The Event, The Experience and The After Party

Friday night finally came and went and so did the 4th annual Improv Summit held at McGill University. It was in my opinion and to all the people I spoke to, a total SUCCESS!

And now a quick flashback on the past three summits:
*DOO-LOO DOO-LOO DOO-LOO!!!*
Summit #1: - Held in 2003, was the brain child of Chris Dye, Maryam, Jerry and I think some other people (I appologize for leaving anyone out). Nine teams from various universities and cegeps (both english and french) from within Montreal had entered as well as Carleton from Ottawa. So many people were interested in being a part of this major event that McGill improv had split up into2 McGill Teams and a Concordia team. The winner of each round was chosen by 3 judges. The event was hosted my "everyone's favorite host" Bryan from Without Annette. The winning team was UQAM

Summit #2: - In 2004, the summit was moved to Concordia University. Fewer teams had participated (I think 6 total) and the winning team was again chosen by 3 judges. The even twas hosted by "The Host Formely Known As" Bryan (I think.. I wasn't even there...). The winning team was McGill (There are rumors a bribe of 1000$ to each judge was involved...)

Summit #3 - In 2005, the summit was brought back to McGill University. All the teams except UQAM had bailed last minute, resulting in a 1 on 1 combat between UQAM and McGill.This time, the style was "Quebec Hockey Tournament Style" and the winner of each round was chosen by the audience voting. The winner, claiming the best 2 out 3 summits, was McGill. Unfortunately, Bryan complained he was not getting paid enough and refused to host that year, so a clone was made and replaced him. To this day no one knew the difference. (Again, I was not present so the above info may be wrong...)
*DOO-LOO DOO-LOO DOO-LOO!!!*

This year we had a total of 4 teams:

McGill

(From L to R: Noelle, Me, Ken, Ilya, Mariana and Andrew)

Carleton

(From L to R: Back - Noel, Chris, Will, Abi, Claire, Eric, Kirsten, Dave; Front - Tim, Owen)

Princeton

(Unfortunately, I never got to talk to any of them long enough to learn their names, although the last name of one of the guys on the team was Weed.)

UQAM


Maryam, Chris and Jerry were behind the scenes making sure everything was running smoothly. Bryan was the host again (we upted his salary - he was happy). The audience had the right to vote for their favorite team. Gil and Miri were the offical vote counters and Adrienne was in charge of the awesome music between scenes.

When I arrived at the location, my team was about to start warming up with Princeton. They taught us a really wicked game that involved: pointing, saying "you", saying someone's name, and saying a state or province.

We then broke up and warmed up seperately. Although I was extrememly tired all day, my energy levels were increasing exponentially. After warm-up, I was ready to tear the summit apart!

Upstairs the place was getting packed. There must have been over 100 people watching. A few people I invited couldn't make it but my good friends Caitlin and Norm showed up (Norm was skipping doing an assignment just to see me perform - dude, you rock!) as well as my chem friends Shing and Melanie. I was especially suprised and happy to see my buddy Joe and his girlfriend Katherine.

Six rounds, Thirty skits and 3 hours later, the summit was over. Everyone performed well and there was high energy held by all. I was very happy with my performances and I was even complimented by a few people after the show (yay!).

By far, one of my favorite skits was between UQAM and Princeton. The scene was a detective manipulation involving both teams. This meant that one player had to leave the room and when he came back, he had to guess the murder weapon, the scene of the crime nad the celebrity who did it. The suggestions were toothpick, Biodome and Tom Cruise. The detective was Rony from UQAM and the 2 other actors, from Princeton, had to get him to guess the words. They started using so many complicated english words that Rony was so confused (since he's french) and spent the whole scene going " I DON"T understand what you are saying! I get it! You're tryin g to trick me!". Then one of the other UQAM guys jumped on and said "Yeah, it's kind of like if we started talking like this:" and switched to french and said a bunch of things. It was hilarious!

After a tie breaker between McGill and UQAM, there was a final round between the two teams. In the end UQAM won by 1 vote! We let them win anyways... It wouldn't have been fair to beat them 3 times in a row.

Following the summit was a crazy after-party at Andrew and Adriennes. Unfortunately the Princeton guys took off because they had to hid the road early. They were actually doing an improv circuit tour! They had drove all the way form New Jersey, stopping along the way at various universities and high schools to do shows. Forunately, UQAM and Carleton rocked the house, although the UQAM team left kind of early to celebrate a birthday for one of the members. I ended up hanging out with the Carlton guys most of the night. Great bunch of people.

At one point during the party (and a few beers later) I decided to just chill in the hallway that lead to the bathroom. I ended up talking to Abi and her friend Tasia, who I had met in the past. I had a good time chatting with Tas (and if it doesn't work out with that guy from that band you see on thursdays, drop me an e-mail).

As the night started wind down I found myself on Andrews bed with a whole bunch of other people, using each other as pillows.

It was as awkward as it was relaxing, haha.

Finally by 5am, 3/4 of the Carleton team that remained and myself crashed all over Andrews floor. We couldn't stop joking around until who knows how long before I fell asleep.

I slept horribly. Alex, who was there to look over Tim, managed to break on eof the foutons and spent the whole night trying to fix it. At one point I hear "CRASH! Augh my head!" I ended up getting woken up by my brother calling me at 9am asking me when I was coming home (for my nephew's first birthday party - read the next entry to come). Noel just refused to believe it was my brother and kept insisting I was lying and that it in fact was my mom asking me when I was coming home because she made sandwiches for me.

By 11 I said my last goodbyes to the Carleton team and ended up home. In about a month we have our other big Improv event, Vaganza - 24 hours of improv, in which we're hoping to have Carleton join us as special guests. Really looking forward to that. Until then, I hope I can come visit in Ottawa some day and catch another show!

For pics of the Summit and the after party plese click HERE!