Castle Council immerses the community in comedy

HUNTSVILLE – Collect your village and let your voice be heard. The Castle Council improv performance at Shenanigans Comedy Club in Huntsville allows attendees to bring their fantastical concerns to characters who will hilariously improvise solutions and story lines.

“The Castle Council is a Dungeons and Dragons improv comedy show we have been hosting in Huntsville since 2023,” said Owner of Plumb Line Events and Creator of the Castle Council, Ethan Mitchell. “We have it themed as a city council meeting, where our players are council members, and our audience gets to be the citizens of the city. They come and tell about various problems happening in our city, and then we improvise adventures based around the suggestions we get.” Those who attend can feel a part of the Castle Council city, get to know characters along the way, and become immersed in an experience like Dungeons and Dragons.

“It’s very audience-interactive heavy, so that we can get the audience as involved as possible, from giving us the literal adventures we go on each night, to naming various NPCs that we come across in the show or bribing our council members by giving them advantage or disadvantage as we go,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said the Castle Council events are fun for those who do not know much about Dungeons and Dragons, but for those who do they will appreciate the lore and utilization of rules by the actors in the show.

“We try to make it a place where anyone can come and have fun,” he said. “It’s undeniably a Dungeons and Dragons show, but we like to say it’s a comedy show first and foremost, that it’s a show that even if you don’t know anything about Dungeons and Dragons, you can come and laugh and enjoy the characters and the story and what’s going on. But if you know a lot about Dungeons and Dragons, there’s a lot of fun Easter eggs, rules, lore and stuff like that that you can still engage with.”

Along with creating a hilarious experience for viewers regardless of their experience with Dungeons and Dragons, Mitchell said the Castle Council is also family friendly.

“One of the things we always do with our shows is make sure they’re family- friendly,” he said. “They’re not for children, but children definitely can enjoy them. Whole families can come out together and meet people from a wide variety of different ages and generations. This can be a nice bridge-builder between so many different types of people because of a shared passion.”

Mitchell said that with an increasingly online world, he enjoys providing a space for families and friends to go into their city and have a good time together.

“I think one of the temptations that lots of people fall into, especially nowadays, is just the easily accessible ability to kind of isolate yourself,” he said. “I think humans, by nature, like to be part of communities, but we also like to experience things together. I think there’s a very important aspect of what it means to be human, that we enjoy laughing and crying and having these strong, powerful emotions with each other. And I think live events are very fundamental for that.”

The next Castle Council show will be held on Sept. 25 starting at 7 p.m. Other shows will be held Oct. 23, Nov. 29 and Dec. 18. In addition, there are also subcommittee meetings of the Castle Council held at other times, such as the “Subcommittee (of Evil)” on Sept. 29. Shenanigans is located at 2650 Leeman Ferry Road Southwest, Suite A in Huntsville.

For more information, visit www. plumblineevents.org or www.huntsvillelaughs. com.