Improv group takes suggestions from the audience

Teresa Trich is having a baby in Towers lobby. That much is certain. The events surrounding… Teresa Trich is having a baby in Towers lobby. That much is certain. The events surrounding the blessed arrival are somewhat more of a mystery.

According to Eric Ellis, the baby’s father, the baby doesn’t particularly want to leave the womb, and at less than a minute old, it has already developed a craving for crack.

According to Trich, the pregnancy is complicated by Dad’s drunken behavior and kitten fetish.

And roommate Lewis Stin is too enamored with camp TV hit “V” to really care.

Fortunately for all involved, not to mention the two dozen or so onlookers captivated by this future “Jerry Springer Show” offering, Ellis, Trich and Stin are merely actors and the back corner of Towers lobby is not about to become a makeshift maternity ward for drug-addled babies and their kitten-loving fathers.

Along with Alanna Turner, the quartet known as the Hat Company delivered an assault of improvisational entertainment in the Towers lobby on Friday.

Improv comedy means making up jokes and skits on the spot, often using outrageous situations and characters suggested by the audience, a la the TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

“I like that you get to make decisions on the spot,” Ellis said after the performance. “And you still get good audience reactions that let you know you’re doing a good job.”

“It’s a lot of fun, high energy stuff,” Trich said. “The thrill of making people laugh and working without a net is great.”

The Hat Company’s hour-long performance consisted of a number of small improvisational games loaded with audience participation. Sometimes, like in the pregnancy situation related above, audience members simply suggested the situation for the characters to act out (i.e. there was an argument over having a baby). Other times audience members were literally dragged into the performance.

One audience member had to control the actor’s movements while they baked a pretend apple pie in a game called “Puppets.” During another game, a combination of Telephone and Charades, characters attempted to solve a murder mystery using only actions and not words. After Trich, for instance, acted out the events of the murder to one audience member, the on-the-spot Sherlock Holmes had to then perform the actions to another unfortunate soul who could use only secondhand pantomime to deduce the occupation, location and method used to kill the deceased.

The Hat Company’s performance was a joint presentation of Pitt Arts and the Pittsburgh Public Theater. The Hat Company regularly participates in Friday Nite Improvs in the basement of the Cathedral of Learning and has been together with rotating members since 1993.

“I go to the Friday Nite Improvs all the time,” said audience member Candi Feldman. “I find it all so hilarious.”

Feldman said she’s attracted to improv because she too is spontaneous and funny. “I think we just sort of attract one another. It suits my personality.”

One final skit put the performers of the Hat Company in a particularly tight spot. The performers pretended to be making a commercial selling horses, but under the premise suggested by a particularly cruel audience member perhaps still annoyed over being forced to participate in the earlier Charades game, the horses’ appeal come from their sexiness. As if that wasn’t enough, after one 30-second skit, the commercial had to be retailored to appeal to the midget demographic, and a third attempt had to include celebrity spokesman Gary Coleman.

“It’s not always easy,” Ellis said. “But sometimes that’s what makes the audience laugh the most.”