Female improv group shows its stockings

A group of women has shown its funny side through two years of improv — and its members wear bright blue tights while doing it.

The Blue Stocking Babes, Pittsburgh’s first all-female comedy troupe, is capitalizing on a rising interest in improv in Pittsburgh as it celebrates its second anniversary with two shows this March. The group uses standard performance tactics, and the women promote their femininity with their humor.

“Our show at the Steel City Improv Theater in March and our Arcade [Comedy Theater] show in March — we’re really excited about these shows because they are the second-year anniversary. Certainly these seem like the biggest, most energized shows we’ve done in our history so far,” said Molly Bain, a member of the Babes.

The Blue Stocking Babes have worked to inspire more interest in the improv community. As an entirely female comedy group, the women recognize their distinguishing characteristics.

“An all-female comedy troupe is a pretty unique thing. Improv scenes in general are really dominated by men, so it’s a great, unique feature, and it’s feisty, and it’s feministy, and it’s really fun,” Bain said.The troupe formed when they met at Steel City Improv Theater doing developmental work. Local comedians Ayne Terceira, Keara Kelly and Christina Powers founded the Blue Stocking Babes comedy troupe two years ago. Powers has since left the troupe, but improv veterans Beth Fogle, Tamara Siegert and Bain now round out the Babes’ lineup.

The Blue Stockings Society — the inspiration for the group’s name — spearheaded an informal women’s intellectual movement in 18th-century England that emphasized education.

“We were all really over-educated,” said founding member Terceira. “So we called the group Blue Stocking Babes because we were just really over-educated women trying to do comedy. Eventually, we’ve moved kind of past that, but we’re not gonna throw out the name, ’cause damnit we took the pictures with blue stockings in them. We’re not throwing out nothing,” she joked.

Terceira has been involved with stand-up comedy since her days as an undergrad at CMU. Although she was initially interested in musical theater, Terceira decided to try improv her freshman year. In 1996, she founded the improv troupe No Parking Players, which still exists today.

“It’s a way of not being pigeon-holed. You can do any character you want. You can be anything you would never get cast as,” Terceira said of the group.

Freedom is what improvisational comedy is all about. Although the Babes use a “form” for their performances, nothing done on stage is ever planned. The specific form the Babes use is something they call “The Bronte,” after authors Charlotte and Emily Bronte of English literary fame.

Each show typically starts out with a few monologues, although the exact words of the monologues are never planned. This is then followed by a series of scenes that reflect on certain ideas brought up in the monologues.

After bouncing around between monologues and scenes several times, the Babes perform a complex maneuver called “The Onion.” This group game starts with one person onstage, but the scene changes as each performer is added to the scene one at a time. Performers are subtracted successively after a certain number of people have entered, and each scene returns to its orginal topic.

The last subset the Babes perform is “The Round.” In the subset, multiple performers begin onstage playing different characters. The catch is that the performers offstage can come in and tag out the players onstage, resulting in rotating character interactions.

The Blue Stocking Babes take the audience through a whirlwind of emotions, with constantly fluctuating personalities ranging from the farcical to the serious. Onstage relationships often get quite intense.

“You get the opportunity to have experiences that you’re never going to have in real life, but you also get to have the opportunity to just say exactly what’s in your head right when you’re thinking it,” Tamara Siegert said.

And fortunately for the Babes, Pittsburgh’s improv scene is “frickin’ exploding,” in the words of Terceira.

“It will only continue, now that we have two theaters,” she added. “The Arcade just opened last month — we have lots of troupes going to festivals, and there’s just a growing, growing variety.”

Although the age of audience members ranges from the young and innocent to the old and refined, the Babes encourage college students to come out to a show.

“If you like girls and you like things that are funny, you’ll love the Babes,” Siegert said.