For some, comedy is something to indulge in occasionally, say, on Thursday nights with episodes of “The Office” or when a favorite comedian comes into town. But for the members of Cal Poly’s Smile and Nod improv team, comedy is a way of life.
The club, formed ten years ago by Cal Poly alumnus Mark Sitko, is comprised of 20 members, all of whom devote their free time to practicing and performing. Although some students may only know the group from its Week of Welcome performances, the club performs throughout the year. Group members meet twice a week to practice, and perform two shows every Saturday night at the Cal Poly Blackbox Theatre (H.P. Davidson Music Building room 212).
Each show costs $5 for students and community members.
Smile and Nod members perform two styles of improv each week, and each performance runs 90 minutes.
The first performance is done in short-form style, as seen on the now-canceled improv show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” A group of seven to eight club members gather on stage and perform two to five minute skits. The audience usually generates the skit ideas.
“There’s a lot of audience interaction during short-form improv. We are always talking to them, and sometimes an audience member volunteers to come on stage,” said Lee Barats, a mechanical engineering senior and team manager.
The second type of improv the team performs is called long-form improv. According to Barats, during long-form improv, the team takes a generalized suggestion from the audience, such as “a doctor’s office,” and performs a longer sketch based off the idea.
The club does more than just perform for Cal Poly students, however. Recently, the group traveled to the University of Southern California to participate in “Fracas,” the only college improv festival in the country. Hundreds of improv teams gathered together to attend improv workshops and performances and meet other college improv enthusiasts.
“It’s like going to another school and meeting people from your same fraternity. We all have something in common,” Barats said.
The team also travels to Scotland every other year to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest theatre event in the world. The team rents out a venue and performs its brand of improv every night to “drunk British people,” Lee said. All money the group makes from Cal Poly performances goes toward paying for this trip.
Barats, who went to Scotland in 2006 and plans to go again this summer said, “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
So why do busy Cal Poly students aspire to take part in such a time-consuming organization? After studying the requisite 25-35 hours, many find there isn’t a lot of time left over.
But it’s the people who keep them motivated, theatre senior Duncan Calladine said.
“Everyone in the club is so unique and awesome,” he said. “We’re so different – we are theatre majors to business majors to engineering majors – that we’d probably never be friends otherwise. But thanks to Smile and Nod, we’re all so close.”
Calladine currently lives with three other members from the team, including Barats.
Members also join to help further their future careers. Barats, whose lifetime goal is to be a cast member of the popular comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” said, “So many of SNL’s best members came from improv: Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Phil Hartman. . It’s just a great experience and learning opportunity.”
Calladine agrees.
“As someone who wants to go into theatre, it’s almost like being in a fraternity,” he said. “We have so many alumni living in Los Angeles or New York who want to help us out.”
For various reasons, both Barats and Calladine agree that joining Smile and Nod was one the best decisions they’ve made in college.
When asked what the team’s ultimate goal was, Calladine became pensive. “People think we’re just trying to go up on stage and tell jokes. But it’s more than that. It’s not only about trying to make the audience laugh; it’s about entertaining them.”