If you were at the Comedy Combo Show in the Nicolson 6 Lounge on Friday night, you were, like me, most likely unable to breathe by the end of the show. What you might not realize from the somewhat brief performances from each group is just how deep the comedy scene at Wesleyan has become.

With all six groups performing their own unique styles of comedy, the Combo Show was representative of the wide variety that the comedy scene at the University has to offer.

“We do a combo show at least every year—at the beginning of every year—to tell the incoming freshman, ‘Here’s an easy place for you to go and see all comedy that Wesleyan has to offer, ’” said Taylor Goodstein ’14, a member of Gag Reflex. “It’s one show and it kind of brings us all together.”

At the Combo Show, each group displayed its unique style. Gag Reflex, the University’s oldest improv group, for example, employs a style of long-form improv comedy known as “The Armando,” where a word from the audience inspires a member of the group to tell a story from their own life—at the Combo Show, a story where Jell-O is revealed to be congealed blood—that then inspires numerous scenes.

“Long-form is basically the opposite of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway,’ where they do short games with very very clear rules,” Goodstein said. “We do more scene building or story building or game building.”

Desperate Measures, the only short-form improv group on campus, focuses more on specific games, not unlike “Whose Line Is It Anyway.”

“[The games] are generally a lot jokier and silly, and…shorter,” said Jana Heaton ’14, a member of the group.

Games can include one where a word from the audience—on Friday night, “umbrella”—translates into a scene that is forced to become shorter and shorter, until the players have a mere one second to complete the scene.

“Our format makes us number one for puns,” said Nick Murphy ’16, another member of Desperate Measures.

New Teen Force is the most free-form of the three improv groups; words and suggestions from the audience can evolve into scenes about everything from horrid banana bread to goats in walls. Due to their lack of clear boundaries, scenes can evolve in any direction and move with a freer sense of flow.

“We have very little rules, so there’s no structural limitations,” said Albert Tholen ’15, a member of New Teen Force.

But this isn’t to say improv is the only option for comedy on campus. Punchline, Wesleyan’s stand-up comedy group, performed between groups, with topics ranging from “Beauty and The Beast” to summer experiences.

The group is unique in part because of the independence inherent to stand-up comedy.

“Because [stand-up is] such an individual thing, and because it would be so hard to organize all these free agents, it just makes a lot of sense to have a stand-up group,” said Willie Zabar ’16, a member of both Punchline and the sketch group Lunchbox.

Lunchbox, Wesleyan’s sketch comedy group, takes comedy in a more scripted direction, with all four members (one member is off-campus) of the group writing and performing original sketches.

“Either we’ll brainstorm ideas for sketches and then divide them up amongst ourselves and say who’s going to tackle each thing, or one person will say ‘I came up with an idea for a sketch and wrote it’ and bring it to the meeting,” Zabar said. “There are other times that there will be projects that we make completely with each other.”

Ultimately, sketches in the group often evolve from their intentions. Friday’s ridiculous (but nonetheless hilarious) turkey sketch, which involved the aforementioned fowl being interviewed by Charlie Rose, went through considerable revision before it reached the stage.

Vocal Debauchery also performs sketch comedy, but with a twist: they perform a cappella in between each sketch. Although they had a shorter slot, they nonetheless used it well, performing a sketch about inebriated puppeteers and singing an excerpt of a song that might not be suitable to print. The combination of a cappella and sketch attracted people from both sides of the aisle and was a feasible transition into the Wesleyan comedy scene for some members.

“I did a cappella in high school, but the comedy was somewhat new for me, but this seemed like a nice mix,” said Jacob Feder ’15, a member of Vocal Debauchery. “A little bit of old, a little bit of new.”

The variety of comedy styles across campus speaks not only to the wide variety of groups but also to the unique voices that each group has to offer. For some, like Solomon Billinkoff ’14, a member of both Punchline and Lunchbox, the best work comes from a darker place.

“I think the sketches that I personally like best are the ones that touch on a weirdness and that are different and more unsettling than your typical fare,” Billinkoff said.

Others see value in effortlessness.

“The people who have a more honest, sometimes subtle, sometimes out-there—but more honest—approach…and don’t worry about being funny, that’s what is funny,” said Jeremy Senie ’14, another member of Gag Reflex.

All of this hard work comes from a passion for comedy.

“I watched stand-up constantly for years and years and years, and that is quite possibly how I got good at it, just from observing so many different comics for basically my entire childhood,” said Punchline member Mike Matthews ’15.

The show was also a testament to how accessible the comedy scene has become, and how well audiences at the University react to it. Indeed, part of the strength of the campus’ comedy scene comes from the sophistication and support that both groups and audiences expect from each other.

“There are easy jokes, and there [is] more sophisticated humor,” Heaton said, “And I think that the Wesleyan audience kind of demands a certain respect, more sophisticated humor with a cruder joke thrown in there.”

Wesleyan’s respect for performers also makes it a solid alternative to comedy clubs.

“I feel like here, people aren’t filming us and putting us on YouTube, where as if you were in some comedy club, someone in the crowd you don’t know could totally film you and it could end up online,” said Cade Leebron ’14, a member of Punchline and Vocal Debauchery. “Whereas here, I can just say whatever I want and it’s not going to end up online with my name attached to it.”

Among the groups, there is a nice rapport, even when it comes time for planning shows.

“We’ve never really been in direct competition with each other because our forms of comedy are very different,” said Lauren Langer ’16, a member of New Teen Force.

Tholen echoed this sentiment.

“We’re [a] small enough community that there’s no point in any sort of in-fighting,” he said. “It makes so much more sense to be a unified front.”

And things only seem to be getting better for comedians on campus; attendance at the Combo Show was strong, and groups are excited by the prospect of impassioned new members.

“[The attendance was] a testament to the excitement of the freshmen this year,” Billinkoff said. “We’ve got a lot of students who have already seen some stuff, people…really into performing; there are kids who are hilarious.”

As for advice that current Wesleyan comedians would give to students outside of the scene, one piece in particular came up: give it a shot.

“I feel like I talk to so many freshmen who are like, ‘I’d love to audition, but I’m not funny,’” Leebron said. “It’s like, ‘Well, if you’d really love to, you’re probably funny.’”

At the end of the day, whether you’re a wide-eyed freshman or a jaded senior, comedy is a skill well worth honing.

“The sense of humor is the single most important part of a human being as far as I’m concerned,” Matthews said, “So I think it has to be strengthened and discovered.”