Unscripted with Scared Scriptless

It’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants circus,” Mandy Pond says brightly.

As a founding member of Scared Scriptless, Canton’s improvisational-comedy troupe, Pond has been engaging in fast, silly and off-the-cuff comic hijinks since 2006.

Recently expanded from six to 10 members, Scared Scriptless performs the second Saturday of each month in the intimate Kathleen Howland Theatre in downtown Canton.

In these freewheeling, two-hour shows, various combinations of Scriptless teammates play challenging theatrical games that require input from the audience, lightning-quick comic imagination — and an utter lack of inhibition or shame.

In a recent Scared Scriptless performance, two of the guys played pals arguing about which DVD to rent, arguing the merits of Keanu Reeves and “Veggie Tales” while being attacked by seagulls. In another scene, a blindfolded couple was on a literal blind date at Wal-Mart. “We’ve got stickers ... and guns ... and stuff,” trouper Kaylene Williams drawled, portraying a proud ’Mart employee.

One sequence focused on a mouse who had been caught illegally kayaking, another about how Mount Everest “got so greasy.”

Silly to the point of occasional incoherence due to the audience’s absurd suggestions, a high-energy Scared Scriptless show is hard to capture in words. Even when the comedy stumbles a bit, it is riveting to watch these 10 creative minds frantically at work.

Here, Mandy Pond (who met her husband, Kevin, through their shared exploits in Scared Scriptless) and fellow fearless troupers Ryan Lynn and Aaron Lee Jones share secrets about life inside this improv comedy cult.

MANDY: Scared Scriptless does short-form improv, three- to five-minute skits, really. Everything is made up as we go along, nothing is scripted. We don’t know what’s coming, the audience doesn’t know what’s coming; sometimes it’s loud and rambunctious, sometimes it’s dirty. We leave that up to the audience. It’s easy to go straight into the gutter, but I think it’s funnier to skirt around it.

RYAN: Onstage, I just feel very free. A lot of times in normal conversation, I’m pretty quiet, pretty subdued. Onstage, (extroverted) is what I’m supposed to be doing.

AARON: Most things I do are ridiculous, on- and offstage.

MANDY: Improv is kind of an addicting drug. I couldn’t go on without doing improv, honestly.

RYAN: It’s always a bit overwhelming the day of a show because I’m usually working and the anticipation builds. But that frazzled energy helps onstage, too.

MANDY: Before a show, I get excited and angsty and always edgy. I try to drink mass quantities of coffee before I go on.

RYAN: We have this game we do called “Halftime,” wherein we have to do an “improv-ed” scene in two minutes, then the same scene in one minute, then the same scene in 30 seconds, then 15 seconds. We speed it up, move quicker, speak faster.

MANDY: There’s a four-character game we do called “Location, Career, Death,” which we shortened to LCD, where the first person has to convince the second person of the location, career and cause of death in the scene we’re playing. It’s kind of like telephone, but it’s entirely in gibberish.

AARON: What’s going through my head up there? Hopefully nothing. What I’ve learned working with them is that if you have any jokes or ideas planned before you get out there, that can be one of the worst things to do. I have to make it up on the fly.

RYAN: My favorite part is the community aspect. I’ve been playing with some of these guys for nearly five years now and it boggles my mind. It feels like we met yesterday. What a bunch of great guys. I don’t have any better friends.

MANDY: Adding four new people, we were worried ... not about their talent but how they would mesh with us. But it’s working. Having somebody new to interact with throws you totally off in a good way.

RYAN: The new guys are great, really funny. There’s definitely a lot of new energy. Aaron in particular reminds me of me. He’s a bit soft-spoken, but in shows, he’s very loud and obnoxious. We might be competing a bit for noise level, he and I.

AARON: I really enjoy being onstage with Ryan. He’s got this deadpan humor that allows me to be as much of a wild man as I want to.

MANDY: Everybody’s a little bit off the wall. David Sponhour has been in theater longer than I’ve been alive. Marty (Demchak) is our wild card — he comes up with stuff no one is expecting. Aaron Lee Jones did a lot of racy theater in Texas, like “A Clockwork Orange” and nude Shakespeare. He brings a lot of really strange characters to his improv.

AARON: One time, during a game called “Storybook,” I was a manic-depressive leprechaun with a prostate disorder. I think that is thus far the strangest thing I’ve ever had to portray onstage.

MANDY: Yes, Kaylene and I are incredibly outnumbered (by guys), but it’s fine by me. Everyone is lovely to work with. The guys play female roles as much as we do.

AARON: I always look forward to whenever I can get onstage and make people giggle.

MANDY: I’d love to do this forever. Todd and Brennis (the Kathleen Howland Theatre landlords) have told us they’d like to have us every first Saturday of the month until the sun burns out.