“RISK!” Before you even get to the second part of the title, “True Tales Boldly Told,” you’re already excited. The word itself is thrilling—perhaps by simply going to this event you are taking a risk. Then the capitalization punches you in the face, and by the time you’ve gotten to that exclamation point(!), you’re hooked. Needless to say, I was already a little carried away with myself before I even got to the performance this Friday at 7 in Crowell.

“RISK! True Tales Boldly Told” is a monthly live show in New York and L.A., as well as a regular podcast hosted by Kevin Allison, a member of the sketch comedy group “The State” (you may have seen them in their TV show on MTV back in 1993-95… or at least your parents might have seen them since you were either busy being born or working on eating that solid food).  On the show, many familiar names, such as Lisa Lampanelli, Margaret Cho, and Janeane Garofalo, tell embarrassing, funny, personal, outrageous stories that ordinarily would be reserved for close personal friends—or just not told at all.

At Wesleyan, the headliner was W. Kamau Bell, a Comedy Central comedian famous for his hilarious and sometimes depressingly accurate depictions of racial prejudice. His story for the campus detailed a time when he took his multiracial baby to a gas station and had a bit of a run-in with confused, defensive, and ignorant white women. The audience found the story raucously funny, all while hoping that they were never that ignorant  person freaked out by the black guy holding the white baby. Bell assured us, however, joking, “Don’t worry, I know you guys are the good white people.”

Still, for me at least, the main events of the night were the stories by Wesleyan students. Jana Heaton ’14 recounted her adventures as a high school punk, throwing a party in her parents’ empty, brand new house, dry-heaving in her mom’s sink and getting away with it all. Jakob Schaeffer GRAD, on the other hand, took a slightly more personal route, revealing to everyone his childhood (and teenage … and college) obsession with Weird Al Yankovic. Virgil Taylor ’15 and Carolyn Cohen ’12 bared their souls at the 10 p.m. show.

The whole event was hosted by Kevin Allison himself, who kicked off the night with an absolutely insane story of his own. The content is not exactly Argus material, but I am going to say that it involved a college-aged Allison, a sex club, a samurai, Allison’s testicles, and a pair of shoes.

The audience was laughing all night and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. But why did “RISK!” come to Wesleyan? Well, it wasn’t only because of that Facebook page “Bring RISK! to Wesleyan” that you may have liked over the summer. The mastermind behind it all was Cohen, who got hooked on the podcast over the summer while driving around L.A. for an internship. Listening to it one day, she heard that there were opportunities for “RISK!” to come to colleges and do a show—and that Brown had already hosted them. Since we are the Harvard of Central Connecticut, she knew what she had to do. Of course, that was not actually her reason.

“At first, it was like, ‘Oh someone famous is going to come to Wesleyan and it’s going to be my job,’” joked Cohen. “But then it just became something completely different…. I wanted to be a part of something, I wanted to instigate something. I just wanted to bring something awesome to Wesleyan.”

And that she did. Still, it wasn’t “someone famous” that made the show so great—it was the bold stories told by Wesleyan students and the hilarity brought by Allison and Bell. Though they may have taken some convincing (every single performance cited Cohen’s persuasion as a big reason why they decided to spill), they all came out with a wonderful experience. Once they agreed to tell a story, they sent a written draft of it in to Allison, who aside from hosting “RISK!” also teaches story-telling classes at the People’s Improv Theater (the PIT) in New York. He then set up a Skype interview with them (modern technology!) and coached them through it, really improving their delivery and the flow of their narrative.

“He asks you good questions,” Heaton said. “[He asked me to] explain my mom’s personality, and I was like, ‘Oh I have a really good anecdote about the time my mom made us go to this drug awareness thing.’”

Even with Allison’s coaching, getting up to tell a story in front of a good chunk of campus is incredibly intimidating. Each of the student performers, though, seemed to be unfazed and glad to do it.

“I do a lot of ridiculous things that the world needs to know about,” Heaton laughed. “When she [Cohen] said it’s something where you tell embarrassing stories, I was like, ‘Pssh, I can do that. Which one?’”

Taylor shared a similar sentiment.

“I think of myself as a person who is silly and talks a lot, so ostensibly this is a perfect event for me,” Taylor said.

Demonstrating the power of Facebook “likes” and student initiative, “RISK! True Tales Bold Told” hit Wesleyan last Friday, and it was not an event to miss. Though we were deeply entertained by Kevin Allison and W. Kamau Bell, the celebrities of the night, the real excitement (beyond exclamation points), came from the true stories shared by members of our own community.