Improv Troupe Performs Stephen King Shows Every Friday This Month

In a perfectly 'Maine' move, The Fresnel Theater at 17 Free Street in Portland is featuring “Improvised Stephen King” every Friday in October, including Halloween night. The themed show is every Friday at 9:15pm and costs $10 a head.

The new improv theater opened just this year and features weekly performances of ComedySportz, a branded competitive comedy show similar to "Whose Line Is It Anyway". Owners Matthew Russell and Krista Simonis had previously run a ComedySportz show in Oregon and decided to open their new improv venue in Maine partly because they had family in the area and because Portland has no dedicated venue for local improv after The Comedy Connection closed several years ago, according to MaineToday.

ComedySportz performances start at 7:00pm every Friday and Saturday and are kept family-friendly. However, their later shows (including "Improvised Stephen King") tend to be a bit more crude. Each night, troupe leader Russell introduces the show and solicits the audience for nouns, verbs, and numbers. From there, the troupe has to perform an improvised Stephen King-esque play according to the title workshopped right then and there. Numbers and verbs play into the plot.