I feel like something that has really contributed to sfth's success is that they all have different strengths in their acting. I'll use Never Give Annabelle A Gun as the example for this, since I feel they were all pretty much at their strongest in that long form. Luke is exceptional at playing characters that are nothing like him: Americans, women, nonhumans, etc.; his most compelling and interesting characters are ones he has basically nothing in common with. he's also great at multiroling, esp if it's characters that are very likely to come into contact with each other because he loves having the opportunity to do a back-and-forth with himself. He doesn't really multirole in ngaag, but he plays a lesbian, which he definitely is not, and is able to depicts her in a very convincing and relatable way. I think this is because he's the one who's done the most reading and studying about improv and acting; he has a deep intellectual understanding of taking on an alternate perspective, and has developed that skill. Tom does well with finding the motivation for a character and centering that as their main trait. some characters end up very two-dimensional, but most end up complex and fascinating. Butch is a great example of this; her main defining trait was being in love with her best friend and being afraid to tell her. he played this so that it was clear that was on her mind in every scene, and it ended up making her more distinctive and allowing her to do things to further the plot that made sense because of that motivation. I think this is because of his whole novelist thing; to write a book, you need a really good idea of what drives each character, and that sometimes has to be isolated to just one main goal or emotion or whatever. AJ does well with adapting to what the story needs, and does his best when he's going along with the others' ideas and building on them. he escalates conflict, and he's amazing at intensifying the plot and raising the stakes. we see this especially in ngaag with him playing the stalker, because he picks up on the romance between Annabelle and Butch and, rather than shoehorning it into a love triangle or forcing Butch out of the picture as nothing more than a friend, decides to take on the part of villain that cares more about possession than love. this made the plot way more interesting, and allowed a sense of urgency that it wouldn't have otherwise had. I think this is mostly because of his background as a director and filmmaker, because he's able to pick up on where they're trying to go with it and come up with a way to make it easier for the audience to get invested. Sam is best at engineering the plot from the background; his minor characters are often the ones that force the plot forward the most, and though he also does great as the mc, he almost seems to have more control over how the play goes when he's in a supporting or side role. as Annabelle's father, he's able to hint at the feelings between Annabelle and Butch before Luke and Tom had even decided they'd have feelings for each other, and was the main reason they ended up with a happy ending rather than a Clamanda-esque unrequited pining thing. I feel like this is mostly because of his experience working in comedy for a long time in the ideas-having side of things; he can pitch ideas for how he wants it to go by making suggestions to the more main characters during their sidequesty moments with side characters. In fact, another great example of these strengths is Clarissa's DIY Wedding; it's almost the same dynamics, with Luke and Tom being girl best friends and Tom's character having a crush on Luke's while AJ's character is in love with Luke's, but in that one, Luke's character ends up with AJ's rather than Tom's. In this, too, Sam sort of drives the plot forward indirectly through his supporting roles, making the whole thing tie together properly. Their individual penchants are really easy to see the more of the longforms you watch, and it's cool to see how they play to these throughout their time in this field.
