Cesareo Contreras
Asst. Arts and Features Editor
The professional improv group The Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) entertained a small crowd with their on-the-fly comedy Sunday night in DPAC.
The event was hosted by FSU’s own improv group, the Suit Jacket Posse.
Comprised of four members – Caitlin Puckett, Jenny St. Angelo, Marshall Stratton and Lindsay Calleran – this specific UCB group used stories told by the audience for their material.
Hallie Giebner, a freshman, was the group’s inspiration for the first part of their act after she
volunteered to be interviewed by the group.
The group expanded on the finer details of her story in their acts, creating fictional scenarios from her most interesting anecdotes.
Giebner’s notable stories involved telling her math teacher to “drop the bass” during class, in addition to describing her love of playing hacky sack.
The group was quick on their feet as well as in their interactions with one another and had the audience howling with laughter.
During one, the group members made up a scenario in which two students, played by St. Angelo and Calleran, were registering for classes, and dealt with a lost WiFi connection.
“No, no,” Calleran said, followed by a yell. “Hold on, I gotta register right now. Disconnect! Disconnect!”
In the following seconds, Puckett assumed the character of Satan and offered them free high-speed WiFi in exchange for their souls.
“It is I, Satan,” Puckett said in a sinister voice.
In the second half of their act, the group asked the audience to shout out random text messages without any context.
The group elaborated and created scenes on the text messages without any prior knowledge.
An audience member called out a text that read, “campo is on our floor, be cool,” the brigaders acted out a scene involving a group of students drinking on campus and a police officer who wanted to join in on their fun.
The scene started when a campus police officer, played by Calleran, entered a dorm room where students, played by other brigaders, were hanging out when a young woman came in with a box of alcoholic beverages in her hands.
“Listen, I’m only 20 years old myself,” Calleran said. “I’m a little thirsty. Why don’t we all share a brew together?”
The students, apprehensive of the situation, ended up dumping the alcohol out the window.
“I just said, let’s have a beer together,” Calleran said. “You just threw a box of beers out the second floor window.”
“You’re so harsh on parking, we’re scared of you,” Stratton responded.
By the end of the scene, the police officer had been left paralyzed and all but one student, played by Stratton, were either dead or paralyzed.
“I’m just a freshman,” Stratton said. “Fuck!”
James Buonopane, a sophomore, said, “It was interesting, funny and entertaining.”
Giebner, the student who the brigaders interviewed, said, “It was sick because that’s stuff me and my friends joke about all the time and it was funny to see other people who don’t know us dying laughing at it.”
Tyler Demoura, the improv captain of the Suit Jacket Posse said, “I think it went really well. The promotion for it was a little late in the game so we didn’t get as many people as we thought we would, but honestly having a smaller, more intimate crowd works better for events like this.”