Fat Penguin

Fat Penguin is a longform improv comedy group that performs in New York City. They have a website at http://www.fatpenguinlove.com. Recently they have been performing the monoscene. Fat Penguin is an independent improv group, but all members were trained at the UCB Theatre.

History

All the members of Fat Penguin were trained at the UCB Theatre and became acquainted with each other at Improdome and Beyond Improdome, the weekly improv jams held at The PIT. Some of them practiced together in a short-lived, practice-only group called The League of Make Believe before forming Fat Penguin in July 2007.

On October 4th, 2007, Fat Penguin made their debut at Sean Taylor's Variety Underground at The Parkside Lounge.

In January 2008, Fat Penguin was selected to kick off the 2008 season of Cage Match at the UCB Theatre. Derrick, as the 2007 season champion, was supposed to start the season, but had to postpone due to scheduling issues. Fat Penguin defeated UCB Harold teams Tantrum (79-50) and T.R.U.C.K.S. (76-41) before finally facing to Derrick in their third week. Both teams performed before a sold out house, which voted 109-96 for Derrick as the new champion. Fat Penguin currently ranks fifth of all time in average number of votes per show (83.7).[1]

On Saturday, July 19, Fat Penguin hosted its own show, Mashed Penguin, for the first time at The Players Theatre. Their guest group was Daystallion.

On October 4th, 2008, Fat Penguin hosted another Mashed Penguin show to celebrate their one year anniversary. Their guest was a reunited fwand.

Cast

Fat Penguin consists of Johnny McNulty, Benjamin Ragheb, Dave Bluvband, Bridget Fitzgerald, Alan Starzinski, Amber Nelson, and Anna Rubanova.

Former Members

• Kelly Hudson
• Rob Stern

Coaches

Past coaches have included Kevin Hines, Justin Akin, Gil Ozeri, Charlie Sanders, Neil Casey, Jim Santangeli, Ben Whitehouse, Peter McNerney, Birch Harms, Gavin Speiller, Porter Mason, Sean Clements, Amey Goerlich, and Megan Gray.

Fat Penguin would recommend any of them.

Forms

For the start of Fat Penguin's career they did montages with an opening they had developed with the help of Megan Gray and Justin Akin, which was a modified Goon River opening. They then switched to doing the Harold.

Fat Penguin then went on to do Pattern Games as the opening their first 5 they did were amazing. Then for some reason all those proceeding those were terrible. Pattern games were dropped when the team decided to do a monoscene one time at a show for the hell of it. They then continued to do monoscenes. They briefly tried doing Harolds within a monoscene, but as a team decided it was too much work and gave up. They are currently doing monoscenes. Although they have been working with other forms. Let's see what they will come up with next, shall we.

Forms created by Fat Penguin, but never used because Alan was the only one that found them cool. Most of them were devised by Johnny.

• Sim Tower
• The Reach Around
• The Life Story
• Alan goes on a journey

Other group overlap

• Johnny, Kelly and Amber are all members of Snacktime.
• Rob is on KnifeStorm.
• Kelly and Amber are the first two letters in the now-inaccurately-named KAPE.
• Dave is on Iron Ruckus.
• Dave and Alan perform as a duo known as Starband.
• Bridget, Dave, and Alan perform with UCBW.
• Alan, Ben Whitehouse, and Frank Spitznagel make up the 3 on 3 Improv Tournament team Boywonder.
• Nicole Drespel, Bridget, and Katey Healy-Wurzburg make up the 3 on 3 Improv Tournament team Castlemania!.
• Dave, Bridget, and Alan perform in The Time Capsule, another member of which (Benjamin Apple) performs with SMIRK, which had been murdered by Fat Penguin in the Magnet Inferno Manor on March 22, 2009 after SMIRK had said something uncouth and vulgar, Fat Penguin did so with a revolver in the study.
• Dave, Bridget and Alan are all members of The Chrononauts.
• Anna is a member of Hot Lather and their improvised Soap Opera As The Diamond Burns
• Dave performs with Sarah Claspell in a duo called Band Class
• Dave and Anna perform together under the name The Russian Queens of Comedy
• Dave performs with John Robert Wilson and Paul Welsh under the name Jello Guys

Trivia

• The women of Fat Penguin are all really tall.
• Benjamin is half English. His penis is half Egyptian.
• Kelly has a crush on everyone.
• Dave will make you pasta if ask him.
• Johnny and Ben attended Ivy League Universities.
• Bridget just beat Children of Mana on her DS. Her penis is half Japanese.
• Alan has the penis of a young boy.
• Rob likes to eat at a pizza place called Posto. Rob has had sexual relations with a woman while Alan has not.
• Dave loves Mega Man.
• Amber is from Louisiana.
• Johnny was once so hungry he ate a horse. Johnny also ate the horse's penis. Johnny is the author of The Zen Of Eating A Horse While In Possession Of A Tiny Penis.
• If you guess Alan's true hair color, he owes you three wishes.
• Fat Penguin is 6/8 nerd.
  • Actually, Fat Penguin is 3/4 nerd.
    • Possibly more.[2]
• Before taking improv classes, Dave used to write fan fiction about his own life. Now Dave lives fan fiction about his own life.
• Kelly is from Austin, TX but did not go to school at UT Austin.
• All of the women from Fat Penguin grew up in the South and escaped to the North to stop being slaves or so they didn't have to marry their cousins.
• Rob is the only member of Fat Penguin who does not live in the New York City. He has an upstate penis.
• Have you ever seen a dragon? Well, Amber Nelson has.
• Fat Penguin once performed on a public access TV show called "So You Wanna Be An Actor?" This was the team's television debut.
• Fat Penguin bitterly stabbed SMIRK's shoulders, backs, and upper thighs on March 22, 2009 with Wolverine claws.
• The first team banned from the Broadway Comedy Club, and fucking proud of it.
• Dave and Anna grew up in the same neighborhood (Forrest Hills, Queens) and went to the same elementary school.

Scenes that happened in Fat Penguin practice that we wish had been on stage

• The International Tea Tasting Competition. The entire Harold that this was apart of.
• Kitten Strip Club/ Dog Jerry Springer
• The children who took over camp tracers.
• A group game where a lawyer (Rob Stern) kept interupting a Will reading, with various disasters happening that kept the family from hearing what the will had to say.
• Polite Bumper Cars
• Dave playing a doll that tells Haulocaust survivor stories when you pull on his string.

Teams and People Who Love Fat Penguin

• SMIRK
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi