Ding! Ding! Ding!

The bell rings, signaling the end of fourth period and the beginning of lunch. However, instead of rushing to the lunch line, heading to their lockers or sitting down with friends to eat, students leave their classrooms and head straight to the Performing Arts Center for a special show.

Stepping into the theater, students sit next to their friends and chatter. Meanwhile, the advanced team members of the Sunny Hills [SH] improvisation [improv] team, Unscheduled 6th [U6], wait in black fold-out chairs on the stage.

All of a sudden, a curly-haired man in a blue-and-white striped shirt and khaki pants strides onto the stage and welcomes the audience to a U6 lunchtime improv show, which happens to be the first of its kind in SH history. Theater teacher Christian Penuelas said he came up with the idea for this new style.

“I wanted more Sunny Hills students to come see the shows, and I figured that if they were at lunch and they were free, it’s very easy for students to get there,” Penuelas said.

 During auditions at the beginning of the school year, returning auditionees with solid performances were placed in the advanced team, he said. Improv team co-leader senior Joseph Loyola said he was nervous in his audition but happy when he found out he made it as an advanced placement member, and that the other advanced team members are qualified for the team and specialize in different areas to take the topic by the reins. 

“That is what makes the [advanced placement] team, because we build each other up rather than going about it alone, our own thing, which is improv,” Loyola said.

The six members, as U6 improv coach Wyatt Logan calls them, of the SH U6 Improv team receive an extra weekly rehearsal and are the only ones who will perform during these shows. Though he has to attend an additional rehearsal and skip his fourth period class to prepare for the lunchtime shows, the first one performed on Wednesday, Oct. 22, Loyola said he is perfectly fine with it as long as he can make more people laugh.

“I hope the audience can understand how much fun it is to be at a comedy show,” Loyola said. “How much enjoyment they can have out of something that is completely free and that they can go to during lunch.”

Logan said Penuelas told him about the idea the summer before the school year, and said he thought it was a great idea.

“I was hoping that it would market our team better [and] help us to create our brand better, and the first show was really successful, so I think it’s doing that,” Logan said.

The improv coach said that, unlike the rehearsals with the full team, the advanced rehearsals are shorter. Because there are fewer people to work with, most of the time is dedicated to breaking down every single key point of an improv scene or character, he said.

“The idea is that we’re creating a fan base for our shows and getting people who maybe [don’t] normally come to a show to come,” the theater teacher said.

Penuelas said these shows encourage students to come to the full one-hour improv performances after school, which are $5 and usually held at 7 p.m. Loyola said full shows usually occur once a month, with a lunchtime show scheduled a little before to build excitement for the hour-long one. Compared to the evening show, where the team plays a full set of 10 games, the members only get to play two or three during lunchtime.

“I think [the lunchtime show] gives them a better opportunity to come and watch these funny comedy shows and to see their friends,” said sophomore Shannon Murray, who attended both the first full and lunchtime improv shows.

Junior Evan Shinmei has also attended improv shows before and said he was glad about the addition of the lunch shows. Shinmei said it was inconvenient for him to drive to school late in the evening, but the lunch shows made it easy for him to watch the shows and also hang out with his friends, who also couldn’t watch the evening shows.

“[The first improv show was] very engaging, super hilarious, and I was either laughing, screaming, cheering or a mixture of all three the whole time,” Shinmei said. “[The lunchtime shows] had the same great atmosphere and laughs as evening shows, [and] I was also able to get more of my friends on board to attend the show with me.”

During the shows, both the team and the audience must be present in the moment, the improv coach said, which will hopefully create more laughter.

“I’ve actually had a realization about improv; I’ve started coining the term, ‘you’re in the business of blessing others,’” Logan said. “I’m hoping that people are blessed and that people can leave the [show] just feeling a little bit better than they did before.”