When I’m bored on a Thursday night, I fret not. Why? Because I always seem to find myself headed to the Ashbury Coffee House in Willow Springs. But not for the coffee, I go to see Sunni Williams host the weekly improv. Along with the event’s co-founder, Chad Feipal, Sunni leads the audience and their teams of faithful regulars through a series of games that test the skills of all the improvisers. Going on seven years, Sunni and Chad found their way to a night of improv at Low Sodium Entertainment. They found themselves taken by this newly discovered world, and began going there every Friday night for some time before they eventually started taking classes there. Shortly thereafter, the two decided to include their friends in their new discovery. That’s when Sunni had a talk with the people at the Ashbury, where she had been booking bands, and reserved herself an improv night thereafter for every week. With a night to publicly have fun and show their skills, she and her team began practicing their improvising ability in her basement on a regular basis.
During that time, her friend Alec filmed them every so often, eventually leading to the making of two DVD’s. Over the past five years, Sunni and her team have made appearances at places like Lot 4 (a sports bar in Chicago Ridge) the Uppercrust in Palos Hills and a few other locations in the Chicagoland area. Sunni went on to tell me that their group has had many hardships including quite a few dropouts and developing several new people as well. Though, Sunni admits that she had some of her own troubles as well, for instance stepping back from the lead position on a few separate occasions. Sunni now states that she feels like they’re in a rebuilding stage of the group, but that everything is going good, and based on their performances, I agree.
It can sometimes be hard to keep the audience entertained for the entire show when it comes to improv, especially when the stage is open to any newcomers that happen to be there, which can make for some unintelligible, or inexperienced, improvisers. Still, the crowd at Ashbury seems to be getting bigger every week. Not to mention, my own unfailing attendance speaks for itself. Although you’ll never find any audience that’s totally accepting to an unpleasing act, the improv at the Ash is a great place for beginners. Naturally, everyone’s bound to bomb the stage on occasion, but this group seems to keep up with each other very well, and more often than not, remain consistently funny throughout the entire 10pm to1am night.
Although, I never go on the stage myself and choose to remain an observer, my favorite game of theirs is the one they call “the alphabet game”. In this game they have two people go onto the stage and one of them says whatever he/she wants to say, as long as it starts with the letter “A”. Then the other person on stage responds, starting their response off with the letter “B”. This continues up to “Z” and then loops around to “A” again. As the game progresses, the ability to hold a normal conversation with each other becomes much more difficult, while adding just the right flavor to the already funny improv dialogue. As soon as one of the players fails to begin their line using the correct letter, or just chokes, he/she gets booted off the stage and is replaced with another volunteer. This is just one of their many creative games. They also play games like the ever so popular “freeze tag”, or “the good the bad and the stupid”. Whatever games they decide to play it’s always a fun Thursday night at the Asbury.
The Ashbury Coffee House also hosts many different charity drives. Last year, they collected used eyeglasses and fitted about one hundred kids per school in the inner city of Chicago. This year they’re doing the same thing in Mexico. You can help by dropping off your old eyeglasses in their drop box at the Ashbury Coffee House (8965 Archer Avenue, Willow Springs) or check out www.giftofsight.org.
You can find out more about their improv team at this website: www.Myspace.com/wewarnedyouimprov.
