As the school year wraps up and seniors prepare to graduate, goodbye becomes normal vocabulary as students get ready to leave IU for the final time. Among these seniors are several members of IU’s campus comedy groups which each have their own way of honoring their graduating members with senior shows to wrap up performances for the past year. Four comedy shows scheduled for this weekend will honor seniors from some of IU’s comedy groups.
The senior show for Full Frontal Comedy will take place at 9 p.m. on Friday, May 2, in the IMU State Room East. Since the group primarily performs improv, which is meant to change with each performance and audience, they won’t be able to do a “Best of” set of sketches similar to what comedy groups, like Backdoor Comedy, are preparing for their shows. Instead, Full Frontal Comedy will be putting a spin on this theme by doing a “Best of” improv games show. According to Kyle Rassel, a member of Full Frontal comedy and one of the group’s graduating seniors, this involved senior members choosing their favorite improv games which will be performed in the show.
Full Frontal's final performance of the semester will also differ from their past shows with the addition of an improvised musical which will take the place of their typical long-form improv game. While the group has been known for their musical improv in the past, this musical, which will last about 30 minutes according to Rassel, will include an entire story with recurring characters all made up on the spot.
“It’s kind of an amalgamation of all the skills that we’ve tried to gain over my four years here,” Rassel said. “And it all kind of goes into doing a musical. It's a big undertaking for us, but it’s so fun and it’s such a huge reward.”
Like the other comedy groups, Full Frontal’s upcoming show will be focused on primarily celebrating their senior members as they close the year. According to Rassel, along with hosting the entire performance, the seniors in Full Frontal Comedy have a secret performance planned to kick off the show. Members of the group that are not graduating will be in charge of organizing the end of the show, which is kept secret from the senior performers till their actual send-off at the end.
While both parts are kept on a need-to-know basis, at their core both are meant to honor the time and contributions that the group’s seniors have given Full Frontal Comedy. According to Rassel, being on the other side of that planning makes everything seem so surreal and final.
“You see so many people go,” Rassel said. “And you've gone through the motions. You've planned the shows before. You know what it's like, but only when it's happening do you really know what it's like to be up on stage, hear those songs and see that audience for the last time. It almost feels like it's not happening to me, but it is.”
Performing the same night as Full Frontal Comedy is Ladies’ Night Comedy, a stand-up comedy group composed entirely of women and nonbinary comedians. Ladies’ Night Comedy will be holding their senior show at 9 p.m. Friday, May 2, in Ballentine Hall room 110. With stand-up being such an individual form of comedy, this show will run pretty similar to ones in the past with each member being given a section of time in the show to perform their own set. According to Em North, an IU junior and president of Ladies’ Night comedy, the main difference that sets this senior show apart is the fact that seniors will have most of the focus on them as they close out the show and perform their sets last.
Members of Ladies’ Night comedy group are pictured. Ladies' Night had its first show of the semester Jan. 31.
As is the case with most of these senior performances, emotions will also be running high for the final show of the school year in Ladies’ Night Comedy. The prospect of saying goodbye to their graduating friends and fellow performers in the group is bittersweet, North said.
“I know they will be moving on to bigger and better things, but the group won't be the same without them,” North said. “It's especially weird when the people leaving are the ones who have been with me since the beginning.”
University tWits, another part of IU’s sketch comedy scene, already took their final bow with their senior show taking place at 9 p.m., April 18 in Ballantine Hall room 013. With their show wrapped up, it’s now time for the remaining groups to say goodbye and close out the semester. One of those sendoffs is still to come in the form of Backdoor Comedy and Boy in the Bubble’s senior shows.
Members of Backdoor Comedy group are pictured performing a sketch. Backdoor Comedy hosted its first show of the semester Jan. 25.
Not only will the two groups' performances happen on the same day, but they’ll also happen at the same place as the two groups are hosting their final show of the spring semester together. Starting at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 3 in the Fine Arts Building room 015, the show will be separated into two halves to give both groups time for their performances and to celebrate the seniors. Logan Vaught, a graduating senior and member of Backdoor Comedy, said the show should last around two and a half hours with each group getting a little over an hour to perform.
Boy in the Bubble will take up that first block of time in the show. Like Backdoor Comedy, they will be doing a “Best of” type performance with sketches that honor the work of seniors in their group. Following directly after them is Backdoor Comedy’s performance that will have their usual mix of sketch and improv comedy.
The improv section of their show will remain mostly unchanged, Vaught said, but the sketches will be picked by seniors from the skits they have written and performed during their time in the group. These sketches will cover a wide range of topics including a musical bit and even a new performer. June, IU senior and Backdoor member Caden Hamscher’s dog, will have a small part in one of the skits.
For senior members of Backdoor Comedy like Vaught, it’s weird to say goodbye to a group that has been such a big part of their college experience. For Vaught, Backdoor Comedy has been there since his first couple weeks on campus and this upcoming senior show has started to bring up immense feelings surrounding graduation and leaving the group.
“It’s just always been a time where I know that for at least four hours a week I would get to hang out with people that I liked just being silly, writing jokes and expressing my creativity in a way that isn't really bound by rules,” Vaught said. “I hope it continues for a while and I hope that it provides people the same safety, comfort and happiness that it brought me.”
More information on the groups, their upcoming performances and eventual tryouts for the fall semester can be found on their respective Instagram pages.
Editor’s note: A member of the IDS is part of Full Frontal at IU but was not involved in the editing of this story.
