Greetings from The Scramble!

Hi. My name is Shane. I am the, uh, most bear-ish member of Greg's PHIT house team, temporarily known as The Scramble. This past weekend we had the pleasure of performing at The Shubin with the other house teams, Activity Book and Fletcher, as well as UCB's own RAGNAROCK! Everyone was delightful and funny, and ultimately there were waffles, but mostly I want to talk about the crazy style of improv known as The Scramble.

If The Harold is a river, with surprising twists and turns, but ultimately following an easily mapped pattern, then The Scramble is a maelstrom of chaos, a veritable skookumchuck of comedy, with so much going on, the audience is forced to decide what to focus on. (If you deduced that I used that metaphor just so I could use the word "skookumchuck", then good job, and ten points to Gryffindor or whatever.) The Scramble walks a thin line between improv comedy and performance art, and I feel it's a more interactive form than the standard improv templates. If you're new to The Scramble, let me give you a taste of the madness!

Our team has eight members, and at the start of the show, each of us comes out and does a scene with a ghost. What's particularly unusual is that we don't leave the stage as the other performers begin their scenes, so at one point in the opening, all eight of us are onstage, doing our individual ghost scenes and talking over each other. To say this is chaotic is probably a bit of an understatement; there is so much happening on the stage that an audience member would not possibly be able to take it all in at once, and would instead be forced to pay selective attention to whatever interests him/her at the moment. This is challenging stuff for an audience not used to it, and we noticed more than a few puzzled faces during the start of last weekend's shows.

The middle of the show is filled with two-person scenes that may or may not be related to the earlier ghost scenes. The primary difference here between The Scramble and The Harold is that there are often more than one of these scenes playing out at once. While not as chaotic as the beginning, an audience still finds more than one thing competing for its attention. The other main difference is that we edit our own scenes. No one from the back line runs out in front to end a scene; rather it is up to us to decide when the scene has reached its natural exit point. We try to end our scenes on a high emotional note, and then quickly drop our character and head back to the line. Personally, I like the freedom to end my own scene when I feel it needs to be wrapped up. Since our scenes overlap continuously, The Scramble is a little more intense than standard long-form improv - there's a whole lotta content packed into every half hour. We end with more ghost scenes, and the final tableau, if you will, has all eight of us back on the stage, interacting with ghosts, as the lights go down.

I'll admit that the form is a little daunting to all of us, and while I am happy with last weekend's shows, I believe that we will only get stronger as we become more used to it, particularly once we don't need to think about structure so much and can focus even more on our characters and scenes. We had a great session with the lovely and talented Morgan from RAGNAROCK!, who gave us some good ideas for The Scramble, despite not being very familar with the form. I think we're all excited to be part of something new and different, and are looking forward to the opportunity to bring Philly something it probably hasn't seen before. We have a very diverse team, and I'm proud of the work we've done, and am anticipating even greater things down the line for us. And for you! Go Phillies!