Making It Up As I Go Along

When it’s raining, it can mean only one thing…possible flooding. Actually, two things…possible flooding and a new blog entry from David (DUKE). The past 7 days have been intense. Since the activities fair I have been going to different groups to check them out, but some of them require that you audition. The one group that most appealed to me was DUI (Duke University Improv—the only improv group on campus). It’s seven guys who perform on average one show a week including during orientation, parents weekend and a huge show at the end of the year. I saw them perform during Orientation and thought they were really funny, so I signed up to audition last Tuesday afternoon.

Well, there were 70 people total who auditioned and in my timeslot there were 3 others. For half and hour, we played some games like “Change,” “Emotions” and “Freeze”—the type of stuff you see on whose line is it anyway. I thought it went pretty well. At one point we had to randomly pick an adjective and noun from some cards. I got “Salty” and “Nun” and played it like I was a nun literally covered in salt. They seemed to like that.

Well, the next day I got an e-mail inviting me to a callback. 10 people were chosen to come to a 2-hour call back on Sunday, but first DUI had a 3-hour workshop on Thursday to teach us some improv techniques. See, very intense. We learned to always agree, say “Yes And…” and always justify your actions. It was exhausting but really fun and there was lots of laughing.

Well, Sunday rolled around and after lots of driving around North Carolina the previous night (see: “The Last Exit”) I was very tired but ready. DUI said we had to prepare a monologue for our call back to show our range, but I decided to try something different and write a song parody about the group members to the tune of…Do You Hear The People Sing? (…naturally) They seemed to like it but I was still very nervous. I thought the callback went well, but I just wasn’t sure about whether I’d make it. It was all a blur. I remember at one point playing a gay detective living in Paris who takes a road trip to Praha, but that’s about it.

Well, Monday all I could do was refresh my e-mail to see if I got anything from DUI. By 8 PM still nothing. I was sitting in my room after dinner just surfing the web when the seven guys from DUI come walking into my room. They asked my roommate to leave and closed the door. One of them, Matt, began, “Umm, we like to talk to all of the callbacks to tell them about some positives and negatives from their audition. We really liked you and thought you were funny, but unfortunately there’s just not enough room to take you this year…

“…Just kidding, you made it man. Congratulations!” I was shocked to say the least and staring rattling off some expletives. The group took only 2 other guys and we all went to tell them about the “bad, but really good” news. After getting the 9th and 10th members, the guys drive us off-campus to a sports bar where they told us all about the group and we discussed our auditions. It was fun, hilarious…my best moment so far at Duke. Tonight is our first practice from 10-12 PM and, at this point, there is nowhere else I’d rather be…of course, that includes UNC!

check out DUI at www.dukeuniversityimprov.com