In a classroom in Snyder-Phillips Hall on a Wednesday night, stomping and incoherent shouts followed by hysterical laughter can be heard. Though a seemingly strange combination of sounds, it’s not unusual to the students in that room — Roial Players.
Improv director Matthew Schomisch said Roial Players improv is “the number one and only improv team on campus.”
“That’s kind of our tagline right now,” Schomisch, a mechanical engineering junior, said.
The Roial Players is a theatre group based out of Snyder-Phillips Hall and has been at MSU for 10 years, though the group became a registered student organization this fall.
“It grew from people in RCAH (Residential College in the Arts and Humanities) wanting to have their own theatre group and branched off into different things,” Schomisch said. “We have our improv, but we also have the regular Roial which does plays and musicals and we’re branching off into new groups of film, music, there’s people who do PR, there’s writers as well. (There’s) a bunch of different branches under the Roial heading brand.”
The improv group has 20 to 25 members. It meets every week on Mondays and Wednesdays and does one show a month with 10 to 14 of those members. Schomisch said rehearsals are open and anyone is able to join at any time throughout the school year.
Film studies sophomore Simon Tessmer said he joined Roial Improv his freshman year and the other members have helped him improve. He said he thinks their group is different than other college improv groups because there are no auditions or cuts.
“We accept anyone,” Tessmer said. “You’re going to learn improv if you want to. You just keep coming back and you volunteer and you’ll get better.”
Tessmer said the shows are similar to classic improv games, but also have something more uncommon.
“If you have ever seen ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ we do a lot of short form jokes like that, but we also try to do long form type stuff,” he said. “It’s less prevalent online but it’s basically trying to tell an improvised story that’s also funny.”
Long form skits can be about 20 minutes in length, while short form skits are around five minutes, Tessmer said.
Special education sophomore Julia Lederer said she uses it to de-stress with like-minded people.
“For me, Roial is really cool because it’s a bunch of people who are generally not theatre majors who still love the idea of performing on stage, or sometimes not even,” Lederer said. “It’s a really good creative outlet for people who aren’t specifically going into a creative major.”
Tessmer agreed and said though members not performance majors, they still want the chance to perform and do what they love.
“It’s just fun and a great stress reliever,” Tessmer said. “This is a place where I can be happy and not have to worry about anything else.”
For Schomisch, the outlet comes from more than just the jokes.
“You get involved with this group of friends who meet twice a week,” Schomisch said. “It’s not necessarily a team, it’s a family. We’re friends and a family. I like being able to have fun in practices, but also be able to translate that fun on stage and sharing it to other people who want to come to our shows.”
