Maud’s Improv Theatre

Pinkie’s tail helicopter-twisted 270 degrees counter-clockwise, and she hopped six inches up and grinned. Luna underhoof tossed the ball to Pinkie, as if it were a little pebble. Pinkie ran forward to catch it, as if the pass would fall short. Luna tensed her shoulders a bit. Pinkie was knocked back several feet, stuck her tongue out as she was squished onto the ground, rolled backwards into a loop rising four feet into the air, and then played dead. She smiled an awful lot for a pony who was playing dead.

“See, you imagined that you threw a little pebble and I thought what if you’d thrown Boulder and Boulder had turned into a big, giant boulder and knocked me over and I got stuck on his surface and I did a big loop as he rolled around!”, said Pinkie.

Zecora laughed, and Luna gave a little giggle.

“That was funny”, said Maud.

Pinkie squeaked with enthusiasm, confetti immediately shooting out of her mane.

“Pinkie, you’re used to being funny on your own. This game is about being funny together.” Maud sat for a moment, content.

“That sounds even better!”, shouted Pinkie.

“And to lose a fetter, only take the lead, when a friend’s in need”, added Zecora.

Maud placed a hoof over Boulder, cradling him in her lap. Boulder held her back. He had been hiding from Maud earlier, and she knew he was making it up to her. He was happy to watch the show, and the ponies had included an extra seat for him in the row for the performers who were watching, instead of in scene. He preferred to be with Maud.

“Zecora’s right. Try to work with what your partner gives you before you add ideas of your own. If they pretend to toss you a small ball, pretend to catch a small ball. If you want to be rolled over, you can work that in after you’ve shown that you recognized your partner’s action”.

Maud paused, and placed Boulder in his pouch.

“Pinkie and Zecora, I’d like you act out a long-form scene. Four minutes or so.” Maud walked over to the three chairs on the edge of the room, and Luna followed. Maud let Boulder sit in the middle chair with her, and Luna sat in the one to her left. Maud gifted her a warm glance, and Luna was pleased to return it.

Pinkie began the scene immediately. “I am the mare-do-well! But the mare-do-well of the niiiiiight!”, Pinkie, now playing Mare-Do-Well, held her forehooves up dramatically, as if about to pounce on some villain.

Zecora approached Mare-Do-Well. “I am new, so please do tell: what is your story, Mare-Do-Well?”, she asked, not having been present in Ponyville during Mare-Do-Well’s debut.

“I help ponies! And save them from mishaps! And… I do it at night! So normal Mare-Do-Well can sleep, and stuff like that! But, umm, not exactly the same as normal Mare-Do-Well, because I…”

Mare-Do-Well looked to Maud to help, not that she could interject mid-scene.

“because I have confetti in my Mane!”, she declared a little loudly. “Like, stuck in my mane foreeeeevvvveeeerr!”

Zecora giggled before she could respond. “While that is a dire strait, I have a problem, if you’ll wait for me to tell you, here’s the rub—I have a walrus in my tub!”

A true problem to be vanquished! Mare-Do-Well hopped up in excitement, and attempted to land on her feet in a way that was more determined than excited. She was pretty excited, though! In a great show of willpower, she refrained from making walrus noises or sticking the straws she had stored in her tail in either side of her mouth like walrus tusks.

“I shall assist you, noble Zecora! Lead the way to your troublesome tub!”

Zecora was playing herself, then. “I will lead you to my hut, and you can help to end this rut.”

Zecora turned and walked to the edge of the stage, and Mare-Do-Well bounced along behind her. At the edge of the stage, Zecora turned, walked a couple paces towards the back of the stage, and then walked back to just behind where she had been standing.

“Here we are, let us face the walrus in my toilet place.”

Zecora opened the imaginary door for Mare-Do-Well, “Here is my restroom, and my tub--”

“Waaaaaiiit, you have to go through your restroom to get into your house?”

Zecora blushed. That’s right, she hadn’t pretended to enter her house yet.

“That’s so cool!”, shouted Mare-Do-Well. “I’m going to put a new entrance to the party planning cave in the restroom in Sugarcube Corner, and we’ll have a secret lever you can pull to make extra toilet paper come up from the party planning cave in case anypony runs out!” Mare-Do-Well had a party-planning cave and lived in Sugarcube Corner in this scene, apparently.

Zecora pointed a hoof towards her imaginary tub. “This walrus soaks here in my tub, ever going scrub-a-dub.”

“Ooh, right! Hi there, Ms. Walrus!” Mare-Do-Well waved to the imaginary walrus. “She waved back! Say hi to her!”

“Hello, walrus in my bath, may I ask you do the math? You’ve been bathing a day and a half,”

Mare-Do-Well gasped. “I know! Because she’s going to have a calf!”

Zecora looked to Mare-Do-Well, a feeling of eager grit. She could work with this.

“This is right, let us act, I’ll bend down and brace my back; carry her, do make haste, to the hospital, no time to waste!”

The two mares bent down, and struggled to get the walrus onto their backs. With a grunt, Zecora shuffled around, and they pretended to carry the walrus through the door.

Zecora and Mare-Do-Well hastened to the far end of the stage, turned, walked two strides forward, pivoted back, and accidentally stumbled.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry Ms. Walrus!” Mare-Do-Well hugged the walrus. “She’s about to deliver!”

Zecora and Mare-Do-Well went on to prove that neither of them had delivered a child before, or didn’t care to act it out; Zecora pretended to scoop up the baby walrus in her hooves and place him between his mother’s flippers. “Why does this baby walrus wear a red-white striped hat-sweater pair?”

“A baby walrus! Hooray! I’ll be sure to plan his one-day-old party for tomorrow!” Confetti shot out of Mare-Do-Well’s mane and onto the stage, some of it even getting onto the drawn curtain. She grinned at Maud, and winked. “Hey, the confetti’s finally unstuck from my mane! And the baby walrus is wearing a red and white striped sweater! And a red and white striped hat! It’s...”

“Waldo!”

“Wally!”, Mare-Do-Well said at the same time. “I never found him in the ‘Where’s Wally Antarctica’ book, but here he is! Sneaky guy!”

Zecora and Luna laughed for a moment, and Maud stated, “cut.”

“Ohmygosh, that was a great scene, Zecora! But I’m still going to have to throw a one-day-old party, except it’ll be for an imaginary walrus and not a real one! It’ll have to be in the morning so we can still have Applejack’s 37-days-until-your-birthday party tomorrow too!” Pinkie hopped twice and looked to the others for approval.

“An excellent performance”, Luna added.

“Hey Maud! What did you think? Did you think it was good? Hmm?”

Maud was quiet in a way that only Pinkie could know was a smile.

“If my heart was a porous formation of sandstone and happiness were like microcrystalline quartz exhibiting growth along the c-axis in the absence of chalcedony, then it filled my heart with microcrystalline quartz”, said Maud.

Maud thought about microcrystalline quartz for a moment. “alpha-chiral microcrystalline quartz”, she clarified. This seemed to make everypony more confused instead of less confused.

Maud knew that they had actually been confused because they didn’t get the metaphor--instead of having been confused because they weren’t clear on what type of quartz she’d been talking about, but it was funnier to let them think that she didn’t know that. She paused for a couple more breaths, because it was more comedic if it looked like she’d taken a long time to figure out that they were actually confused because the metaphor was hard to understand.

“That means it was good. Boulder liked it too.” Maud patted him, and the girls all smiled.