With the aim of kickstarting the theater season and giving audiences a good laugh, this year’s improvisational acting show, “So __ You’ll __ XVI: Licensed to __” will take the stage once again from Sept. 26-28 at 7 p.m. in the SC PAC.

The show will run for about 90 minutes, and will cost $10 for general admission, $5 for students and senior citizens, or free with an LT student ID, director Michael Kuehl said.  The show will involve two teams of performers playing various improvisational acting games while battling for the audience’s laughs.

“It’s one of the most rewarding shows for me, personally,” Kuehl said. “It is often funny as all get out.  It’s all about agreement, and going with the flow, and finding connection, which are just all awesome skills to take with you throughout anything you do.”

Everything the actors say and do on stage will be completely improvised on the spot, cast member Lola Podolner ‘25 said. In addition to that, however, actors have no idea which team they are on or which games they will be participating in, which differentiates “So__” from other improv shows.

“Obviously, none of it’s planned, but the actors [in other shows] usually know what [games] they’re gonna play, and we don’t do that at LT, which is interesting,” Podolner said. 

Rehearsals for the show, which ran until about 6 p.m. and fluctuated between the PAC at SC and the Reber Center at NC, often involved ensemble-building activities and practicing with different improv games, Kuehl said. These included “One Word Stories,” in which actors attempted to create a coherent story by each going around and adding one word to the narrative, and “Whoosh,” a warm-up where actors got into a circle and passed the “whoosh” around by waving their hands at their neighbor, introducing more and more “w” words as the game progressed.

“Because there’s no set group that you’re doing these games with, you end up working with 

every single person in the cast, so you really get to know people well,” Podolner said.  “Trying to be funny on the spot is a really difficult, vulnerable thing, so when you let yourself do that with a group of people, you get close to them a lot faster.”

This year’s cast is composed of 30 total members, 28 actors, and two emcees. About 10 of them have never done any kind of improv before, including cast member Artist Dingle-Guynn ‘25, who hopes that the show will spark joy and positivity for the audience.

“Sometimes life is sad, but then people are funny,” Dingle-Guynn said. “You watch the funny people, you have a laugh, and you leave feeling better than when you came.”