To celebrate Valentine’s Day, CWU’s Improv Club, The Hot New Jam, put on a show in a packed SURC theater on Feb. 1. The show featured improv comedy, props and performances from CWU students across all majors including the Observers own Z Morris.

“We put on these shows because we are a group of people who like to have fun and that’s one of our main premises,” Annika Brimhall, the president of The Hot New Jam, said. “It’s just we like to have fun, and we like to bring our improv silliness to Central. It’s something that this team has held at such a high regard.”

The play followed an audience influenced narrative. King Poseidon had been murdered with a rubber chicken and the only suspects were his daughter, a constantly singing squire and a scuba diver.

The show itself started out with the club asking the room for a location. Many suggestions were given out, from a dark alley to a Waffle House, but in the end, the bottom of the ocean was chosen as the location for the play to take place.

Next, the club asked the crowd for an object, with a rubber duck being the final answer. The request was slightly altered to a rubber chicken and from there, chaos ensued.

The show began with two members who acted as fish detectives as they looked into the recent murder of King Poseidon, ruler of the sea.

As their investigation continued, they interviewed the last three people to see him before his death, his daughter, his squire and a scuba diver. It was during these interrogations that the suspects said what they were talking to the late king about before his untimely death. All three conversations gave a clear motive for why the suspect might want the king dead.

The lack of a script or prior direction meant that the club members had to think of everything on the fly. With the situation only getting more complicated as time went on.

There were times where actors would suddenly have to give an “Oscar moment,” and other times where club members would randomly be brought into the story as completely new characters.

In the end, the room of onlookers decided who the murderer was, with it being none other than the constantly singing squire and his lawyer that he found on the road. Their motive, the death of the king would allow Reaganomics to get passed.

The show ended with thunderous applause, despite one murder being performed on stage. At the very end of the show the rubber chicken was accidentally ripped in half while the club members were saying goodbye.

After the event, Brimhall said, “being one of the more popular clubs on campus, we get a lot of outreach from both campus, and from students, and we just feel it’s really important to come here and make people laugh. We want to make people smile, and it’s one of the things that we strive for.”