Gabi Merchens

Buchanan “Buck” and Clint Vrazel were doing improv long before they even knew what improv was. Playing silly games and making up songs with their friends, the twins had no idea that what they were doing would become a significant part of the Oklahoma performing arts scene.

“We were just messing around,” Buck said. “We didn’t know it was called improv or acting. That was the word we discovered later. We were just messing around, making up songs and making up games and that was just normal. We saw improv later and thought ‘Oh, this feels familiar.’”

Taking the last of his environmental science books off his shelf, Adam Lifsics works to fit an 11-year career into a series of boxes.

Lifsics, Norman High School’s 2016 teacher of the year, is leaving Oklahoma in July for Terra Nova High School, a project-based learning school in Beaverton, Oregon. Though he says he and his wife are staying afloat despite cuts to education in Oklahoma, Lifsics worries that Oklahoma’s financial struggles could impact his family in the future.

When her dad banned 6-year-old Gabi Merchen from watching the Disney Channel, she had to look for other options. She came across “3rd Rock from the Sun,” a comedy about aliens who land on earth in human form and attempt to fit in. Watching the show and laughing at the characters’ experiences sparked Gabi’s passion for comedy.

Although her dad’s refusal to watch the Disney Channel introduced her to comedy, Gabi’s mom was the key influence in her pursuit of the art. When Gabi’s parents divorced, she said she looked to comedy as a “defense mechanism.”