Ari Stern (CAS ’13) recently played an eight-year-old girl named Ruby of the strawberry-jelly family who just wanted to go to grape-jelly school. Such is the life of an improv performer.
“In a set we did recently, the person we interviewed had grape jelly in their fridge and we asked them if they had any other sort of jelly and they said ‘no only grape,’” explains Stern. “So when we did the set there was this whole story arc of this strawberry jelly family in a grape jelly neighborhood, and their daughter Ruby who was building “bridges” between the two flavors. We like to parallel social themes. Those are some my favorite moments.”
Stern is currently a performer at ImprovBoston in shows such as Face Off, Downtown IB (Improv Boston’s parody of Downtown Abbey) and “Shelf Life,” a show he does with his friend Shawn Musgrave (’12). Stern is currently the President of Liquid Fun, one of BU’s improv comedy groups which won best comedy group this past year at BU Central’s BU’s Funniest Competition. Stern also performs stand up around Boston, including twice at ImprovBoston’s Naked Comedy Showcase, and won BU’s Funniest Student in 2010.
This month, Stern is producing a show called VinyaHaHasa at Improv Boston, an improvised yoga comedy show that he developed with Musgrave. During the performance chairs are replaced with yoga mats, and the audience is immersed in the comedy show with performers embedded in the audience.
“It was definitely a challenge to make this an entertaining show for an hour when you’re in a yoga class where people typically people don’t talk,” Stern said. “How do you make stuff happen in a yoga class where people are typically silent and sticking on a mat the whole time? We had to figure out a few things, but working with the cast and the director it’s definitely worked out amazingly.”
After being cast in a show in high school with an improv element, Stern came to BU wanting to do improv, and joined Liquid Fun. Wanting to grow more, he auditioned for Improv Boston and was casted in their Face Off show last June.
“I would love to be a professional comedian, that’s always been my dream,” Stern said. “When I was a kid, and I was watching the Oscars, my mom tells me, I never was like ‘oh I want to win an Oscar one day’ I was always said ‘I want to host the Oscars one day because I was always excited by being a comedian.”
While making the switch to getting paid for his comedy (all his work at Improv Boston is unpaid), might be difficult, Stern is hopeful for his future. At the end of the day, it is about doing the work he loves.
“I love it when you can exchange maybe two lines of a scene and then you just look at the other improviser and by making eye contact you know exactly where everything else is going to go for the next five minutes and you each know exactly what you each have to do to serve the underhand pass for one of you to hit it out of the park,” Stern said. “Wow, I just made a sports reference.”
Vinyahahasa is every Friday night at 10:30 pm from 4/12-5/3, Face Off is every Saturday night at 10:00pm, Downton IB is every Friday night at 10:00pm 5/3-6/7. All shows are at Improv Boston.