Anna Rinaggio, Campus Carrier asst. arts and living editor
Easy Baked Improv recently performed their ‘Newbie Show,’ welcoming five new members into the troupe. The troupe has been around for roughly 20 years and puts on a show each month that is free for Berry students to attend.
Junior Brayden Kimbrough is in his second year with Easy Baked Improv and stepped up to a leadership role this year. In this role, he aims to build a strong group and bring out more audience support for their shows.
“When I was able to take over, my main focus was just building a good team culture for people among the troupe and then also getting to the point where I felt like we could have a good audience that was returning to our shows,” Kimbrough said.
The troupe typically holds practices twice a week, where they run exercises and games from “The Cookbook.”
“[The Cookbook] is essentially like a three-inch binder that is just chock-full of games and old photographs and rules for certain games and terms and everything,” Kimbrough said. “I’m bringing it into focus this year. It was bestowed upon me at the end of last year, so [practices look like] finding new games in The Cookbook and seeing if those games work well for our troopers, and if so, trying to get them in a natural cycle of rotation of games that we do.”
Freshman Sam Russell joined the troupe this year and said that performing in the Newbie Show was especially fun once the audience started to get comfortable.
“The crowd, it was a really big crowd,” Russell said. “I didn’t expect that many people. I think it took them a little bit of time to get comfortable with giving suggestions, but it was really fun when we got them comfortable.”
Russell, a theater minor, said that one of the things she enjoys most about Easy Baked Improv is its performance aspect.
“I really like theater, and so improv is kind of like theater,” Russell said. “It’s just a more laid-back way than performing at the [Berry College Theater Company], because over there, it’s very structured, whereas improv, the point of it is to literally to just say the first thing that comes to mind.”
Senior Nolan Scoretz is also new to the troupe this year. Scoretz had no improv experience prior to auditioning, but he said that he was able to get over his initial stage fright fairly quickly during the Newbie Show.
“I was a little nervous at first,” Scoretz said. “It went a little bit slow at first, but then we picked it up and I got really comfortable, got back into my element.”
Scoretz said that even though auditions have already happened, Berry students can still get involved with the troupe by coming to shows.
“The best [way to support] is [to] go to our shows,” Scoretz said. “Participation in the shows, giving us ‘ask fors’ when we ask for them, that helps a lot and makes it a little more fun and interconnected with the crowd, which is a really important part of improv.”