Let's Try This Players perfom for 26 hours in improv marathon

They stretched, they moved, they clapped, pointed, and just stared at each other in what looked like a bizarre game of human dominoes. They yelled "Freeze!"-then quickly mobbed each other onstage. Later, half of them gathered in the middle of the room, wandering around with their eyes closed and arms folded, while the other half formed a ring around them whispering, "Away."

They did this, and other equally weird rituals, for 26 hours non-stop.

And to them, it all made sense.

Improv is a style of unscripted theatre, often used to make quick comedy sketches based on audience suggestions (like the show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" on ABC). Let's Try This! is Georgia Tech's own student improv troupe, based out of DramaTech Theatre. They perform shows every semester, usually at DramaTech. They are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of improv at DT this semester, and have existed as an ongoing troupe since 1993.

Despite this, many people still don't know they exist, says Wes Schrader, troupe leader. "For a while last year, we kept hearing that people would go see improv shows done by another troupe [at Under the Couch], and they'd say, 'Wow, isn't it great that we're getting improv on campus?' Except we've had improv on campus for a long time already.... So now we work harder on the advertising, we work harder on our shows, and it's paid off."

But the increased numbers in the audience, and in the troupe membership, brought new problems. "Last year we had a lot of new members all at once, and there were so few old-timers left that teaching them good improv was next to impossible. This year, we didn't get as many new people right away, but it's still been an issue."

Schrader sought advice from another improv teacher. His suggestion? Instead of having a normal 3-hour workshop one weekend, hold an Improvathon--a 24-hour-long gauntlet of skill building and endurance.

But troupe members upped the stakes and made the goal 26 hours. Why 26 exactly? "Someone pointed out that a marathon was 26 miles long, and that's really all it took," Schrader replies. "We were already crazy for trying to do a 24-hour workshop, so we figured, what's another couple of hours?"

Armed with coolers, snacks, and caffeine, the troupe camped out onstage at DramaTech from 8pm last Friday to 10pm last Saturday. The workshop lasted the entire 26 hours, with no other activities. Troupe members striving to "pull the full 26"-to last the entire Improvathon-were only allowed five minutes of break time per hour.

As the night and day wore on, curious students came in to watch, expecting to see a show taking place. One by one, they wandered away, unsure of what they had just witnessed.

"Yeah, it was like being in a zoo," Schrader laughs. "I guess they must have thought, 'Cool, we get to see how they do it.' But would you rather watch a Disney movie or watch an animator draw frames at his desk day after day? Watching us must have been boring. It's not like our shows at all."

The troupe members, it seems, were anything but bored. "What I experienced at the Improvathon... was the compression of six weeks' worth of evolution into two short days," says troupe newcomer Adam Johnson. "If [Georgia Tech] could manage to combine learning and fun in the same way, with the same density, imagine what it would do to the quality of education on campus."

Plans are already underway for future Improvathons.

The next performances of Let's Try This! will be the weekend of November 19 and 20 at 9:30pm in DramaTech Theatre, behind the Ferst Center for the Arts. Tickets are $2. Call DramaTech at (404) 894-3481 for more information, or visit DramaTech's website at cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/dramatech.