High school improv team competes against peers
Recently at San Benito High School, the Comedysportz team faced
off with the improv team from Logan High School in the SBHS
auditorium. The show, consisting of eight participating performers,
was filled with dramatic comedy and hilarious interaction with the
audience.
According to the San Jose Comedysportz Web site it is
”
Not comedy about sports, but comedy played as a sport!
”
High school improv team competes against peers
Recently at San Benito High School, the Comedysportz team faced off with the improv team from Logan High School in the SBHS auditorium. The show, consisting of eight participating performers, was filled with dramatic comedy and hilarious interaction with the audience.
According to the San Jose Comedysportz Web site it is “Not comedy about sports, but comedy played as a sport!”
Comedysportz is better known as an improv group. Sebastian Forbush, a senior and captain of the SBHS team, said “basically improvisation, where we make stuff up on the spot.” The Comedysportz show started with a referee introducing the two teams, Logan and SBHS, and explaining the rules.
Comedysportz has many aspects to it. It has rules, time limits and different games.
On the SBHS team, each player has their own favorite games.
“My favorite game is countdown,” said Cameron Pesce, a member for more than three years.
Countdown is a game that consists of the players doing the same scene in half the time they start with until they are down to just three seconds to act it all out.
Forbush said he prefers a game called Forward Reverse, which is a game that gives the referee the ability to stop the player and have them go into reverse. During the recent competition, the referee called stop as one of the performers was in the middle of a fall.
The Comedysportz game isn’t performed only at a high school level; there is a professional level, too. The referees at the high school Comedysportz shows are from the professional Comedysportz team in San Jose. The professional group hosts a workshop for the high school teams on the first Saturday of every month.
“They’re amazing, to see how funny our school is compared to other schools,” said Pesce, of the workshops.
There are 10 members on SBHS’s team, each with their own reasons for joining.
Forbush said “at first I did it to get extra credit points in drama, but then the more I played the more I liked it. I do it for fun. I see it as a learning experience and I like making people laugh.”
The students on the Comedysportz team said they are on the team because they love performing and being on stage. In Comedysportz, they get to learn about their own comedic skills along with their peers at school and their peers of other schools.
“It’s fun to play against other schools,” Forbush said “because I don’t know what to expect.”
For Pesce, he said how it was about territory and how he loved performing when, at an away show, the crowd would be cheering for the SBHS team.
“Now against our own team, it’s kinda hard,” Pesce said “because everything we teach each other, we use on each other so we all know our techniques, like how Bernadette Rodriguez and Michael Frelier are the intellectual actors while Sebastian Forbush and I are the physical [ones.] We know what works and what doesn’t.”
SBHS has a very passionate Comedysportz team and the performers will continue to participate in shows throughout the year. The team competes today at Christian High School.
