As autumn slowly encroaches upon us and the days begin to darken, the Drew University Football Team decided to embrace the darkness for their first game of the semester. Basing their show on the iconic emo anthem “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance, the team performed their comedy set dressed in dark, spiky clothes, black band tees and hair that looked like it walked straight out of the year 2006.
For those who may not know, the Football Team is the name of Drew’s improv comedy club. As team captain Avery Burnap (‘25) said, “Drew University doesn’t have a football team. So, naturally, the improv comedy team took over that responsibility because somebody has to do it.”
The Football Team’s first game of the 2023-2024 year took place in The Space in the Ehinger Center at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1, and featured a showcase of various games, one of which was an improvising song exercise called Emotional Orchestra, where the crowd provided parameters and the players had to create a sound to fit an assigned emotion.The improv games also included disrupting someone else’s scene by pretending to be their evil twin and “guess who” style game where players had to guess who an improv member was based entirely on answers to press conference-style questions.
“Improv is always different, for better or for worse, and I think that even if we’re not the most professional group, our rehearsals and our games are just so much fun, and it’s a nice way to involve a lot of people in the community in an event,” said Burnap. “Because yes, it’s a show, but we also rely a lot on crowd participation, and we always want to involve everyone in the show because it’s much more fun that way and it makes for better comedy.”
The Drew Football Team not only put on a show, but a crowd-engaging experience that got the whole room roaring with laughter and sitting on the edges of their seats with excitement.
If improv comedy is your thing, be sure to catch the Football Team’s next game on Saturday, Nov. 11!
Chloe is a junior majoring in English and minoring in Spanish.
