Wyn Caudle
Arts & Entertainment Editor
On Feb. 7, Don’t Throw Shoes Comedy Improv Troupe hosted their first show of the semester: Ship Show! The show took place in Lean Lecture Hall and had many jokes surrounding ‘ships’ and what they can mean.
After Morgan Hunter ’25 gave opening remarks to the audience, the Shoes stepped forward to introduce themselves. Going down the line, each Shoe said their name and shared a ship they were looking forward to. This ranged from character ships to sea ships.
The first game of the night was ‘Hitchhiker.’ In this game, three players sat in a car arrangement, each with a different role to play. Intermittently, passengers in the car rotated seats, and one of the players would leave the car to be replaced in the rotation by someone else with a different role. All of the Shoes participated in this game, with passengers ranging from creatures to kindergarteners.
The next game played was called ‘Outburst.’ In this game, members of the audience provided suggestions for situations to be acted out by two of the Shoes. As the scene went on, other Shoes shouted out adjectives that the Shoes changed their performances to match. The first round had Caitlin O’Neil ’26 and Matthew McMorrough ’25 on the docks by a ship with only one bed. This scene came about from combining the idea of a physical ship with the concept of the ‘there’s only one-bed’ trope found in media. The second scene saw Henry Walter-Wilde ’27 and Afton Camlin ’27 on a boat deciding the best way to set fire to it.
The third game featured audience participation again in the form of character suggestions. The host of ‘Just Plain Folks’ (Camlin), interviewed Shoes as audience-suggested characters. The characters chosen were a delivery truck driver without a truck (Rinoa Brandsema ’28), a frog panicking while growing limbs (Julia Glenn ’25) and gay LeBron James (Emma Anderson ’26).
The next game was titled ‘Survivor.’ In this game, Hunter, Anderson, Glenn and Joe Russo ’26 performed a scene in which they acted as eco-friendly robbers. After the scene was performed, the audience cheered as Walter-Wilde eliminated the person with the least amount of cheers until there was only one actor left. In this scene, Anderson ended up being the last Shoe standing and attempted to play every part of the scene all at once.
The last game, ‘Two Lines,’ featured three Shoes, two of whom had just two lines they could say, with the third person being able to speak freely. In the first scene, Russo and McMorrough were given two lines each while Walter-Wilde could speak freely between them on their date in a spaceship that featured lots of rainbow-toe socks. The second scene held Jack Freer ’26, Mary Lepore ’26 and Leo Walsh ’28. Lepore could speak freely while Walsh and Freer had only two lines. The three had a confrontation in a morgue, featuring lots of references to the ‘poop deck.’
The show finished out with by playing ‘World’s Worst’ in which they attempted to be the world’s worst BLANK, with career ideas once again coming from the audience.
Come out and support the shoes at their next performance on Feb. 22 — Improv the Improv Musical in Gault Recital Hall! @dont.throwshoes on Instagram