SketchProv at The P.I.T.
Last night I was a judge at the final round of The P.I.T.'s SketchProv Tournament. What is SketchProv, you ask? It's a combination of improv and sketch comedy wherein the participants take a suggestion from the audience and have ten minutes to plot out a ten minute sketch. In other words, its hilarious semi-anarchy.
The way the tournament worked was that there was two brackets made up of sketch and improv teams. Each group performed a sketch, improv and sketchprov set, and in the earlier rounds, the audience voted on the winner. Last night they called in the judges to preside over the match between the top sketch and improv groups.
The breakdown of the competition after the jump.
The Teams: Audience of Two -- a two man group that represents, apparently, a larger comedy collective.
ETC... -- a nine member group that looked like they were assembled from a college dorm. Also, I should mention, they performed in the semi-final round right before the finals show, so this was their second performance of the night in two hours.
The Carnage: ETC.. handled their large size impressively. Everyone had a part, and they put together some really rich multilevel stories in the short time they had to work with. There were some really strong individual performances, but one or two of the members seemed like they were in the group because they were someone's best friend. Also, the whole thing felt a little shambolic and rambling at times.
Audience of Two was deliciously weird. They had a great give and take between the two performers, and made good use of the wacky guy vs. straight man dynamic. And one of their sketches included a song which used the lyric "principal of awesome school," which, you can't beat that. Their other sketch featured the two players reciting a litany of health-related complaints that was approached Beckett in terms of absurdity.
The Fallout: You can probably tell from my write up which group I went for. Both teams gave really energetic and genuinely funny performers, but in the end it was Audience of Two that won my vote. And the prize.
Comments (1)
Ao2 performed some of the best improv and sketch i've seen in a very long time. the material was good, but their performances were truly great.