A mixed bag of scripted and improvised comedy brought laughs to the first two nights of the Empire Comedy Festival.

University Union Comedy organized the comedy fest, which drew large crowds to Panasci Lounge on Friday and Saturday nights. At the beginning of each performance both nights, University Union President Dennis Jacobs read a disclaimer because of the recent controversy surrounding HillTV’s content. The disclaimer stated that University Union did not make any of the performers clear their material with University Union. This, of course, begged the question: How could University Union possibly make an improv troupe clear its material in advance?

There were no possibly offensive jokes to be found in any of the improv performances, but the same could not be said of a small number of the skits during Saturday’s performances. The audience became noticeably quieter during a skit by Penguins Without Pants, where a man proposed an unseen swastika-shaped diagram to the Food and Drug Administration to replace the food pyramid.

‘The skit was a little offensive; it shouldn’t have been there,’ said Leah Berg, a freshman interior design major.

In reality, the poster with the supposed swastika diagram only had a picture of a puppy on it.

The first night of the comedy fest featured the performances of four different improvisational comedy troupes from Syracuse, Columbia and Cornell Universities and Ithaca College. Columbia’s performance was the most theatrical, Cornell’s performance the smartest, Ithaca’s the funniest and Zamboni’s the best overall.

All four teams had noticeably different performances and styles.

Klaritan, Columbia’s improv team, was the first to perform. The team used long-form improv much like Zamboni Revolution, SU’s improv comedy troupe. However, Klaritan focused on creating a single more-or-less cohesive story rather than Zamboni’s multiple stories, which sometimes overlap. Both Zamboni and Klaritan succeeded at their respective styles of performance.

‘I thought some of the long form comedy was a little esoteric,’ said Hallie Stiller, an undeclared freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences. ‘(It was) a little more theatrical than comedy … I have a short attention span.’

Cornell’s team, Whistling Shrimp, and Ithaca’s team both did short-form improv, which usually consists of party-game scenes, including a debate between Fraggles and Smurfs, including the fact that ‘Smurfs are so blue, they could be in an Emo band,’ which eventually extended to other shows that most current SU students grew up on.

One of Ithaca’s features was a game show that was just as much a competition for the best one-liner as it was for the correct answer in the form of a question.

In response to the category of Lucky Charms, a member of Ithaca said, ‘What is the cereal that didn’t help me get lucky at all?’

Whistling Shrimp’s jokes relied upon cultural references, to great effect. The group also brought audience members onstage, increasing involvement in their performance to its utmost degree.

‘I liked the general creativity,’ Stiller said. ‘There wasn’t a weak link among them.’

Ithaca’s team took improv to a whole new level when some of their team members risked drowning for their art. In one scene, the performers would alternate sticking their heads in a clear plastic container filled with water, while the other performers conducted the scene. Every once in a while, the performers would switch to the container, but when they came back they had to justify why they were wet, usually with a typical off-the-cuff one-liner.

‘It’s really easy to get a laugh at that, but they did it well,’ said Ian Solomon, an undeclared freshman in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. ‘This weekend’s great. It’ll be cool to see a professional comedy group (Upright Citizen’s Brigade), because I can’t imagine they’ll be any better.’

Zamboni Revolution took a little while to get into its groove, but once they got there, it was deliciously absurd. And although Zamboni kept its individual scenes short, it was still able to create in-depth scenes populated by well-developed characters. One such scene had a church congregation of only one person, but he made up for the sparse crowd with multiple personalities.

‘I respected the long-form,’ said Ben Youngerman, a freshman majoring in broadcast journalism. ‘It’s a harder thing to sustain and keep going.’

There were two other skit comedy troupes other than Penguins Without Pants; Hammerkatz from New York University and Cleanest River in America, a New York-based comedy troupe consisting of three Penguins Without Pants alumni.

All the skit comedy troupes were funny most of the time, but the most hilarious group of the evening was Hammerkatz, without a doubt. The troupe used a combination of live performances and movie clips. The team’s movie clips were incredibly creative, such as the opening credits to ‘Bananas in Pajamas’ to alternate – and wildly inappropriate – music.

‘I liked the use of video clips – that worked really well,’ said Steve Page, a sophomore television, radio and film major.

Hammerkatz’s best scene was when the troupe combined its movie clips and live performances in a series of homemade movie screenings, all of which focused on ridiculing an unfaithful girlfriend on stage and telling her to suck assorted appendages.

The remaining two troupes both delivered their lines expertly. Penguins Without Pants didn’t shy from mocking the Student Association, where they portrayed the entire Assembly as incompetent.

Published on October 23, 2005 at 12:00 pm