On stage without a script, following the directions of the audience may be intimidating to you, but for them, this is no big deal. The Hot New Jam had their first show of the spring quarter on Saturday night, and started with a bang.
This club is CWU’s only improv team, composed of a group of comedians who make up scenes, characters and jokes on the spot, based on suggestions from the audience. The Hot New Jam has nine members: Annika Brimhall, Bailey Frasier, Cesar Trejo, Dylan Santini, Heidi Palko, Mercer Akeson, Sayli Keni, Shawn Mulligan and Z Morris.
This group goes up on a stage and has to improvise a scene based on the audience’s suggestions. “With improv, you’re making the discoveries about the characters at the same time that the audience is, you’re not doing your character analysis backstage before a show, you’re onstage learning what all these characters are doing and making stuff up on the fly,” Shawn Mulligan, senior musical theater major and president of The Hot New Jam, said.
The nature of improv doesn’t allow the team to prepare for their shows the same way as other comedians and actors. There is a lot of room for interpretation and creative expression, they can take an audience’s suggestion and take it in whichever direction they want.
“Sometimes there will be a joke or a TikTok format that’s really popular and you have to be really, in my opinion, up to date on that kind of stuff, so preparation in that regard is a little bit difficult,” Mercer Akeson, a sophomore English education major and treasurer of The Hot New Jam, said. Improv requires participants to be ready for any suggestion, building scenes and characters off of the ideas from the viewers. “I relate it to more like Michael Scott from the office,” Akeson said. “Like, ‘I have a gun!,’ you just never know what’s gonna happen.”
The community around improv is very supportive and inclusive, drawing in people from different perspectives, cultures and backgrounds.
“Our community’s here support us,” Mulligan said. “We call them The Hot New Fans, the ones who come to the shows regularly and come to improv on Fridays. They’re always there to sort of boost us up, and to really build off of this sort of community thing that we have created.”
For an hour each week at their scheduled meetings, the group opens their practices to all CWU students. This is where they will review announcements and play improv games together to put their skills to the test.
“I’d say it’s [improv is] always a useful skill,” Akeson said. “I’m an English education major and so I feel like being in front of the classroom, you’ll always have to think on the fly, and improv is applicable to a lot of things.”
This year, The Hot New Jam is celebrating their 10th anniversary as an established club at CWU. Admission is free for students and community members to attend their final shows of the quarter on May 4 and May 25.
