UF’s School of Theatre + Dance will premiere an original performance, “Sketchy People,” on Thursday at the Black Box Theatre.
The show is directed and written by UF professor Charlie Mitchell in collaboration with student actors. It focuses around a sketch comedy troupe that reunites after several years to perform a last show, according to the UF College of Arts website.
Mitchell said he was approached by a director from the school in the Spring to write a devised piece for the Summer.
A devised piece is a show created from scratch with collaboration from the actors, he said.
“Normally a playwright just goes into a dark room somewhere and creates a play,” he said. “In this case, it’s sort of a workshop where you and the actors can write the material together.”
Mitchell said the idea for the show came from a sketch comedy class he teaches. He said he got plot ideas by watching the actors improvise different scenarios in character.
“It was about a sketch comedy group so of course we needed to make sketches,” Mitchell said. “Just like ‘Saturday Night Live,’ we needed material.”
The eight-character cast is a mixture of undergraduate and graduate theatre students.
“The real trick was trying to really honor their contributions and have eight well-developed characters,” Mitchell said. “It’s tough.”
Mitchell said he spent his summer days working with the actors for five hours at a time playing improv games to generate ideas. At night, he would spend another five hours synthesizing those ideas into a working script.
“I’m very curious to see what works and what doesn’t work,” he said.
Summer Pliskow, a 20-year-old acting major, plays three characters in the show. She said it was a new experience for her working on the play, but she had a lot of fun.
“It was great to have a piece of us in the show,” she said.
Pliskow said Mitchell interviewed all of the actors in the cast and used parts of their lives to mold the backstories and personalities of their characters.
“Some people have exact stories from real life put into them,” Pliskow said. “My character Megan that I play, her relationship bits are actually pieces from my life.”
The play runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., according to the UF College of Arts website. Tickets will cost $13 for students and $18 for the public. Tickets can be purchased at the University Box Office or at ticketmaster.com.
“Expect to be entertained,” Pliskow said. “It’s a laugh-out-loud kind of comedy.”
