Murray Wood: April is the most frustrating month on the prairies
As much of Saskatchewan deals with another spring snowstorm, Murray Wood says we're all asking the same question: This i...
A handful of 12th graders from Saskatoon’s Tommy Douglas Collegiate are in Ottawa this week to compete on a national stage, although they don’t know what they’ll be performing — yet.
The high school’s Grade 12 improvisation team, Skits and Giggles, won the provincial title at the beginning of March, qualifying them for the Canadian Improv Games taking place April 15 to 18.
Read more:
It’s the only team representing Saskatchewan.
Skits and Giggles’s improv coach and Tommy Douglas Collegiate teacher, Mike Prebble, said he was “ecstatic” about the qualification.
“The kids work so hard and we spend a lot of time with them,” he said.
Prebble wasn’t the only excited one, though.
Skits and Giggles team member Tyler Stockdale said his parents were at the provincial competition and caught his reaction to the win on camera.
“If you looked at me outside the context of that, you’d think I was having a panic attack or anxiety attack. I was definitely shaking, tearing up a little … that was a super exciting moment,” he said.
During this week’s competition, each team will get 15 seconds to huddle and brainstorm before performing a four-minute unscripted scene.
“I think the scariest moment is just like the anticipation, because you don’t know what you’re gonna do because you’re doing it all on the spot,” Skits and Giggles team member Brynn Cawood said.
Skits and Giggles team members Tyler Stockdale, left, and Brynn Cawood. (Marija Robinson/650 CKOM)
Rehearsing for an unscripted performance
While high school theatre students have to recite specific lines for their stage debut, Cawood said she prefers improv because there aren’t those kinds of constraints.
“I really like just how freeing it is, mostly because every time I’ve been in skits and plays and stuff, the most stressful part is memorizing lines. So, then if I can act without having to memorize lines, then it’s way more fun,” she said.
Getting to that point of comfort without a plan, though, takes practice.
The students began training back in September, and Prebble said, they “treat it kind of like a sport.”
Similar to basketball, “you don’t just tell the kids to go and scrimmage and then play. So, we run them through drills of listening, accepting and offering up ideas and then how to move scenes along and stuff like that,” he said.
According to Prebble, being part of the team gives the students skills, including the ability to adapt and think fast, that will help them beyond high school and into life after graduation.
Cawood, who’s been doing improv since Grade 9, is an example of that.
“I don’t think I would have been able to ever publicly speak at all, I was so anxious as a kid,” she said.
But now she’s able to do presentations without a problem, and Cawood said she’s become more well-spoken and outgoing thanks to improv.
When asked whether he had any advice for younger students considering an attempt at the art form, Stockdale, who only began improv last year, said it’s all about taking the first step and trying.
Quitting something you dislike is easy, “but it’s way harder to regret not joining sooner,” he said.
Read more:
