How many comedians does it take to make a vacuum cleaner? No, not to fix one — to physically become one. If you’re at city-based improv collective Negative School’s new live series, we’d say nearly five, if you include the hose pipe. One of the many games that feature in the bi-weekly series titled Improv Cage Brawl, is Human Tetris. The audience calls out names of imaginative machines and the performers on stage have 10 seconds on the clock to get in position to mimic it.

“The concept of a cage brawl is simple. Two teams of improv artistes come together to hone their skills through unscripted quickfire battles, judged by an impartial audience who scores the acts,” shares co-founder Neeltarni Pratap, who has studied improv across premier schools including the iO West Improv School in Los Angeles, originally co-founded by comedy maestro Del Close in 1981. The shinier feather in her cap, however, is being at the helm of a team called Kool Kats in the upcoming brawls.