Imagine someone who’s not an employee walks through an employees-only door. What happens to him next?
Duke audiences will have a chance to ponder this and other existential questions this Friday at the performance by Duke’s lone student sketch comedy troupe, Inside Joke. The members have worked for months to come up with sketches, developing them through improv work and polishing them up for the show. This process was still lively and ongoing as recently as Sunday afternoon, when a dozen members assembled in a conference room to hash out the final scripts, tossing out suggestions for the optimal punchline to a skit involving attempted hook-ups and diorama class projects.
“I think the gay porn ending could work,” one member suggested.
What differentiates sketch comedy from improv is this degree of process and revision. Improv requires being funny on a moment’s notice; sketch comedy involves carefully crafting a humorous situation over a period of days or weeks.
“It’s kind of easier to be funny in a social sphere, everyone can do that,” said sophomore Bron Maher, a member of the group. “But it’s really hard even for groups like Inside Joke and, I gather, DUI to write and perform comedy, to pre-plan what an audience will take as funny. That’s difficult and that’s something that you have to develop.”
The upcoming show, consisting of around 15 original sketches, tackles local topics like Fix My Campus and what happens when someone doesn’t get into a fraternity that they are rushing, as well as broader issues like urinal conversation and heartfelt eulogies gone wrong. Inside Joke President Charlie Molthrop, a senior, described the show as a collection of “weirdos in normal worlds and normal people in weird worlds.”
The group is billing the show as “The Free Show That Is Free and Costs No Money.” When asked for clarification on the matter, Molthrop, an engineering student, delved into a bit of time-space relativity.
“It’s mostly free,” he said. “It’s not free of time passing. It’s not ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’ When you enter the theater, you’re traveling at one second per second. In other words, it doesn’t cost any money.”
In developing comedic scenes, Inside Joke members compile a weekly “List of Funny” of words or phrases that hold the spark of humorous potential, said first year Cosi Goldstein. She said that most of her ideas come from things she sees or hears in the course of daily campus life, like a classmate intensely focused on getting the last ice cream out of a tiny Ben and Jerry’s cup. Fragments such as these can lead to group improv sessions which, if they work, develop into full-fledged scenes—which means there is a chance that theatergoers in some way influenced the product they are going to see.
The group also has been helped in this process by Inside Joke alum Dave Schmidt, Trinity ’07, who studied at the Second City comedy conservatory in Chicago and interned in their production office before coming back to work in Duke’s alumni affairs office. He said when he was in Inside Joke, the creative process was more centered on writing, but he has been coaching the group on using the Second City method of improv-driven scene development, which he described as the industry standard. The improv can generate a memorable character or idea that will then be developed through scripting, or it can help the writers out of a tight spot.
“Improv can give you those ideas along the way where if you’re sitting in a room you won’t get as rich of an idea,” Schmidt said. “If you’ve written your way into a corner maybe you can improv your way out of it.”
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