World’s Nerdiest Improv Show – Episode 1: Cream of Carrot Soup

Show

Show Notes

Jen and Katrina talk about high fives in improv, whether initiations can always work, and the word Bequeath. Of course, this is also the first episode so Jen and Katrina are seeing whether this new studio EVEN WORKS!?

Credits

Starring:

Katrina Charles as Katrina Charles

Jen deHaan as Jen deHaan

Music & Sound FX: Katrina Charles

Set/Video Design & OBS Button Pusher: Jen deHaan

Production: Jen deHaan / FlatImprov.com

Theme song:

Title: WNIS (Weenis) Theme

Written by: Katrina Charles

Performed by: Katrina Charles and the Katrina Charles choir

End Credits:

Music by Patrick Richmond from Pixabay

Special thanks to:

World’s Greatest Improv School (WGIS) (weegis)

Transcript

Jen: Hello and welcome. This is the world’s nerdiest improv show. Parentheses W-N-I-S. Parentheses. Weenis. And we are your hosts.

Katrina: I’m Katrina Charles.

Jen: And I’m Jen deHaan. This is the show where we talk about improv stuff. Katrina: And maybe one day we’ll have guests or something.

Jen: Maybe. I hope so.

Katrina: Me too.

Jen: Yeah, that would be kind of nice.

Katrina: Who wouldn’t want to come visit?

Jen: Well, probably a few people wouldn’t want to come visit if they didn’t like improv. They wouldn’t maybe want to come visit.

Katrina: Yeah. That’s true. Yeah, that is true. Statistically speaking. There are probably a few people who wouldn’t want to come, but there are also probably several who would.

Jen: Well, we’ll see. We’ll see how well we do, you know, that we’ll have to show.

Katrina: I’ve already interrupted you like three times. This is going really well.

Jen: This is going super well. But this is. This is episode one, our very first go in our new, um, studio, uh, with our new titling. Nice titling, nice song.

Katrina: Very nice. Um, I want to thank you for, for making that photo of me look even more serial killer-y than it was when I sent it to you.

Jen: Yeah. Uh, the grayscale. Was it the grayscale or was it

Katrina: Maybe the grayscale? It might be the shadows, I don’t know, whatever you did really accentuated my eyes. And I think that’s that’s where my my, um.

Jen: Your murderous…

Katrina: Creepy. Yeah. My. Yeah.

Jen: You went creepy, I went murdery.

Katrina: Yeah. This is similar. Creepy is like a precursor to murdery.

Jen: Yeah, it is a bit. Yeah. All right, so we’ve got, uh, improv things on deck. Uh, today we are going to be talking about a whole bunch of things that we’ve seen on the internet that relate, relate to improv.

Katrina: Yes.

Jen: Katrina agrees.

Katrina: I agree.

Jen:  Excellent. All right, well, uh, why don’t we talk about what is our sponsor that this show is brought to you by? Soup.

Katrina:  We would not be here without soup.

Jen: This week’s soup, I believe, if I’m correct, is the cream of carrot.

Katrina: It is. Preferably a vegan version because I am lactose intolerant. And you are vegan. Yeah. So, um, probably, like you mentioned, a cashew cream. Carrot soup?

Jen: Yeah. I think I would do a cashew cream mix in the carrots. I would not put cumin because I am not a fan of cumin.

Katrina: Interesting. Interesting.

Jen: Uh, but there we are. We are brought this week by. See, I have to get used to which, uh, which side I can present on. I go like this. It’s brought to you by…

Katrina: I keep leaning closer to you instead of further away.

Jen: Yes. We’ll figure it out.

Katrina: We’ll figure it out.

Jen: Eventually we’ll figure out how to do the high five.

Katrina: We will. Do you want to try real quick?

Jen: We should try. Oh my goodness. Oh we’re failing. Your hand is gigantic. You’ve got a giant hand.

Katrina: I will put on my hand size corrector later.

Jen: What is your opinion of high fives and improv? Because I have heard that if you ever do a high five in a scene, no one will ever edit on the high five.

Katrina: Oh. That’s interesting. I’ve never heard that. Huh? I, I also don’t think I’ve ever tried to initiate a high five in improv. Mainly because you don’t know who you’re dealing with. You know, you don’t know how hard their high five will be, which could mess up your scene because, you know, it could just take you out of the moment. So I think I really try to generally avoid high fives if possible.

Jen: I think that’s good advice. I think that’s good improv advice, both on a physical and also a potential, if it is indeed accurate. The information that I’ve heard that that if if you do a high five in improv, uh. Evidently people will refuse to edit on that because it’s almost like you’re asking for an edit. It’s like they will let it hang, but that could be completely inaccurate. And that is where I’ll throw it to our audience. To leave us a comment about what their thoughts are on the high five in a scene.

Katrina:Please let us know.

Jen: Should we go to our advertisements?

Katrina: Oh, yes, of course. You know we have soup as our main sponsor this week, but we do have some lovely advertisements lined up, so, uh. Yeah, let’s roll those.

Jen: All right, let’s roll those.

Katrina’s Ad: Late night zoom improv class? Too late to drink coffee? Well, you have just the thing. Tea! Tea. You probably have some in your cupboard right now. Is it expired? Who cares? It’s just dried leaves and stuff. Expired Tea. It’s fine.

Jen’s Ad: Hi, I’m Jen DeHaan. As a self-professed and unverified improv nerd, I’ve always asked this question: why? When asking for a suggestion about something you find in the kitchen, the most common answer is said to be spatula. At first, I was curious and then I was skeptical, and then I was curious again. But the only thing I had to do was go and look in my own kitchen for the answer. And oh, an answer I found. This is an advertisement for the spatula, the most common suggestion for item found in a kitchen. And I know why now, because look at all the options, all the things people can think of when they think of an item in the kitchen. We have wooden spatulas with slots. We have plastic spatulas. We have a silicone spatula that’s orange, one that’s pink, another one that’s wooden. But with no slots. They might also be thinking of this purple one that has a spatula on both ends, a green one that you might not be able to see because of the green screen. Oh, spooky. I just realized that. Oh, shit. All right, small orange one again. Why are so many orange? These cheap ones that I got from Ikea probably about 20 years ago, one that has metal. And another one that has metal, and then these ones, a free one that you can get with an ice cream maker. And then are these even spatulas? I don’t know, but that’s what you get to think of. That’s why spatula is the best suggestion for items that you might find in a kitchen. I’m Jen DeHaan. For spatulas. All right. Where did that green one go? I can’t even see it now with my fucking editing.

Jen: All right, we’re back. Hi. How are you doing?

Katrina: I’m good.

Jen: Good.

Katrina: I’m great.

Jen: We’re doing a show! Look at us! We’re doing a show.

Katrina: We’re doing it! We’re here!

Jen: Here we are. Here we are. Yes.

Katrina: Me and my gigantic hands.

Jen: You’re gigantic hands. I know now I feel like I’ve. I’ve potentially made a faux pas by commenting.

Katrina: A faux paw?

Jen: Oh, we’ve got wordplay in our first episode. Oh, my. Look at us, look at us just rocking. All right, well, uh, as we said this week, we’re brought, uh, to everyone by soup. Uh, so thank you. Soup. And, uh, let’s go to some of our weekly slides. Why don’t we? All right, here we go. Oh, we’re not even on the right slide. Let’s go back to the first slide of the day, the word of the week is “bequeath”. Uh, why don’t we just mention what the word of the week even means? Why do we have a word of the week in the show? Katrina?

Katrina: Why do we have one? Well, yeah, first of all, we thought it would be fun because we like words. Um, second of all, we thought maybe you could use these words in an improv scene and make your scene that much more fun with a new word.

Jen: Exactly. And I, uh, saw the word bequeath. The first thing I thought was, wow, I want to use that in a scene. Um, and I think it is a perfect word that could be used in the scene. Of course. Bequeath. It means to give or leave by will. Used especially of personal property. Like that spatula. I could bequeath a spatula upon you. I could hand you down a spatula in my will if I were to perish and die one day.

Katrina: If I were so lucky…

Jen: If you were so lucky that I died one day.

Katrina: No. I, yeah. No. Yes. No. I mean, if you left me a spatula, it would kind of like, make up for it.

Jen: Okay. That’s good. Uh, a good good to know. I’ll use one of those little hand spatulas. Now, do you find that you like, uh, that when you use a word that you’re maybe not expecting to and it just flies out of your mouth, and it is a word that is of equal magnitude to bequeath, does that titillate you when you’re doing a scene at the time?

Katrina: You know, it does titillate me. Um, but it very rarely happens because I usually just try to stick to words that I use normally, just in case.

Jen: So, bequeath is not part of your regular vernacular, are you saying, Katrina: Well, now it will be.

Jen: Okay.

Katrina: And maybe I’ll try to even work in titillate or vernacular.

Jen: Titillate or vernacular? Well, we got the next two episodes worth of words. Perhaps.

Katrina: Amazing. Everyone forget you heard it here.

Jen: Yes. And if you do use bequeath in a scene, please do let us know that you are perhaps inspired by our show. Isn’t that how it works? As you hear? Like I’ll hear a word in something, a show or something that I’m watching and just try to hold on to it. And then I find like a flash memory is just like. Co into that word and it’s coming out sometime during the week.

Katrina: Mhm. Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. Nice. Should we go to the next slide.

Katrina: Yeah!

Jen:  I mean we got such uh we got oh my god I forgot the soup sound. Oh. Oh I’m failing already.

Katrina: Wait. We can go back. We can do it again. This is our first time out of the gate. Yeah, we should allowed. We’re allowed to do this.

Jen: We’re allowed to go back to the previous thing. All right, let’s do it. We got.

Sound effect: Oh, yeah. Soup.

Jen: There we go. It doesn’t… I don’t think it carries the same weight anymore. But, you know, there’s always another episode. Um, yeah. Yeah.

Katrina: Well, we’ll it’ll it, you know, again. It’s fine.

Jen: Okay. I sound forgiven. All right. Next slide. Oh that’s right we’re going to…

Sound Effect: As seen on… the internet.

Jen: As seen on the internet. This is the part of the show where we’re going to be bringing in things about improv that we have seen on the internet. And, uh, I brought this one today. It’s, uh, improv shortcuts, initiations that always work from the Will Hines Substack. And this particular article has a whole bunch of proposed initiations that apparently will always create a worthwhile scene. Katrina, what do you think about that idea in general?

Katrina: Um, I think. Yes.

Jen: Just yes.

Katrina: I do think I do think that’s a, you know, a good idea actually, because often we have very similar initiations for scenes, and they can always turn out into, you know, turn into a different scene. They almost always do. But having just kind of an initiation that you can start with and see how it helps set up your scene a little bit better and like. I think. I think that’s a that’s a cool idea.

Jen: Yeah. And a jam a couple of weeks ago. Well, the day that this article came out, I was hosting a jam that evening, and I tested it. I think you might have been there, and I assigned the same initiation. I think it’s on the next slide. Although these are probably way too small for anyone to make out, but I assigned the initiation “Hey, let’s buy this” to everyone in the jam as a warm up scene. And every scene was, of course, dramatically different. And all of them worked. I mean, we’re talking a, um, you know, a sample size of 4 or 5, but I think that’s enough to prove Will Hines’ case.

Katrina: I think I was in that class, that jam and it did help. It makes you think, too. Like everyone’s going to have a different thing they need to buy. But having that action set up and the person that you need to go with essentially.

Jen: Yeah. It’s kind of like getting the setup in a way. And it just makes the scene a little bit easier to just kind of self setting up in a very light way. Band meeting is at the top of this. I’m still going to get ah, I did the right side, I did the right side up there, band meeting. And band meeting, I seem to recall, because I assigned that as an opening exploration scene to inspire a montage. And that, I mean, the montage never had much to do with the band. It was going everybody was going to hospitals and giving birth and all sorts of things. It was not about the…

Katrina: Sandwiches.

Jen: Sandwiches, always. Sandwiches are a sandwich right in our set. All right, moving on. Ah, there’s a sandwich. Here we go. Mm. Might go with cream of carrot soup.

Katrina: Probably would.

Jen: Probably would. All right, uh, this slide right here. Submit to Wnis. Because this is episode one. We should probably remind everyone Wnis, World’s Nerdiest Improv Show, pronounced Weenis. Ween.is. That is a URL on the screen if you type in http colon slash slash ween.is, you’ll go to our page and there’s a whole bunch of information on that page, and you can send us things, you can send us messages, you can send us something for the show. You can send us questions. Katrina is going to answer all of them personally. Katrina: Personally? Um, I, I do procrastinate, so it will probably be in the new year.

Jen: Yeah, I’m surprising Katrina with this news right now, by the way. Yeah. During the show.

Katrina: Yeah, yeah.

Jen: Yeah. Katrina will send you a personalized story in response. Katrina will comment on your home decor in the response.

Katrina: I would.

Jen: Yeah.

Katrina: I would. Just you have to request it though otherwise I won’t.

Jen: All right. So you heard it here. If you want some commentary on your home decor Katrina will provide next slide. Yeah. Scene Sprinkles: Season with Specifics from TikTok. Katrina, what does this mean?

Katrina: Well, this is like, you know, adding a little extra flavor to your scenes. You can pull information from anywhere these days, but we prefer TikTok. So yeah, we’re each week we’re going to pick out a couple of our favorite little tidbits of information we learned from TikTok that we might someday get to use in a scene.

Jen: Exactly. And see, I’ve been doing this for a while. I do like to partake in the TikTok. I like to, uh, uh, scroll through mindlessly at the end of a stressful day and just get distracted. But what happens is I end up learning things. It’s kind of like this week I learned or today I learned, uh, but TikTok. And then I find myself during scenes, if something does come up during that scene mentioned and I’ll be like, oh, hey, I saw something about that on TikTok. And before I know it, I’m blurting it out. This happened, uh, in a class a couple weeks ago where I just blurted out something I learned on TikTok. I didn’t say TikTok or anything, and the note after I was done was, “Hey Jen, we’re on the same side of TikTok I see”. I was busted. And why don’t we watch that video? And then all of you, anyone watching can, uh. Use these same facts if you want in your scenes. All right, let’s see. Let’s see where we’re at. Can we can we do this? Can we do this? Can we move over?

TikTok Video: What are two things that you did not realize were done by the same person? The literal inventor of the Xbox. He’s the same man that found that 4500 year old yeast in Egypt, and recreated sourdough bread in, like laboratory conditions himself. That that’s  his name. And if you look really closely at the Xbox logo, like, stay with me, it’s sourdough bread. This man was obsessed with sourdough bread.

Jen: So that’s what I got busted on in my improv scene was, uh, bringing out the sourdough bread. Fact. Because sourdough bread came up. It’s useful, I tell you. Use it. Learning from all sources is a useful thing for improv. Katrina, you. You sent over a video. Why? Why did you send over this next video that’s going to come up?

Katrina: Well, I this particular week was not on sourdough bread TikTok, but I was on cat TikTok. Uh, and I learned an interesting fact that maybe if I’m ever seen about a cat, I can bring up.

Jen: All right, well, let’s let’s roll the let’s roll the clip.

TikTok Video: A very content cat, a very content cat in the UK has become a record holder for having the world’s loudest purr at 54.6dB. 14 year old Bella’s purr.

Jen: Okay, I don’t really know what happened with the video, but I think we got the gist there. That’s a that’s an interesting fact. That is an interesting fact.

Katrina: I, I love that a cat won a world record. Um, I feel like cats should be winning world records all the time. But, yeah, having a very loud purr is a neato thing. And as loud as a kettle boiling. Yeah. That’s impressive.

Jen: Very impressive. And there’s a lot to pull out of there. We have world records, we have kettles, we have cats, we have purring. There’s so many things that could trigger that particular flash memory of that particular video.

Katrina: So many that could “Tigger” even.

Jen: More wordplay! You are the wordplay expert. I’ve got to say. You should have a world record.

Katrina: Oh, I probably couldn’t there are a lot of really good people.

Jen: Well, there is maybe you need to be louder than a kettle, then.

Katrina: Maybe I’ll be as loud as a lion.

Jen: Oh. Great. All right, well, let’s, uh, I guess we’re going to close the media window now. We’re going to close the media window. We’re going to go back. There we go. Hi, Katrina.

Katrina: Hello.

Jen: Hey! This is going pretty well.

Katrina: It is going pretty well!

Jen: Yeah, yeah, we’re bringing out some…

Sounds Effect: Production value. You’re valuing up my production.

Jen: Some production value, I hope.

Katrina: Yeah, yeah, I hope our watchers are enjoying the production value because it’s an important thing to us.

Jen: Exactly. Yeah. And if we do have watchers out there and hopefully we will, uh, this is where you can find us again. Ween.is. That’s where we live. So please hit us up. Let us know what you think. Talk to us.

Katrina: Wean island.

Jen: Wean island, that’s where we are. All right, well, I think our show is coming to the end. This is just kind of a test. A test, everyone, a test to make sure that our audio works, our videos work, all that kind of thing. We just wanted to get it out there and see if it actually functions. But before we go, we’ve got one very special last segment. Hopefully this works. There we go. It’s a lot of preamble to change the photo hanging on our wall. That’s right, because we’re streaming on the World’s Greatest Improv School, Twitch. Thank you very much, Weegis, for giving us the space for the show.

Katrina: Thank you. Weegis!  

Jen: Thank you. Weegis!  All right. Should we roll some…

Katrina: Thank you. Weegis!  

Jen: We’ll just keep saying that to fill out the show. Oh, my God, it’s 45 minutes of show.

Katrina: I mean, it’s our show.

Jen: It is our show. Is there a time limit? Will we get kicked off if we do an hour and a half of “thank you, Weegis!”

Katrina: Thank you. Weegis!  

Jen: Let’s I don’t know, let’s roll some credits, shall we?

Katrina: Let’s roll some credits.

Jen: All right, let’s take it. All right, there we go. Look at this. Look at credits. Oh, boy.

Katrina: I think this went really well.

Jen: I think it went well, too. I don’t know if anyone could hear us over the 80s, buddy cop music.

Katrina? CAN THEY NOT?

Jen:  I don’t know, I can hear me a bit, but we’ll see. We’ll see in the replay.

Katrina: Okay. All right.

Jen: All right. And blackout.

Links

Homepage: http://ween.is

Twitch: http://twitch.tv/wgimprovschool

YouTube: http://youtube.com/@flatimprov

Socials: Instagram | TikTok

Podcast: TBA