While horror shows usually give audiences a fright, this comedy stage caused an uproar of laughter.
On Thursday at 8 p.m., the Hello Dali improv comedy group performed its horror themed show in Doudna’s lecture hall.
The show featured the performers under their stage names: Ex-files, Hijack, Asiago, Dictionary, Outback, Finger, Banshee, Uncle Howdy, Double Stufed and Mind Wipe. All of them were able to show their stage personalities, bouncing ideas back and forth off one another.
At the beginning of the show, the audience were to provide job occupations to the performers, writing them down on slips of papers that would be drawn in a collection later near the end of the show. The show started off with a gentle warm-up, getting a volunteer from the audience to act out their day.
The improv games started off with four squares, each couple of people out of a group of four would rotate and play the setting given to them by the audience.
Another game was excuses-excuses, where game members had to mime out why they were comically late to a job. Other games included a soap opera, a horror movie, fortunately unfortunately: A fairytale game ending.
The group also performed a game called World’s Worst, which lets the performers give their worst impressions for people, places and things. The game doubled back to the job position slips provided at the beginning of the show.
For Olivia Keys, stage alias Dictionary, this was her first semester getting up on the stage with Hello Dali.
“We all have to learn off from each other, it’s a great time to be genuine with each other,” Keys said.
Keys went on to say they regularly practiced once a week on Thursdays, the same day as their performances with the exceptions of special events.
Group member Lauren Carter-Chenowith, Banshee, explained a bit further what special events entailed. Events were hosted directly with the theater group at the school; they would play special shows at the Eastern’s spring festival, where they’d host different shows over the course of three days.
“This coming Thursday, Oct. 31 on Halloween, we’ll be hosting an event at Seventh Street Underground in MLK. If you don’t know where that is, it’s underneath the Java Cafe. It should look like a dungeon,” she said.
Carter went on to say they wanted the audience to come out and get a good laugh, even with their mess ups it was guaranteed to get a range of emotions from audience members.
For those interested, Hello Dali hosts an open audition process at the beginning of each semester. Auditions are taught; there’s no jumping in without any training.
Asha Hoak can be reached at at 581-2812 or at ahoak@eiu.edu.
