An eager audience filled Tommy’s Place to the brim on Tuesday, ready to experience one of the most unique live comedy performances on campus: Spoiler Alert Improv’s musical. With the suggestion of a genre and title from the audience, the troupe kicked off its hourlong, improvised musical — thanks to crowd participation, the night’s show was a western musical entitled “Crazy Canyons.”

Spoiler Alert harbors a long tradition of performing improvised musicals, with co-president Josh Morton, a senior majoring in theatre with an emphasis in comedy, remarking that they’d been doing them long before he joined during Fall 2021. This custom has continued consistently ever since, and Spoiler Alert remains the only improv troupe on campus to do several musical episodes per academic year.

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However, the demand for more musicals has been building with each passing semester, leading to the troupe aiming to do several musical shows per semester.

“I think musical improv is so much fun that once we got more of the troupe on board with wanting to do more [musicals], we got to do one every month,” Morton said.

Fellow theatre student and second-year member Samara Hernandez agreed, remarking that “it’s such a fun live experience” and that musical improv is “a bit of a different beast.”

The musical element of these shows requires a different caliber from the performers, according to Kasia Monet, co-president and a senior majoring in theatre.

“It’s everything I like doing in improv normally, but then heightened,” Monet said. “I’ve got to be way more on, and more invested in the story.”

This sense of complexity is something the performers expressly enjoy: Third-year member Anya Jiménez, a junior majoring in writing for screen and television, feels that, as a performer, the shows feel fulfilling when she hears the audience reacting to not only her jokes but also her musical skills.

“There’s something kind of rewarding about doing a show and feeling that feeling from on stage sometimes and being like, ‘holy shit, we fucking did it,’” Jiménez said.

The musical shows not only require skill and talent from the performers but also a significant amount of practice.

“We practice this a lot, and we talk about the structures and the types of things that we can do,” said junior member and dance student Avery Zerr. “I think the reason why the audience loves it so much is because their expectations [for musical improv] are so low that being a good improv group, you exceed their standards and they’re shocked and impressed by the result.”

They aren’t wrong in this assumption. Frequent Spoiler Alert attendee and junior majoring in psychology Camila Beresford-Redman said she especially anticipates the musical episodes.

“Improv is already difficult as an art form and adding in song is very interesting,” Beresford-Redman said. “[The group has to] make up melodies and lyrics on the fly.”

However, the troupe agreed that its “secret weapon” to taking on improvised musicals is senior performance student with an emphasis in pop music Carmen Thomassiny, who provides the equally improvised musical accompaniment that makes the shows possible.

At any mention of Thomassiny’s name, any member of Spoiler Alert will gush about the fact that her talent is the key to the troupe’s success in its musical episodes.

“You’ve never seen someone tickle the ivories quite like this one,” Jiménez said.

Thomassiny is experienced with musical improvisation herself, having provided Spoiler Alert with instrumental accompaniment since her freshman year in Fall 2021. Nevertheless, the musician hasn’t tired of reacting to the troupe’s improvised plotlines because of all the “curveballs” that come with narrative improv.

“You ever had a moment where you’re watching a show and you just hear somebody throw a major plotline and you feel the troupe be like ‘woah, that was cool?’” Thomassiny said. “It’s like that with musical improv, but like every five minutes, which makes it even more fun and everyone’s doing the same thing.”

Spoiler Alert’s musical episode combines the talents of the troupe — whether it’s acting for theatre students like Morton and Monet, storytelling for screenwriting students like Jiménez, dancing for Kaufman School of Dance students like Zerr or music for Thornton School of Music students like Thomassiny — all the disciplines are united by a love of improv comedy that makes for a wonderful show.

“Musical improv is the combination of every awesome art,” Morton said. “You got singing, you got dancing, you got acting — you got improv, the GOAT, it’s like everything in one. I don’t think you can miss out.”