MU Improv kicked off its year on Aug. 22 with its first show. As its audience grows, so does the club, which has drawn a record number of freshman performers interested in being on stage.

“It’s grown a lot,” Schuyler Weinberg, MU graduate and an MU Improv founder. “We’ve had lot of the new people. A lot of the freshmen last year brought people in to come to the shows, and we actually had a consistent audience.”

When the group started out, it practiced for seven months before its first show, and all those hours helped MU Improv improve, Weinberg said.

“I think we got a lot stronger at improvises,” he said. “The shows became better, and people who follow the shows liked what was happening, and they decided they wanted to be a part of it, too. It looks better when you’re good at what you do.”

One of the individuals Weinberg said he greatly credits improving and expanding MU Improv is Dillon Cassidy, the club’s president and one of its founding members.

Cassidy said he was active in recruitment during Summer Welcome, which Weinberg said led to this semester’s high turnout.

“It’s grown so much,” Cassidy said. “When it was founded in 2009 we had about eight regular members. I’m actually the only one left now from that original eight.”

MU Improv member Joey Greenstein said the club’s first show was a success.

“I walked into the room, and the entire Shack was filled,” Greenstein said. “People were sitting in booths on the side, and it was borderline overwhelming.”

Senior Naomi La Fond said the more people attend the show, the better the group performs, because the group feeds off the audience and its energy.

“That’s the whole point of doing something,” she said. “You need an audience. You need their reactions. When we do improv, we need to find out what people think is funny and what people don’t think is funny.”

Junior Ian Sobule said having an audience is crucial.

“It’s funny how as a performer you have no concept of what is hilarious, and it’s critical to have an audience because it’s impossible to have a bad show with an audience,” he said.

Sobule said practice for the club is more about getting a feel for your teammates and developing personal relationships so people can trust one another on stage.

“Improv is based on group mind, so if you don’t know someone, it’s hard to bounce an idea off of them,” sophomore member Eric Dude said.

The club will have shows the second and fourth Thursday of every month. It will also be introducing a new team called Armando Diaz, which will be performing the second Monday of each month. The members will bring someone from the community who they think is funny to speak and perform a monologue, after which the group will perform.