• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

(From left) First-year student Andy Gardner and third-year students Chris Smith and Lincoln Atkin

Gabe Cardenas just can’t get enough of comedy.

Cardenas, an ethnomusicology student who graduated from UCLA in 2005, and the rest of Bruin United Improvisational Comedy Kraze recently performed their last show of the year on June 2 in De Neve Auditorium.

For Cardenas, BUICK offered a chance to participate in something he might not otherwise have tried.

“I (had) never really heard of improv comedy before I came to UCLA,” he said. “I would never have known had I not met the people who started the group.”

The group was founded in 2003 by UCLA alumni Elliot Deutsch, Leslie Klein, Mike Scott and Corey Wish. All four cofounders have graduated, but BUICK and its audience keep growing.

“This is the strongest year the group has had yet,” Deutsch said. “The performances are stronger, and they are getting the word out better so the audiences are going to be bigger.”

In high school, Deutsch had always had the opportunity to do improv work, but when he came to UCLA he discovered things had changed.

“We found that there really wasn’t an improv group on campus,” he said.

Ironically, although BUICK started out as a group aimed toward non-theater students, its membership has changed considerably since its inception.

“Now about half the people in the group are theater majors, and they really know what they’re doing,” Deutsch said. “The quality of the group went up a lot.”

For Cardenas, though, his time with the group has been a chance to learn about himself.

“When I’m on the stage by myself with 80 people in the audience staring at me, waiting for me to make them laugh, it’s a scary feeling,” Cardenas said. “BUICK made me realize I really enjoy it.”