By Claire Gunning
Staff Writer
Comedy Sportz, Mira Costa’s improvisational team, competed at the Fullerton Drama Festival alongside the Mira Costa Drama Department on March 20-21, but did not rank at the competition.
Fullerton is held at University of California Fullerton annually and approximately 60 schools compete each year. This year, Comedy Sportz competed improv in front of judges that scored their ability to maintain and act out scenes.
“My favorite part about Fullerton was all the downtime we had,” Team member Miranda Baldo said. “I do love performing of course, but mingling with all the other schools and other people was amazing.”
One team of five Comedy Sportz members competed in front of judges at a time. The two teams that went were Charlie Durham, Tamara Knell, Christie Carey, Miranda Baldo and Elizabeth Hartman on “Team Haha” and Sarah Colen, Armance Sherman, Duncan Bardeau, Juliana Rosenfeld, and Hadley Thomas on “Team Diversity”.
“Fullerton was amazing. I am constantly inspired time and time again by the play
of my peers and teammates,” Durham said. “I was so proud of both of the teams we sent.”
According to Baldo, Comedy Sportz played numerous games including a team favorite called “New Choice”. To play, the team improvs a skit based on suggestions and while performing, a judge can call out “New Choice” at any time which forces the players to alter the skit to include a new action or phrase of their choosing.
“I love New Choice because it gives you the most free range as an improver in general,” Baldo said. “You get to really portray yourself as a funny individual, while sharing your knowledge of a scene structure.”
According to Durham, the team faced scheduling difficulties due to many team members being in the cast of Drama’s spring musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie”. The play’s opening night is April 27, so Durham hopes to schedule more matches afterwards.
“Even though we don’t have any matches coming up, we are still practicing and having fun,” Durham said. “I sincerely hope that we can have more matches planned by the end of the year and I am working hard to do so.”
The annual Teacher Match has been cancelled again and thus will no longer take place in May. The Teacher Match was earlier postponed from November when threats Yik-Yak threats closed down the school.
“It almost brought me and Sarah [Colen] to tears with pride over our team and our performance at the Fullerton Festival,” Durham said. “Although we didn’t come home with a trophy we played our hardest and best and that’s all I could ever ask for in our team.”
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