As the short-form improv group enters its 25th year of telling jokes on MU’s campus, the remaining four members work to keep the show new and exciting
Each Wednesday night just before 8 p.m., Leadership Auditorium fills with students. The room buzzes with conversation and laughter amongst audience members as they wait for the show to start. Soon enough, the lights dim. The crowd goes silent. For a split second, the only thing that can be heard is a Drake song playing from the auditorium speakers. Then, breaking the stillness with a burst of shouts and hollers, the four members of MU’s Comedy Wars rush in.
Comedy Wars is MU’s premiere short-form improv group, founded in 1999. The team consists of juniors Prim Stonebraker and Declan Colbert, both second-year members, and seniors Sean Lomasney and Henry Right, both third-year members. Comedy Wars’ motto is simple: “make jokes, not war!”
From left to right, Declan Colbert, Prim Stonebraker, Sean Lomasney, and Henry Right huddle together for a group photo after two hours of improv skits on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024 at the Leadership Auditorium in Columbia, Mo.
The shows consist of the four members playing a variety of improv games for an hour. Most of the games are inspired by the improv show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” which started in 1998 and ran for almost a decade. Stonebraker, Lomasney and Right’s favorite game, Tony Winning Moment, involves three players acting out a scene using location or character suggestions from the audience. At any point in the scene, the fourth person can exclaim “This is your Tony Award Winning Moment” and make one of the three participants burst into a fully improvised musical number. At the end of the game, the three on stage will come together to sing a big closing song.
“It’s like the best game of all time,” Right said. “We have to limit ourselves from playing it so much.”
Each show also has a theme, many of which encourage audience members to dress up along with the four on stage. In the past semester, the crowd was encouraged to wear groutfits, Halloween costumes and pantsuits.
The team credits Stonebraker’s creativity as the source of the themes each week, though how she comes up with them is a little unclear.
“Prim picks those,” Colbert said. “I’m not sure how she gets them. Sometimes we’ll brainstorm and we’ll have an idea, but then it seems like she’ll throw it out and say something came to [her] in a dream. She’s stated dreams and visions a couple times.”
While everything said in their shows is made up on the fly, the team’s preparation for the shows begin long before their on-stage improvisation. Each week, the four meet up two hours before showtime to practice and get their energy up. Even before that, though, the show is on members’ minds.
“It’s all we think about all day long, because we want to put on a great show for everybody,” Lomasney said. “I’ll put things in my notes just to remind myself, like ‘try to make a joke with a stranger today,’ or ‘raise your hand in class and don’t answer the question correctly,’ just to get my juices flowing for the day.”
To the team, the key to making a good show is trusting each other and having fun. Stonebraker feels that the small size of the group has helped them build a tight relationship, which in turn helps keep them on the same page during scenes. To Right, bouncing off of the information other comedy warriors give him is crucial in making a successful scene.
“In my experience, a good show is when we’re all firing on all cylinders,” Right said. “When you’re in a scene with somebody, it’s mainly about trusting the person across from you and making sure that they’re gonna pick up on whatever gifts you give them.”
Comedy Wars relies not only on the group’s own abilities to make jokes and create scenes on the fly, but also on the audience’s suggestions and reactions. The best shows are performed when the warriors and the audience are in tune with each other, and according to Colbert, the laughs are what help make the good shows the great shows.
Students gather in the Leadership Auditorium on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. Attendees in the audience actively engage with the show, laughing at the improv skits provided by MU’s Comedy Wars team.
However, each member has a different preference of how the audience interacts with their show. Not every audience member has to be loud and outgoing. Stonebraker finds that the best suggestions are the ones that are whispered. Colbert said he has a specific audience member who he loves to see at shows.
“Yes, actually, I have one person in particular, I’m not gonna call them out,” Colbert said. “But there is this one person who is a very loud laugher and a very delayed laugher. And so the laughter will, like, have died down and then it’ll hit them.”
The comedy warriors don’t just feed off of the audience. Each show attracts a diverse crowd that has made it a weekly ritual to watch improv for an hour every Wednesday night.
Sophomores Alex Oude Alink and Ashlyn Vanlerburg both frequent Comedy Wars shows weekly.
“It is hilarious and it’s the highlight of my week, because it brings us so much joy,” Oude Alink said.
Lelia Kramer, another MU sophomore has attended the shows weekly since her freshman year.
Kramer attends the show as often as she can because they often provide a space for some much needed stress relief in the middle of her week.
Comedy Wars faced major changes halfway through the school year, the biggest being the loss of five members. This not only meant a major downsize, but it also contributed to a change in group chemistry.
The downsize meant learning how to find a balance between relying on each other and on individual talent and motivation. With only three other members on the stage for support, each comedy warrior had a larger spotlight, which forced them to develop more confidence in their individual skill sets.
Throughout the show, the audience interacted with the members through skit inspiration and background laughter on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024 at the Leadership Auditorium in Columbia, Mo. An all-time audience favorite is their final improv skit, “Tony Award Winning Moment”.
“I think that the biggest part of losing a majority of the team was centering ourselves and the four of us,” Right said. “And centering ourselves in our friendship as a team and as a group of people. And looking at the person next to him being like, ‘Hey, we lost some heavy hitters, but I am still super confident in you and your abilities, and I’m very confident in my abilities.’”
The loss of those members is still keenly felt within the group. For most of them, those older members were the ones who shaped their early experiences in Comedy Wars and influenced how they are now.
Two past members in particular, alumni Jack Trusler and Camden Brazile, have had a major impact on Stonebraker. Their impact is so large that Stonebraker is even including them in her plan for the future.
“They just moved to Chicago and I plan on moving it up there too,” Stonebraker said. “ So that’s definitely probably my most life changing relationships.”
Colbert, and potentially Right, plan to move to Chicago alongside Stonebraker. There, the group hopes to continue their comedic careers through an improv group of their own.
Comedy Wars is still thriving and bringing laughter and joy to their audience every Wednesday night. However, the future cannot be ignored. The main group currently consists of juniors and seniors, meaning the remaining members have to start cultivating the younger members who will take over the stage one day.
“I think the number one thing is stage presence,” Lomasney said about recruiting new members. “It’s a big auditorium that seats like 100-125 people. So we want someone who can project to the back of the room, can carry a scene on their own if they need to, and brings a unique perspective.”
Comedy Wars is a ritual for both the warriors and the audience members. It’s a way for students to put their lives on pause for a moment and simply laugh with each other in Leadership Auditorium.
As for the comedy warriors, this group helps them present their talents to the world. For them, Comedy Wars is about pushing themselves to the next level and making an impact on people’s lives.
The future of Comedy Wars is bright and one that will outlast the current members — bringing laughter and joy to students for years to come.
“I think what Wednesday night is for people, and for me in general, is something really special,” Lomansey said. “It’s a de-stressor. People can be depressed, people can be stressed out about their lives, but we try to give people an hour where they can just relax, laugh at a bunch of people that are acting like idiots, and we bring the audience into it as much as possible so they can feel like they’re a part of something special on that Wednesday. But for the future, I think, the sky’s the limit.”
Edited by Alex Goldstein | agoldstein@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Bella Zielinski and Grace Knight | gknight@themaneater.com
Edited by Scout Hudson | shudson@themaneater.com