By David Gordon

Perhaps you’ve seen the chicken walking by on campus. You know the one that I mean. The one named Atticus Finch that thinks it’s a mockingbird. Its been seen coming down the unispan, palling around with the sitting statue on the Hofstra Hall-side of Calkins Quad, urinating in Emily Lowe Hall and, late last week, was told to fly the coup by Public Safety after they had reportedly received over 10 phone calls about chicken-sightings around campus. (For the record, it’s not the one that was on TNL last week.)

“It’s our fun little mascot” says junior Jackie Nese, founder of Improfstra, the University’s new improv club, whose first show plays the Spiegel Theatre Friday and Saturday, April 24 and 25 at 8 and 11 p.m., respectively. Their troupe is called “Tequila Mockingbird” (Atticus Finch-Tequila Mockingbird…get it?)

“Every major drama department in every major university has an improv group,” says Nese. She and troupe leader senior Richard Pepio, are drama majors. “I question why we haven’t had one.”

The group, they stress, is not solely for drama students. “It’s about improv for everyone,” said Pepio.

“We wanted to reach out to the Hofstra community” added Nese.

To audition for the troupe, interested students had to partake in an introductory workshop where they learned the basics of improvisational comedy, including shortform and longform sketches. Shortform are, as Pepio describes, the kind of things you see on “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Longform is, ideally, “a one-act play that was just improvised for you.”

The troupe members this semester are fine arts design major Brendan Bailey, drama majors Chris D’Amato, Ariana Murphy, Alexis Rhiannon and Abigail Strange and school of communication students Ross Greenberg and Crystal Peone, According to Nese and Pepio, they were picked, along with their individual skills, “because they work well together.”

Long term goals? “Building awareness [of the club], of course,” says Pepio. “We want to bring about a wider knowledge and audience for improv and get everybody, regardless of major, involved. We’d like to have more workshops, improv nights open to everybody, and, naturally more shows in the fall.”

If you are interested in joining the troupe, visit the Tequila Mockingbird Facebook group. Admission to the performance is $5.