Spending an evening at an improv show is like trading your usual crowd for people who are much more entertaining. The setting for this drama is less formal than a play and allows more interaction between the audience and the actors: If one of them blunders, it is funny and everyone likes to watch how they will get themselves out of it.

This year's Winter Shorts were changed from those in the past. Usually there is a formal production with a set and costumes, but this season the Student Drama Association chose instead to do improvisation, a form of theater where anything can happen. The format is similar to the popular TV show, "Whose Line is it Anyway?" In improv, the actors and audience play games and invent scenarios.

One may have a tendency to be critical of this, especially considering that Winter Shorts changed into a spontaneous performance. Friday night's performance was pleasantly surprising, and the actors certainly put plenty of preparation into it. I was a little skeptical when I arrived to a closed box office and haphazard signs written on magazine pages with markers that directed audience members to an empty hallway and locked doors. It soon became clear that the aura of this performance was low pressure and a lot of fun. Student Drama Association members sold tickets, and the actors casually walked around the theater in everyday clothes before the performance.

Their first scene or "game" was four of the actors pretending to be in an audition. They created characters on the spot who had to audition for a part in a play that was made up from random words shouted by the audience. What I expected to be silly and dull turned out to be rather entertaining, pretty soon the whole audience was laughing. Occasionally, a scene would become tiresome, but the performers were able to read the audience and did not let themselves go on too long.

The collection of actors each added something special to the performance. There is just something funny about the sight of Isaac Paris, and his antics are even more entertaining. He did an excellent impression of Dick Cheney as a Scooby Doo villain. Rachel Blackwell did an excellent job of being a shameless seductress. Anna Gagne-Hawes and Levi Ben-Israel led the troupe through the exercises, always keeping things moving. I was surprised and impressed to find that some of the performers were not in the theater department.

The objective in this form of entertainment is most often if not always comedy and I could only imagine the misery for the audience and performers if it was bad comedy to a small audience, but it was good. I was a little disappointed at the audience turnout. I am sure that many students would have really enjoyed themselves if they had put off their alcohol imbibing for an hour and attended the performance. It would be a different experience for those in attendance and a larger audience gives actors more energy.