bell was rung, had to incorporate whatever was on the paper into their story. My favorites were: Tickle me elmo, poppycock, is that Frank Sinatra and googly-goo (you had to be there to know why). Anyway...that was hilarious.

The last skit was the toughest to pull of, but it worked well also. It was called "snapshot" and the troupe picked a couple from the audience and brought them on stage. They asked where their last vacation was and then the whole troupe and the two audience members struck poses while the lights went out. When the lights came back on, two of the troupe had to explain the vacation photos. There were about 6 snapshots explained and people loved it.

So all in all a success for The 5th Wall. Congrats to them. The rest of the night was so-so. There was a guy who played electric music which wasn't bad, but got tedious quick. Then there was a karate exposition that was more like a feel good lecture. That got old real quick. And last was a band called Fetish from Artesia whose fetish was obviously for bad, underpracticed and undertalented music.

I got to EmCee from the astral plane. I had a wireless mic and sat in the light booth of the theater and called the show. At first people had no idea what was going on when my voice boomed through the theater. It was funny.

Two more weeks then the semester is over. I'll be coming to a town near you.