Without a Box Continues to Entertain
By Cory Forsyth
A&F Associate

At a quarter to eight on Friday night, roughly two hundred people were lined up outside Scripps Balch Auditorium, rocking toe-to-toe and hugging themselves and each other to keep warm, all the while letting their excitement build noisily in the cold air. Twenty minutes later only a few stragglers could be seen in the back of the crowded auditorium exchanging their two dollars for the chance to observe comedic greatness. Producer-in-training Noah Buhayar PO '05 paced the front of the auditorium nervously and importantly, gesturing to the stragglers to find a seat. A few minutes later the crowd hushed expectantly and their excitement grew just short of fever-pitch.

Soon the lights dimmed and the crowd's febrile excitement broke into a sweaty applause that for a few moments drowned out the opening notes of The Twilight Zone theme song as the projector started displaying the opening video.

The crowd had good reason to be so excited. As Will Cipes PI '03, Without A Box's host, says every time he introduces a Box show, "the scenes we're about to see have never been seen (or rehearsed) before and will never be seen or heard again" (presumably, although I did notice a handheld digital video recorder filming the show from its tripod in the center aisle). The first Without A Box show of 2003 could never be recreated. In this spirit of transience and with an appetite for hilarity, the audience settled in.

Without A Box, the only five-college improvisational comedy troupe, was founded about thirteen years ago by Pitzer student David Schwartz and now performs roughly every two weeks throughout the semester. Hundreds of students regularly line up as early as an hour beforehand to guarantee that they will get a seat.

Each show generally begins with a skit or video, the only non-improv of the night. Friday's show started with a parody of The Twilight Zone in which mundane coincidences occurred, with hilarious results. The idea was that one of the Boxers had been kicking around for nearly a year when Will was inspired when he accidentally set his alarm an hour early one day and spent a few minutes in an empty classroom thinking he was in the Twilight Zone before he realized it was just a crappy coincidence.

The rest of the show consisted of "bits" that Will introduced and then asked the audience for suggestions for. These included two "straight scenes", where the Boxers take a suggestion ("botanical gardens" and "biscuit", in Friday's show) and then run free-form with it, a bit where several Boxers gave a eulogy to an audience-suggested superhero ("supernun"), "fakespeare", where they parodied a certain, obvious, European playwright's style in the (audience-suggested) "computer lab". These bits are chosen democratically by the Boxers when they meet to practice on show day based on which scenes they feel like doing that day and who wants to be involved in those scenes.

Without a Box's continuing success is due to its consistency. I talked to several audience members including Andrea McKay PO '03, who told me that she's confident that every time she goes to a show she will laugh a lot. Many of the audience members come to the show expecting this; they also come, like George Bartle PO '04 with admiration for the talents of the crew. "[Their] quick wits are matched only by their unexpected punchlines," Bartle said, adding that Friday's show did not disappoint.

An unexpected highlight of the evening occurred during the seventh bit, when the Boxers got a volunteer who told them about his day and then improvised his dreams that night. Their chosen volunteer was an obviously inebriated, kilt-clad Pitzerian who terrified the first few rows by crossing and un-crossing his legs Grounds-Keeper Willie-style and occasionally giving in to fits of laughter when asked questions such as, "How was your day?"

Anchored by the exceptional, non-humorous (and not supposed to be) piano stylings of the group's pianist Jason Flatley (CMC '03) and the exceptionally humorous host Will Cipes, the eight Box members should continue to give brilliant performances all season. Mac Barnett (PO '03), Box member, explains that "improve is an audience-centered event", one where the Box members "work with the audience to get to a higher form of humor." According to Barnett, the Box members enjoy it just as much as their audience does.