{"id":11197,"date":"2016-03-29T13:56:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T17:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=11197"},"modified":"2016-03-29T14:00:52","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T18:00:52","slug":"hhs-improv-team-at-canadian-improv-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/hhs-improv-team-at-canadian-improv-games\/","title":{"rendered":"HHS improv team finishes top ten at Canadian Improv Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Huntsville High School improv team T.O.P. (Totally on Point) came away from the Canadian Improv Games with a top ten finish last week in their first-ever berth at the national competition.<\/p>\n

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The team \u2013 Couper Ebbs-Picken, Andrew Gordon, Piers Hancock, Melina Lisi-Orfao, Grace Murphy, Sophie Nickerson, Hailey Scott, and Colin Welsh with coach Kim Russel-Brooks \u2013 represented Sudbury and Northern Ontario at the Canadian Improv Games 2016 National Tournament<\/span><\/a> at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, March 23-26.<\/p>\n

Eighteen teams from across Canada each competed in one of three preliminary rounds that held the ticket to the finals. The Huntsville team competed in the second night of preliminaries, coming away with a third place score that night which placed them tenth overall.<\/p>\n

The teams were required to compete in four out of five events \u2013 the two required events of ‘life’ and ‘theme’ and two of their choice, in Huntsville’s case ‘story’ and ‘style’. For ‘theme’ the team was given a word and had to explore its meaning. For the remaining three \u2013 exploring a person’s ‘life’ in a sincere way; performing within their chosen ‘style’ of melodrama, and constructing a narrated ‘story’ with a beginning, middle and end \u2013 they did ask-fors.<\/p>\n

“An ask-for is when we ask the audience a specific question and use their answer to base our scene off of,” explained team member Hailey Scott. “For example, for our story scene we asked the audience for a noise and what we got back was \u201cooh\u201d and we had to incorporate the sound ooh into lots of things in our scene.”<\/p>\n

Armed with that limited direction, the team then had only a quick 10-second huddle to spill out some ideas, decide on a direction and determine the stakes \u2013 why the audience would care \u2013 before launching into four minutes of improv for each event.<\/p>\n

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The HHS Improv team during their ‘style’ event at the Canadian Improv Games. Image: Bill Nickerson<\/p><\/div>\n

To an outsider, the prospect of getting on stage to perform with such minimal preparation might seem daunting, but to these young actors it’s exciting and energizing.<\/p>\n

“There’s so much positive energy,” said Scott. “We practice our huddles in advance so we are quick at it and we have an idea of what\u2019s good and bad. It just comes with practice.”<\/p>\n

The national event also includes several days of workshops to help participants hone their improv skills. “People come from all over Canada to judge and referee and teach workshops, and groups from across Canada participate,” said Scott. “There’s also something called toast and jam which is a morning warm up where people from across Canada get together to play improv games. It’s nice to get to know them outside of the competition.”<\/p>\n

View a short clip of one of the team’s performances here:<\/p>\n