Undefined, Lafayette’s improv team, will be performing their first shows since the initial quarantine in March of last year on March 4 and 5 at 7 p.m. through a livestream.

Although, this show will be a little different than Undefined shows in the past. Typically, there would be a full team of about 20 people. But this show will only feature seven of the eight members left in the group. This number is due to the fact that the group wasn’t able to hold auditions following the final shows of the season from last year.

Junior Miles Kimberlin has been a member of Undefined since his sophomore year. His first season with the team was cut short due to the pandemic.

“Regarding the pandemic, it affected us a lot more than I or anybody on the team could’ve expected. We had to cancel the yearly Thursday Night Live performance, as well as our last Undefined show of the year. We planned on having a secret send-off show for the seniors where we would make a video for them, play some games and things like that to send them off. However, due to higher restrictions from the pandemic, we were unable to make this a reality. This year, we hardly spoke about anything Undefined related for the entire first semester, and it wasn’t until recently that we decided to do a virtual show,” Kimberlin said.

Senior Kate Sommer is one of the captains on the team and has found that the role she received as captain has not panned out in the way she initially expected.

“This year has definitely been different, to say the least. Being a captain I assumed that my job would look similar to those of the previous years, but I was wrong. Instead of holding auditions at the end of last year, planning four shows, and Thursday Night Live, we have been trying to figure out how our small team of eight can put on a show while also being safe in following the COVID guidelines,” Sommer said.

Despite the changes that the team has had to adapt to, Sommer remains optimistic for the upcoming performances.

“After many creative meetings with my co-captains, we have decided to do a short one-hour show, streamed on either Zoom or Youtube and making sure we stay six feet apart. Unfortunately, we can’t have any audience members so that will be a new experience for all.  This has certainly been a challenge, but it is nothing this amazing group of people can’t handle,” Sommer said.

Knowing that the Undefined show will be virtual for people to watch, the members have continuously put effort into staying on the positive side of things and are working through to make sure this show gets out there.

Undefined sponsor Natasha Fischer said, “Because everything changed every five minutes at the beginning of the semester, none of the stuff that we had planned happened. When I got here, I contacted [the captains] and I said ‘The world needs to laugh’. [We wanted to] let them know that Undefined hasn’t gone anywhere. Now it’s become a charity [event] for Dallas, Texas. We’re incorporating some music, I have a couple of people recording some stuff, it’s become kind of bigger than it started off as, but we’re excited.”

The team decided to use the show as a charity event for helping citizens of Dallas, Texas who have been impacted by the recent snowstorms in the area.

“There’s so many people suffering right now and why not do this and make people laugh but also give back and make it about helping the world again? Because we’ve spent so much time being down and out about it and now it’s time to step out and make a difference,” Fischer said.

The team has begun rehearsals for the show and co-captain Jake Bingham hopes the final shows will help to bring some laughter into viewer’s lives.

“We’re picking up where we left off, we’re getting ready and I think this is going to be a good show. I think it will show people that we can still laugh, we can still have fun. The world does need to laugh right now, there’s a whole lot of bad and not a lot of good and we just want to give that little extra good to someone’s day.”