On Oct. 13, Pleasant Valley High School had their first of the year, and second ever, Improv Night. Audience members packed the black box theatre for a night full of on-the-spot comedy. The teams competed against each other in a series of randomly chosen games and scenes and enlisted the help of audience members along the way. In the last second of the tiebreaker game, Hatrick (consisting of Joey Dwyer, Robert Williams, and Michael Guhin) came out victorious.

Improv is a program not many schools are able to offer, but PV has three competing teams and one junior varsity team that is preparing to fill vacancies when members from the competing teams graduate. However, improv hasn’t always been as successful as it is now. Molly Dippel, junior and WACIT’s captain, said, “It wasn’t until about three years ago did we have three teams. It used to just be WACIT and then Select Button and Hatrick joined later on.”

Improv night is also a recent development. The first improv night was in the spring of 2016 but it turned out to be such a huge success that there will be two improv nights this year. However, the improv teams have more to prepare for than just Improv Night. The three competing improv teams go to competitions to compete against improv teams from other schools. Francis Dunbar, improv leader, said, “Through the drama club they go to competitions like International Thespian Festival and Iowa Thespian Festival.”
Doing improv requires much more than just being funny. Dippel said, “It takes a lot of courage to go up on stage and become this extreme, wacky version of yourself.” Because of this it is important that each team feel comfortable with each other and become very close. Dippel also said the bonding is her favorite part of doing improv. She also mentioned, “Being on the team with some of my best friends is just really exciting to see what things we can do in the upcoming future.” If you weren’t able to make it to the fall improv night there will be another one in the spring.