When I heard that Parker’s own music teachers Alec Synakowski and Rob Denien and SK-teacher Dana O’Brien were performing an improvised show at Second City, I honestly did not know what to expect.  I could not have been more pleasantly surprised. Improvised shows can really be hit or miss, but “The Sights and Sounds of Sheila’s Sister and her Musical Cousins,” performed on September 17, did not disappoint.

The structure was unlike any improv show that I have ever seen. As audience members filed into Judy’s Beat Lounge, Denien, Synakowski, and the third member of their trio—“Her Musical Cousins”— Jamee Guerra, a music teacher at Baker Demonstration School, played banjo, piano, and the keyboard, respectively. Though they had not been playing more than five minutes, it was easy to tell that they were jammin’ and having a good time playing great music together.

Synakowski opened the show by telling the audience that though they had been practicing together for weeks before the show began, they had never rehearsed what we were about to see, which we would also never see again. To kick off the show, he asked for a suggestion of an emotion, and the trio began to play. At first, I thought it was just going to be the three musicians playing for an hour, but then two people appeared on stage and seamlessly began to perform an improvised scene. It was some of the most clever improvisation I have seen.

These two actors were the incredibly talented Dana and Edmund O’Brien, a married couple who have been improvising for over 25 years together. This is when I caught on to the way the show would work. Her Musical Cousins’ songs would help the O’Briens’ improv scenes which would then help the musicians play a new song. Or, as the Second City website, put it: “[Audience] suggestions and choice of instruments will inspire them to inspire each other.”

When the stage lights shut off, signaling the scene had ended, the band would ask for another suggestion, begin to play a new tune, and the actors would walk back on stage ready with a new idea for a scene inspired by that song. In one scene, the actors were miming playing with drones, and the musicians would make sounds to indicate if the drone was flying or falling, and everyone in the room, both on stage and in the audience, was able to catch on right away.

The show was so much fun to watch, but I will admit that, content wise, it was intended for a more mature, adult audience.  Still, I think anyone in the Upper School would have enjoyed the show immensely. This was one of the funniest shows I have seen in a long time on a Second City stage.