Fast paced, extremely random, and incredibly funny all describe AHI Tuna, Atholton’s Improv Club. They perform multiple times throughout the year with their most recent performance and kick off to the year being the talent show. They meet every Thursday after school in Mrs. Stackhouse’s room (C145) to play games to practice their improv skills.
Improv is acting without a script or a plan, instead using only spontaneous imagination to tell a story. To get better at this, club members practice with warm up exercises and games, a couple of which being bippity-bippity-bop, an acting game similar to duck-duck goose, or party quirks, where every “party guest” has a specific quirk that has been chosen by the audience that the host must guess. The games provide the structure to the improv shows.
“It’s similar to tug of war but you’re both on the same side,” said Sophomore Robert Finegar, a member of the Ahi Tuna Club about his experiences with the club. “Because you both want to be the center of attention but you also want to help your partner in the scene.”
These shows that the club puts on are “really stressful” to plan and organize, according to Senior Jack Pazulski, the president of the Ahi Tuna Club. From the planning to coordinating to practicing, he said it takes a lot of hard work and immersion to get used to having to react quickly to a scenario, making their performances even more admirable.
“It’s a little bit hard,” said Freshman Zoe Crider about adjusting to the pace of the club. a new member to the Ahi Tuna Club said when asked about what it’s like, but she says that new recruits will eventually learn the how the club works.
And now, people watch as they come on stage, the weeks of practice in hand, the spot lights reflecting off of them as they thrust you into the middle, involving the audience and then running off to their places, ready to begin. Out they come, one by one with a new identity. A cat, a pyrophobic, an overprotective mom, showing off their skill as they perform their character as best they can for the audience, and everyone laughing as they go.
The Ahi Tuna Club is a very unique club with very unique and interesting people. While it is not for everyone, it’s a place that would be good for someone looking to make new friends, try something new and break out of your comfort zone, or, as Pazulski put it, “Go off the rails a lot!”