Muses bail on improv acts at West L.A.’s Empty Stage

  KATHRYN OGLE David Koff and
Darcy Staniforth perform improvisational comedy in
Social Extortion.

By Chris Young
Daily Bruin Staff

Improv comedy lives just a few minutes away from Westwood, at
the Empty Stage Improv Theatre on Pico and Veteran, where every
Friday night comedy troupes summon their muses.

The improv groups Social Extortion and the Perks, however, had a
bit of trouble calling forth those muses last Friday. Viewers were
presented with Social Extortion’s mellow and extended acts,
which contrasted with the fast-paced, borderline chaos of the
Perks.

Social Extortion’s three-person group creates its
hour-long improv act by having audience members submit cards before
the show, which ask for a description of a personal acquaintance.
The actors announce at the beginning of the act that they will
“improvise” their comedy and drama using these cards,
which may be exactly why every scene isn’t so funny.

Each player picks a card out of a hat, announces the character
he or she will assume, and does a monologue as an introduction.
Then they switch off pairs onstage until the finale with all three
players. Each duo improvises until the scene’s natural end
and cue out by artistic director Stan Wells.

For Friday’s performance David Koff embodied the character
of “Scott,” a frat-boy jock who lets friends take girls
to his roommate’s bed. Darcy Staniforth was
“Rebecca,” a 22-year-old blonde with a penchant for bad
poetry and a slow drawl. Paige Baxter played “Julia
Elizabeth,” Rebecca’s kid sister who aspires to be a
911 operator, practices CPR on her dolls and fouls up
Rebecca’s plans.

Beyond the standard jock or frat-boy stereotypes of partying and
drinking, having aspirations of being a lawyer and being on the
crew team, Koff’s character was fairly one-dimensional
throughout the show. A couple of his first scenes were good but the
skit started to get stale by the middle.

  KATHRYN OGLE Darcy Staniforth (left) and
Paige Baxter of Social Extortion perform at the
Empty Stage Theatre in West Los Angeles. Baxter’s scenes with
Koff never really clicked and there were numerous pauses where
there should have been dialogue.

Staniforth’s improvisation proved to be the sharpest and
her character the most memorable ““ a whiny, self-involved
blonde with the mind-numbing laugh of a siren. Her body language
effectively captured her character, as she jumped and turned up her
heels or seduced Koff’s character with over-exaggerated
coquettish moves.

The show lost momentum several times during the night as it
became more apparent that the comedians were exhausting the
possibilities of their characters. The actors should have taken out
the jar and drawn different cards, starting a new play.

There were, however, some good moments when the actors shared a
telepathic-like empathy and cracked a good joke. But other times
the humor just simmered on the back burner and the performance
dragged on.

Social Extortion’s show was followed by the Perks, giving
the audience a taste of two different styles of improv comedy.

The Perks’ weekly show, “Green Eggs and Kevin
Bacon,” includes regulars Kay Christianson, Michelle Durnell,
Christopher Hutson and Lincoln Myerson, with a guest comedian in
every show.

The Perks ask the audience at the beginning of their show to
name two locations which will serve as the scene for their
performance.

Friday night they asked for two places where people
wouldn’t hold a high school reunion. The audience cheerfully
volunteered Fairbanks, Alaska, and a prison cell.

The Perks then launched 45 minutes of short scenes linking
Fairbanks and the prison cell. This idea came from their overall
“six degrees of separation” theme, which says that any
two people can be linked by six acquaintances.

Each comedian took on multiple characters who were supposedly
linked, although it wasn’t apparent how.

The Perks’ show had two different paces. In the first act,
artistic director Wells dictated when to change scenes by varying
the stage lights and music. In the second act, the actors rang a
bell to end a montage and change the actors onstage. The latter
allowed for more inspirational acting, but was extremely
discontinuous. The plot took so many turns that it became confusing
and hard to follow.

Occasionally the scenes turned into humorless, bland dialogue.
Jokes came and went and were spaced apart by a lot of dead time.
Although there were a couple of original gags, the momentum never
really picked up and the Perks’ show dragged on from sketch
to sketch.

Judging from the performances of Social Extortion and the Perks,
the muses must have had Friday night off.

IMPROV: The Perks play every Friday at 9 p.m.
and Social Extortion plays Friday May 11 and 18 at 10 p.m. Both
acts are at The Empty Stage Theatre, 2372 Veteran Ave. at Pico Blvd
in West L.A. Tickets are $7. For more information call (310)
470-3560.