The Blacktop Comedy Teen Performance Team is back this Friday! Alert the press! Roll out the red carpet! And, sound the trumpets!
Our Teen improv team is ready for the spotlight. They'll be on the spot this Friday, but they're always ready. They're an amazing group of improvisers who constantly impress me. Every week they meet, rehearse improv games, learn new improv skills, and prepare for a show. It's a lot of work, but they embrace it.
And, they push themselves even more by learning new improv formats. The teens have studied short form improv games, but they've also jumped into long form improv, and even a Teen Harold. The Harold? Adults have a challenging time learning The Harold! That says a lot these teens are willing to rush in and try so many new things. Whenever I leave rehearsal I'm always impressed, and inspired. They jump into everything! The only time these students don't jump into a game is when they're trying to be polite and give someone else an opportunity to guess during The Dating Game, or Interrogation.
Do games always go well? No. But they fail forward, which is a skill I think a lot of adults are hesitant to embrace. The teens learn from the failure, immediately try the game again, and succeed. It's that simple, but also that hard. That moment of failure terrifies people. It terrifies me, but after working with the teens, I see how quickly a failure can pivot into a success. Yeah, you can interpret failure as a miserable moment, and feel trapped, or it can be a temporary moment of learning (not even interpreted as 'failure'!) and then move on. It sounds good on paper, but it's even more impressive to witness in the moment, during class. The teen improv team has given me a masterclass, and they didn't even know it.
The Teen Performance Team's show is this Friday at 7p. Come support the show at Blacktop Comedy Theater is Rocklin, but be sure and arrive early. The theater is packed with friends, and family.
You can grab tickets online, but you can always grab them at the door too. Just $5. The show will be followed by The Underground. Perfect Friday night if you ask me. Call your friends, and tell them to put down the book (book!? psshhh!), comedy in Rocklin awaits!