Crowd Cracks up at Charred Goosebeak Show

Improv+comedy+group+provides+laughs.

Improv comedy group provides laughs.

Colgate’s only improv comedy group, Charred Goosebeak, held their first performance of the year in Donovan’s Pub Wednesday, September 28. In front of the packed pub, the group started their performance with a rap battle. Playing the moderator of the battle, sophomore Ian Guap spouted off a list of rules.  “No insulting each other’s mothers unless it’s funny,” Guap said.  

The rap battle was between two members, self-named rappers “Thick Boy D*ck Boy” and “Criss Cross Apple Boss.” It started with a lot of smack talk and quickly deteroriated into talk of making out.

After this extremely entertaining introduction, the group played a series of improv games on stage.  The first was called “Shift Left,” and included four actors.  The actors operated in alternating groups of four pairs. Each pair was given a vague situation called out by the audience. The first pair was designated to be a waxer and waxee, the second pair was supposed to be at a hot-dog factory, the third pair was told to incorporate the adjective chunky and the last pair was supplied with a suggestive phrase.

Once every pair had their assignment, the game began. Each group did an improv piece with their given situation until the moderator of the game yelled, “Shift left!” and a new pair would step up to take their place. The pairs repeated and every round got slightly shorter. The roars of laughter from the audience proved the game to be a hit.

The next game the group played was called “Ding.” In this game, the people on the stage had conversations with each other, incorporating a chosen word in any way they saw fit. This game was based on the use of the word “flamingo.” However, when the moderator said “ding,” they had to restart their sentence and finish it in a different way, thus changing the direction of the conversation. The twists and turns made this game a crowd favorite.

“Any show that manages to combine flamingoes and 2Chainz in one scene is good in my book,” sophomore Emily Jacobs said. “The audience participation made sure that the group stayed on its toes, and they certainly did not disappoint.”

For the last game, the group played a game called Pick-Up-Lines. In this game, scraps of paper with pre-written phrases were scattered on the floor. The two actors were told to base their skit on the TV show Shark Tank. As the actors conversed on stage, they had to pick up paper scraps and incorporate the phrase into the conversation. This led to a very entertaining scene that sometimes didn’t make the most sense.  The phrases included, “You’re a wizard, Harry,” “Oops I did it again,” “What does the fox say” and many others.  This elicited howls of laughter from the audience.  

“It was so cool how they were able to come up with so much material on the spot,” sophomore Abbey Curtis said. Charred Goosebeak will be performing again on Saturday, October 22.