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Nuthouse, WSU’s improv comedy group, premiered to the public on Saturday, Aug. 27.

This semester’s cast is made up of a diverse group of students, all of whom have different amounts of experience with improv.

Kraus is one of the oldest cast members. After doing improvised theater for three years now, he believes no matter how long someone is involved with improv, they’re still able to learn.

“Every single time you step into an improv role, you learn something new. I’m still learning to this day about improv,”Jimmy John Kraus said.

Elias Nilsson is another one of the more experienced cast members. After doing improv all throughout middle and high school, he’s only taken one semester off during his college career from doing Nuthouse.

Kamira Nicolino and Kyle Rogge are some of the newer cast members. They’d both been involved in scripted plays during high school but have only been doing Nuthouse for a few semesters.

Michael Snyder never dreamt of being a cast member; he only went to Nuthouse rehearsals to play the games.

“I grew to love it, and the more you love it, the better you get, and eventually, I was good enough to be a cast member,” Snyder said.

Spencer Knudson is the director of the Nuthouse improv comedy group. Knudson spent two semesters as a cast member himself before being elected Nuthouse director.

“It’s hard being a director instead of cast member. As a cast member, you can go to rehearsals to have fun, while as a director you have to run rehearsals and make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable so they’ll be able to have fun,” Knudson said.

This show was full of improv games that involved the audience a great deal. The first game played was “Human Symphony.” Each cast member has a word from the audience and as Knudson, the ‘conductor’ directs them, they use their words to create a symphony. This game started off the show with a huge uproar of laughter from the audience.

Another interactive game enjoyed by the audience was “Your Place or Mine.” The two cast members involved were each assigned to a location, and the other was unaware of their partner’s position. Then, each cast member hinted at where they were without ever giving the name of the location. This game played on the irony of the cast members involved, Kraus and Nilsson, and the location to which the players were assigned.

Just the mention of the advice game “Good, Bad, Worse” caused the audience to whoop and holler. This game offered good, bad and worse advice to questions from the audience. Another game that included audience participation was “Zulu Die.” In this game, the audience suggested a product to advertise and if the cast member did not advertise it to their liking, they shouted “die!” Then the audience decided how the cast member was to die.

A favorite among the cast members was “Lines from a Pocket,” in which they pulled lines written by the audience from their pockets to include in the scene – even if it made no contextual sense.

A game titled “Objection” ended the show in pandemonium, as the audience exploded into laughter. The cast members were to object to each other’s arguments which were approved or disproved by the panel of three selected audience members.

Overall, the cast members agreed that the first showing of Nuthouse’s improv comedy this year was a success, thanks to the high-energy audience and cast.

“My favorite thing was how responsive the audience was. Sometimes, we have shows where we fall flat,” Snyder said. “This audience was fantastic and it’s so much easier to keep the funny going when the audience is bursting out laughing at something you said.”