Will Hines

iamachilles:

Bombardo

(standing, left to right: Erica Warnock, Chelsea Clarke, Marcy Jarreau, Aubrey Plaza; sitting: Emily Askin, Emily Felt, Beth Newell)

Bombardo has it’s final show ever tonight!  A bunch of its members have moved or are moving away from New York, so they are finally ending their run.

Bombardo is arguably one of the most influential independent improv groups in New York City EVAR!  If you were an indie group that formed between 2006 and 2010, you definitely did their Friday night Gotham City Improv show — and it was often your very first show.  If you didn’t do their show, then you hadn’t really completed the indie improv circuit that, at that time, also included Rogue Elephant’s show and the Tantrum/Mailer Daemon/fwand show.  (Both at Under St. Mark’s.)

They were also the first all-girl improv group to form that was completely made up of current students and not established veterans.  (Ms. Jackson, a successful all-girl group formed before Bombardo, were made up of vets from the improv community, i.e. Jess Allen, Tara Copeland.) 

And they were definitely one of the only all-girl groups to find their voice quickly and stick around.  They helped influence the formation of a lot of copy-cat girl improv groups after their formation, but Bombardo would consistently blow these groups out of the water.

And, don’t quote me on this, but I’m 99% positive that Bombardo pioneered the format of having two opening groups and just one headliner.  For a long time in the indie improv scene, there were two “headliners” and one indie group that opened for those two groups.  See: Reuben Williams/Rogue Elephant (later Ugly Stick/Rogue Elephant), Primal Bias/Five Dudes, Tantrum/Mailer Daemon (later Tantrum/fwand), and so on.  Bombardo’s attendance numbers convinced everybody pretty quickly that this was the format to go with.

If you saw a Bombardo show, you were almost guaranteed to see at least one scene with a cat (Chelsea), a witch (Aubrey), a sassy black lady (Marcy), a clueless mom (Felt), a clueless date (Erica), an ornery teen (Beth), some sort of monster (Askin) or a scene with a group of vapid, annoying ladies with high-pitched voices (all).

So, say goodbye to Bombardo tonight.  There’s a jam at the end!

Bombardo’s Final Show
Gotham City Improv @ 10:00 PM
48 W 21st Street, 8th Floor
$6 admission, BYOB

Bombardo has been for a long time one of the coolest, funniest groups.