CORRECTION: Improv night at CHS to be held Friday night

Instead of worrying about remembering their lines, a group of 20 Corbin High School students will be making it up as they go along as Redhound Threatre hosts its inaugural improv night on Friday.

Corbin theatre teacher Rebecca Liford-Hibbard said during the 45 minute show the students will play a series of 12 improv games, several of which will be familiar to fans of television’s “Whose Line is it Anway,” and/or late night comedian Jimmy Fallon.

The games include:

• Let’s make a date, is similar to the old television show “The Dating Game,” but each of the bachelors/bachelorettes have strange personalities that the contestant must guess.

• Party quarks calls for each guest at a party to have a strange personality/character that the host must guess.

• Murder, murder die in which the audience comes up with the weapon, location and occupation of the killer and the actors much communicate what happened.

“It is kind of like the rumor game,” Liford-Hibbard said, explaining that how the story begins is nowhere the same as how it ends.

• The classic scenes from a hat, in which audience members are asked before the show to write down ideas that the players must then act out.

• Three headed Broadway star in which music from a Broadway musical is played and then the three players must sing their own lyrics with each player singing one word at a time.

Liford-Hibbard said she held improv night while teaching theatre at Knox Central High School and it proved so popular that she decided to try it out at Corbin.

“The kids had so much fun,” Liford-Hibbard said

It is one of those things that you don’t have to spend a lot of money or prep time on and the kids get to show off their skills,” she said.

While the starring roles in the traditional plays tend to go to the more experienced students in the theatre classes, Liford-Hibbard said the improve night is an opportunity for other students to shine on stage.

“This is something that any student can participate in,” Liford-Hibbard said. “We have several athletes who have come in and are hilarious.”

Liford-Hibbard said she is waiting to see how well the show is received. If it goes over well, she said she would like to have a similar show in the spring and is looking at doing it each trimester beginning next school year.

In addition, Liford-Hibbard said she would like to open the performance to the theatre students at the middle school.

“I teach improv at the middle school and they are fantastic,” Liford-Hibbard said.

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Betty Hamilton Center for the Performing Arts at Corbin High School. Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students.

All proceeds go to help finance the theatre program.