New Waiter, New Restaurant

By Larissa Lee

Drama Club on Fridays have been a staple X-Block for many of the theatre kids at Dalat for around five years. Every Friday, as the bell rings at 3:10, we’d all scramble our way down to the room Auckland on the first floor of the Harbor building, excited to see what improv game that day would bring. Last Friday, Keiryn Sandahl (12), student leader of Drama Club, had introduced a twist to an improv game she had introduced two weeks prior. 

“I took the concept from the New Neighbor game and made it a game with a waiter and restaurant simply to change the premise so the skits wouldn’t get old. The game mechanics are essentially the same,” explained Sandahl.

The game’s premise is simple. It consisted of one person acting as someone new moving into a neighborhood of that actor’s choice, while others would act as residents of that chosen neighborhood, each possessing a specific trait catered to the prompt. For example, every member of the neighborhood would have a different hobby from each other, or a different allergy. In this new variation of the game, however, the starting actor would serve as a waiter and pick a type of restaurant to function as the setting, like a steakhouse. Then, instead of residents of a neighborhood, three other actors would come in one by one, acting as customers with different traits based on the given prompt. 

When asked about his favorite skit, Hudson Brooks (10) said that “the fear one was quite funny since we were in a pizza place, and Gabe (Roylance, 10) was speaking in an Italian accent and asked if I wanted to try all of the pizza, but I was afraid of olives, so when he said ‘all of’ it sounded like olive, and I fell on the floor screaming.” 

Another memorable skit included three delusional customers who each thought they were different animals. Keiryn spent the skit attempting to lick her own eye as a delusional person who thought she was a frog, Marcus Lim (10) portrayed a person who was convinced he was the “Eagle of God,” and Michael Silverstein (10) played a cat who was engaged in a chase with said eagle.

Improv games aren’t unusual in Drama Club. In fact, one of Drama Club’s main purposes is to work on improv skills. All the games played focus heavily on improvisation to practice thinking on our feet, but the variations of the New Neighbor game don’t only focus on improv, but also developing a character on the fly. Starting the skit for this game requires a quick establishment of setting by the “waiter,” and careful yet quick thinking from each “customer” to decide what trait they’ll embody based on the prompt.

Drama Club concludes the week with fun and excitement for many Dalat thespians. Between the improv games, the lively group of people, and the buzzing atmosphere, it certainly provides unforgettable memories, and last week was no exception.