loyal fan by definition

Greetings from the Old Dominion state. My daughter and I drove from East Tennessee to Northern Virginia today. We didn't stop at any roadside attractions because we wanted to get here in time for a show at The Comedy Spot in Arlington. I had ordered tickets to the 7:30 performance of ComedySportz, the family-friendly improv show. We picked up my mother at her house and made it to the theatre with several minutes to spare. Mom had never seen an improv show and wanted to experience one. I had originally thought about staying for the 10:00 p.m. show because tickets are half price for those who also attend the early show. The flyer for the later performance warns "Please do not bring your children, your mother or livestock to the The Blue Show" and there I was with one of my children and my mother. I decided not to subject Mom to the potentially offensive material.

ComedySportz can be found all over the country. In a typical performance, two teams of improvisers compete for points. Tonight's show had only four players and a referee. Two of the players were team captains and the other two players switched back and forth between teams.

They did a couple of guessing games (Blitzkrieg and Five Things) with clues in gibberish, much like the Chain Murder Mystery game that we recently started playing at Einstein Simplified shows in Knoxville. They played a game called Left!, which is the same as Actors in a Box but with only three players instead of four. I guess you could call it Actors in a Triangle. Two of their better games were Story and Parallel Universe. Their game Story is much like our Conducted Story except that the referee conducts the story and it's an elimination game. At the end, the ref had the last two players talking simultaneously. In Parallel Universe, the scene shifted between completely different time periods but the improvisers had to justify whatever position they were in when the whistle sounded. The three time periods suggested tonight were the Renaissance, the Ice Age and modern day England.

The performance space is a renovated Victoria's Secret storefront in the Ballston Common Mall. It looks great. Placards on the wall list suggestions that have been retired from overuse. I recognized several of the celebrity names, food items and fairy tales from our shows in Knoxville. During the performance, only one "brown bag penalty" was issued. It went to an audience member who suggested a same-sex relationship between two characters. And I think she was there with her children and her mother.