If you’re ever in need of a laugh, our campus celebrity, Allen Tedder, has your back. During class with him, unsuccessfully fighting off chuckles is a regular occurrence. If you’ve ever attended one of his Chapel Hill Players, also known as CHiPs, performances, you empathize. Allen is a junior Dramatic Arts major from Lexington, N.C. He’s been in a number of plays, namely Playmaker’s The Parchman Hour as well as The Taming of the Shrew. He just recently performed in Lab Theater’s Eurydice. Having found out about his hidden talents and spectacular resume, my interest and curiosity were piqued. See what I found out:
Her Campus: Can you talk a little bit about CHiPs and your involvement in it? How long have you been doing it and what’s your role etc.?
Allen: So you want to know about CHiPs. Alright. I got into CHiPs a year ago. I was in the incubator program for one year. It’s a training program for the performing group. I was in there for a year. You can be there either indefinitely or for a short amount of time and I got in the performing group last year. I’m currently on the artistic committee and I’m also an incubator coach.
HC: Oh wow, and what’s the ‘incubation’ period like?
AT: Oh it’s great. We have an audition for CHiPs and the first thing you get in, is the incubator program. We teach them basics of improv, advanced improv skills and other things that will get them to performance level with us. Hopefully, they get on the performance level. Some people don’t. It’s not a guaranteed thing.
HC: So what’s the hardest thing about improv for you?
AT: The hardest thing about improve for me is trusting that what I say will be funny without me trying to make it funny.
HC: Would you consider yourself funny?
AT: I don’t know if I’m funny…
HC: Well, do you laugh at your own jokes?
AT: I do laugh at my own jokes, but that doesn’t mean I’m funny. That could just mean I’m crazy.
HC: OK, do you make other people laugh?
AT: I do make other people laugh…on occasion.
HC: You don’t sound very confident…?
AT: I don’t know. I don’t like to call myself funny. Because once you call yourself funny, you just turn into goofy and you’re no longer funny – it’s for the classiness of it.
HC: Have you ever done anything on stage that you thought deserved laughs, and it just failed miserably?
AT: Ohhhh yes. Yes. I do that all the time because my sense of humor is just weird… last semester I wrote a sketch about the Twilight Zone and Rod Serling. And I thought it was the funniest thing, and you know all the CHiPs actually liked it, we put it in our show, and it goes up as the first big joke that I want just to get swelling laughter. And it just brought the crickets out – absolute death silence.
HC: Oh God!
AT: It’s okay, I heard that the rest of the sketch went over really really well, and people laughed at it. But, um right after the joke bombed, I just walked downstairs and sat in a dressing room and didn’t listen to the rest of the skit.
HC: Oh my god that sounds so awful. Poor you!
AT: It’s okay, it’s okay. The other stuff got laughs so it’s okay.
HC: So is this just a college thing? Or is it something you want to turn into a profession… What do you want to be when you grow up?
AT: I love improv. I love comedy. And I love writing – especially comedy writing. When I graduate I plan on being an actor. So I’m going to go to New York. And I’m sure, you know, the skills I’m getting in CHiPs are going to benefit me. I think definitely if I go to New York it’d be nice to do some comedy on the side, you know maybe as a second job.
HC: Do you do stand-up comedy?
AT: I would do stand up. I think I have the capacity to do standup. I just haven’t done it yet.
HC: Do you want to act in Broadway or movies?
AT: I haven’t decided yet, either way.
It looks like Allen is going places so make sure you get your pictures and autographs while you still can. Also, CHiPs is having an “End of the World” show on November 30. If you haven’t seen Allen perform yet, mark your calendar for that one! I know I’ll be there!