The Saint

By Onika Davis, Reporter and Nevaeh Porter, Reporter

On Thursday, March 5, 2026, Aquinas and Grand Rapids Community College students put on an improv show in the Moose.

Improv nights are events hosted by the on campus improv group, Mission Improvable, in which members act out various games and situations given from the audience. They introduce the game and how it is played, then they ask the audience for details. Typically the details are who this person is, what scene are they in etc. The games played were “Switch”, “Tap In”, “Three-Headed Experts”, “Cast Member”, “Taco Bell Game”, “Party Quirks”, “SportsCenter” and “Interrogation”.

Improv Team opening Improv Night show – Photo by Nevaeh Porter

When asked how long improv nights have been happening, Mission Improvable President Michaela Faith responded, “At least two a semester, AQ has been having improv nights every year, revived by predecessor Drew, for the past three years.”

The first game of the night was “Switch.” Four actors must be in a square formation. The two actors in front are given a scenario and have to act out that scenario. When an actor not participating yelled switch, all of them rotated clockwise and the next two actors in front got a new scenario that they had to act out. This continued until the game was over. The scenarios (in order) were a baby mama (Faith) and the other mom (Rhodey Matzke) had a drop-off situation with the kids, two professional garlic bread tasters (Matzke and Delaney Pocevich) tasted contaminated garlic bread and they were stuck in the room with no doors, a captain and crew member trapped in the Mariana Trench (Pocevich and Henry Vredevelt) and one actor (Faith) shot the other (Vredevelt) when he snuck up on her. The scene where Faith shot Vredevelt was based on one of the texts an audience member had that read “I found a bullet.”

The next game was “Tap-In.” In this game, two audience members are selected to go onto stage and assist with the scene. Whenever one of the two actors (Kyle Devine and CJ Guillermo) holds out their hand, their corresponding audience member must give them the first word that pops into their head to use as their next work in the scene. This scene’s topic was “bundling home and auto with Progressive.” Guillermo acted as Jamie and Devine as Flo. They mentioned how Jamie had gambling debt, how he was bundling home and auto with Progressive and had car insurance with Geico.

“”We just have to stick to seeing the bright side of life,” Devine said in character.

Game three was called “Three-Headed Experts.” In this game, each actor can only say one word at a time in a sequence to answer questions. This scene was set up as a talk show where Guillermo acted as the host and Pocevich, Matzke and Vredevelt acted as the three-headed experts. They were billiards experts and outright told the host how they felt.

“I. Do. Not. Feel. Like. You. Are. Doing. Your. Job,” Matzke, Vredevelt and Pocevich said.

Next came the game “Cast Member.” With a rotating group of four actors, one would play a Disney cast character, one played at the character’s handler and the remaining two would be a form of guest at the park. The actors would only rotate once they had broken character. The four fictional characters that the audience had given out were Woody from Toy Story (Santiago Mejia), Mother Gothel from Tangled (Ashlyn Armock), Olaf from Frozen (Niko Patterson) and Mater from Cars (Devine).

“No,” Armock said in character. “Don’t do that to Olaf. He is my best friend and likes warm hugs, but not with a blow dryer.”

The fifth game of the night was one that actor Xavier Memjie came up with. This game is called the “Taco Bell Game.” It began with two actors. One of them (Anna O’Neill) was holding a bag filled with Taco Bell sauces, and could only use the phrases on the sauce packets to act out the scene. The other actor (Armock) had full range to say and do whatever they wanted. For this scene they were on a Tinder date in a cemetery drawing on headstones with chalk.

Game six was called “Party Quirks.” In this game, actors had to pretend it was one of their birthdays and the other three came as someone turning into something, someone with a weird occupation and a celebrity. The birthday host had to step out of the room while the audience decides the actors’ roles, then they came back in trying to figure out who/what everyone was during the party. The birthday boy was Devine celebrating his twenty-ninth birthday with a Paw Patrol themed party. Faith turned into an onion, Mejia was Nicholas Cage and Memjie was a professional pencil sharpener.

The second to last game of the night was “SportsCenter.” In this game, a coach, an olympic medalist and two onsite reporters were at the Olympics watching and commentating on the medalist as they competed. For this scene, Guillermo was the coach, Matzke and Mejia were the onsite reporters and O’Neill was the Olympic medalist whose sport was brushing teeth. They acted out a scene where O’Neill acted as if she was competing and won gold while the others were all commentating as if it were a real event.

The last game played was “Interrogation.” In a Clue board-game-esque style, one actor (Patterson) would leave the room in order for the audience to choose who they had murdered, what the weapon had been and where it had occurred. The actor who is then chosen is taken back into the room by two detectives (Memije and Vredevelt) and based on the questions they ask, must figure out what crime they had committed. Attendees chose Colonel Mustard to be the victim, for the weapon to be a Snickers bar and that the body had been hidden in Aquinas College’s own Moose Cafe.

“You want me to admit it, don’t you?” Patterson said. “You want me to admit that I know Colonel Mustard.”

The Improv students have two more shows this semester. One coming soon and one R-rated show. Both dates are to be determined.

Actors Vredevelt, Memjie and Patterson acting out Interrogation – Photo by Nevaeh Porter