Oncoming Traffic aims to have them rolling in the aisles

by Mark Hinson September 30, 2005

When the students were coming back to college in late August, the Florida State University improv-comedy troupe Oncoming Traffic decided to have a little fun at the expense of Tom Cruise.

You know, it's been a heck of a year for Cruise. The couch-bouncing psycho-Scientologist had recently proposed to a TV actress half his age and, for the heck of it, taken on the entire pharmaceutical industry.

The Traffic gang screened a copy of Cruise's testosterone-driven, fly-boy flick "Top Gun" from the Reagan era. As the film ran during a sold-out midnight screening on campus, the comedians added running commentary.

Whenever a scene could be interpreted as vaguely homo-erotic (think beach-volleyball scene, for example), the players rang a bell.

"We rang that bell a lot," Traffic member Ernest Wilkins, 20, said.

"We didn't tell the audience what the bell was supposed to mean, but they caught on quickly. Our audiences are usually pretty smart. They've grown along with us."

Check the audience IQ for yourself tonight when Oncoming Traffic riffs off anything and everything the crowd shouts out during a comedy show at the Warehouse. The troupe is making an effort to extend its quick wit beyond campus and into the Tallahassee community.

"What you see onstage is 100-percent made-up," Wilkins said. "We don't have bits that we do. It's all off the cuff. It makes for a more interesting show that way."

The troupe tries to keep the material relatively clean.

"I can't say we haven't let out a few curse words, but we try to be friendly for all audiences," Wilkins said. "Again, it depends on the audience and what they choose. Body parts - you name it, and it's been yelled out. I've played all different parts of the body."

Oncoming Traffic was formed in 2002, and most of the members are everyday students who are not majoring in drama or performance.

"I grew up in Chicago, which is a mecca for improv," Wilkins, a sociology major, said. "I started going to shows, and I just fell in love with it. ... That's the way most of us (in the troupe) feel about improv comedy."