MU Improv’s female comedians furrowed their brows in concentration after listening to audience members yell out suggestions of things not associated with sex. Lined up against the wall of The Shack during the annual Femprov show on March 13, the women improvised one-liners like:

“Sex with me is like Tide Pods. If you put it in your mouth, you will die.”

“Sex with me is like a plane crash. There are too many people in the cockpit.”

“Sex with me is like Six Flags. I might throw up. I’m sorry.”

MU students gave suggestions, like life events or places where you would lay a blanket, to create interconnected scenes. According to MU Improv President Connor Levi Hills, the two teams, Vagical and Not Your Mom, each had 30 minutes to perform, and at the end of the night, they combined to play a game called “Sex with me is like…” Each team showcased long-form improv, the same format that catapulted the careers of female comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

“One of the main goals of Femprov is to acknowledge women in comedy because we are quite a minority,” Femprov performer Sarah Pribe said. “It gives all of us the opportunity to perform with each other, which in turn allows us to support and motivate each other both on and off the stage. We are all women in comedy, and so by supporting each other, we can hopefully create a greater platform for women in comedy.”

Members of the first team, Vagical, ran on stage to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and the seven women introduced themselves as their characters for the night. These characters spanned from Gert, a Swede who was hit on the head as a child and did not speak correctly, to Virginica, a girl infected with demons and needing to be exorcised. Throughout the half hour, the performers webbed together stories about a failing family coal business and a high school dance. Both were centered around two audience suggestions: a picnic basket and an exorcism.

Two or three women improvised at a time on The Shack’s stage while the remaining members of the team stood offstage and laughed with the rest of the audience. Sometimes, performers took the scene in a far-fetched direction and reacted to their own words with a sympathetic grimace. However, the improvisers say “yes, and” to all ideas, a concept in which a performer accepts what another performer says onstage and expands on that idea.

The second team, Not Your Mom, began its performance with two women riding alongside each other on horseback. This established the themes for the rest of the night. The other scenes included a town-wide horse versus mule rivalry, a woman undergoing surgery to attach herself to her horse and a child learning about sex for the first time. If somebody standing offstage thought of a new direction to take the scene, often as a response to something her teammate said on stage, she would shoo that teammate into the sidelines and present her new idea.

“It is a space where you don’t have to be good, just interested,” Pribe said. “Everyone has good and bad scenes, even the most experienced people, so it is a very humbling activity, and everyone knows that. Something we do at the end of each practice is pat each person on the back and say, ‘I got your back’ because not only do we have each other’s backs in scenes but also outside of the club.”

Even though the problems women face persist over time, jokes and scenarios performed at Femprov occur only once. According to MU Improv member Gabby Velasquez, members of Femprov practice Thursdays at 7 p.m. on the second floor of Memorial Union and have shows every Tuesday at 9 p.m. in The Shack.

_Edited by Alexandra Sharp | asharp@themaneater.com_