Editor’s note: Sully Styles, the producer of this piece, has relationships with members of the cast and was requested to play piano for parts of the show. Additionally, Trenton Rose is the co-producer of This Appalachian Life.
NouN Improvisational Comedy Troupe took Boone’s largest stage on Feb. 15 for their most successful show yet. The group performed for an audience of more than 200 people during their first performance on the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country’s main stage.
NouN is an App State improvised comedy club which puts on a variety of themed comedy performances throughout the school year, including the annual Funny Fest founded by NouN three years ago. In the past four years, they have seen an exponential rise of popularity, expanding both the content and outreach of each show.
Being backstage with NouN, you can feel the building anticipation toward each show, eased by the constant stream of quips, accidental sketches and inside jokes. On stage, you work more as a family than a team, working together to create worlds and competing to make each other laugh. NouN’s growing audience is due, in no small part, to the clear sense of camaraderie of the team both on and offstage. If one were to attend enough shows and follow the team for awhile, one begins to realize that every team member is close friends with nearly every audience member.
When Trent Rose, former president of the club, took on the leadership role, NouN was performing for fewer audience members than there were comedians on their team. A few years later they were performing to rooms so packed that people had to stand in the back for the duration of the show. Now, at the largest available venue, audiences are still filling up the available space, threatening to expand up into the balcony of the Appalachian Theatre.
At the seeming height of the group’s success, Trent is taking a step back. Busy with his responsibilities as a graduating senior and a cast member for the App State Theatre Department’s upcoming production of “She Kills Monsters,” the night’s show was his final performance with the team.
“I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” he said. “I genuinely am so God-darn glad that I exist at the same time as these people and get to share the stage with them.”
Join The Appalachian backstage with “Saturday NouN Live” for a night full of new beginnings, bittersweet goodbyes and bountiful laughs.
NouN’s annual Funny Fest will take place in late Spring. For more updates you can visit @noun_improv on Instagram.
