Get your laugh on

Students get their funny bones tickled by FSU improv group

Oncoming Traffic is a weekly improv comedy show put on by FSU students. Founder Curtis Parks and fellow student Pat Young work on their improv skills for the next show. Photo by: Aaron Pagel

by Ted Stratton February 02, 2004

Students tired of the same old garbage spewing from their television may want to check out a local comedy show renowned for its originality.

Hosted by Florida State's self-professed improv and guerilla theatre specialists, Oncoming Traffic provides students with comic relief.

Curtis Parks, a student at FSU, officially founded this weekly live show in the spring of 2002. Parks wanted to start something new and different on campus for young comedians and budding actors.

"I had to perform," Parks said. "I hadn't gotten cast into anything and I had to perform. We had used improv as a warm up before, so when I got the opportunity to put on an entire show, I was like 'yeah, I've got to do that.'"

At a typical Oncoming Traffic show the audience is just as much a part of the show as the actors on stage. In the "Excuses" skit, audience members are encouraged to shout out ideas as to why someone is late for work. And "Best Day/Worst Day" calls for individuals to get out of their seats and on the stage as performers act out the best and worst case scenarios for one's day.

"The more intelligent and live the crowd is, the much better the show," Parks said.

Sometimes audience members find themselves getting involved by accident.

"A girl in the front row had her cell phone go off by accident one time," Parks said. "We answered it and it turned out to be her mom. The girl got real embarrassed, but now she is one of our best fans and comes to almost every show."

Let this be a warning to sheepish audience members.Not knowing what to expect is the foundation of improv.

"We are the machine and they are like the fuel," Parks said. "We feed off them. The better the fuel, the better the show."

Occasionally things have been known to get a little out of hand.

"One time during a game of 'Helping Hands' I had to eat raw pizza dough with tomato sauce and pepperonis and I don't eat meat, which was interesting," Director and President of Oncoming Traffic Regan Davis said. "Plus I ate some of the newspaper it was on. It didn't taste good, but it was really funny, so it was worth it."

For Davis, eating raw pizza dough and newspaper was worth it when he thinks back to the show's humble beginnings.

"We used to perform at Down Below at Barnacle Bills and the people there weren't really into it," Davis said. "I remember saying, 'We need a better location.' So yeah, things are much better now."

With their days of performing in dim pubs over, the troupe now packs the Warehouse with regulars each week. But their rough beginnings helped them build character and become better performers.

"We moved from people trying to be funny to friends trying to perform and put on a show," troupe member Kevin Boyle said. "As we grew we changed our approach from toilet humor to a more Monty Pythonesque humor with complicated relationships and complex characters that come across as genuinely funny instead of just copping out and doing a toilet joke."

Oncoming Traffic attributes much of its improvement and development to hard work, frequent rehearsing and the instruction and advice of Chicago-based improv troupe Second City. Michael Gellman, of the same improve troupe that was once home to John Belushi, Bill Murray and Mike Myers, paid a visit to Oncoming Traffic last April to offer his expertise and counsel.

"He gave us lots of ideas on how to form relationships and scenes and how to move the scenes forward and not worry about making the scene funny, which in turn made the scenes funnier," improv veteran Lindsay Urban said. "Because it wasn't just punch line after punch line it was a story and it made it situational comedy instead of one liners. He knew what he was talking about; he took us to a whole new level."

Later this spring, Oncoming Traffic will be performing at the Dirty South Improv Festival in Chapel Hill, N.C. before traveling to Miami for another festival and group of workshops. In April, the performers will attempt to break the world record for longest continuous improv show completed by a single troupe. The group hopes to celebrate their two-year anniversary by surpassing the 35-hour record time set by STS Seven Improv out of Seaside, Fla.

"We are going to bring in whole new games and are probably going to have to incorporate eating into some of the scenes to keep us going," Parks said. "It's going to be awesome."