Welcome back to The Mac Weekly’s Student Org Spotlights!
Here at The Mac Weekly, we pride ourselves on serious journalism but we also like to keep ourselves unpredictable. That’s why this week’s edition of SOS is un-serious journalism — because we’re doing a look into Macalester’s premier comedy troupes!
Fresh Concepts
First, meet Fresh Concepts, Macalester’s very own improvisational comedy org (that was horrified at the idea of being funny in the interview).
Fresh Concepts holds auditions, which are formatted like a workshop, at the beginning of fall semester. Active members teach auditioners how to perform stage improv and participate in games and short scenes. The org also hosts some improv workshops throughout the year that are open for anyone to participate in without fully committing to joining the team.
A member of the Fresh Concepts leadership team, Rhys Winchester ’26, reflected on her audition process: “My friend was like ‘you gotta do Fresh Concepts’, so I auditioned, and then I also auditioned for Bad Com, and they told me I had to write some things, so I said ‘no!!’ And thankfully, I got into Fresh Concepts… and it’s been a great time.”
As an improv group, scripts and planning before shows are what Winchester calls a “no-no”. The group instead learns different forms and structures of improv in their workshops. But the group does put on one pre-rehearsed show: the sketch show, which is performed in the spring semester of every year.
“I really enjoy being able to work collaboratively with people, which I have been in the improv setting,” Winchester said. “But then to work with them in a ‘let’s sit down and write this thing’ setting is really cool. We get our sketch show written and rehearsed within a month… And so it’s really fun to see all of that come together.”
Speaking of shows, there’s one right around the corner! Fresh Concepts’ 12-hour show will take place from Saturday, Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. to Sunday, Nov. 3 at 8 a.m. on the fourth floor of Old Main. In fact, this 12-hour show will be 13 hours long this year, as Daylight Savings will end on Sunday, setting clocks back one hour.
12 hours straight of improv seems insane — and members admit that it is. Leadership team member Birdie Keller ’25 explained the mental and physical toll that the show has on them.
“The 12-hour show is so much fun,” Keller said. “I love doing delirious improv because there’s no pressure for it to be good and you can just be so unhinged. And I’ve always stayed awake for all 12 hours, which is so thrilling. Sometimes I sit in a chair comatose for like an hour, but I haven’t fallen asleep.”
In addition to their dedication to putting on a 12-hour show, Fresh Concepts prides itself on the bonds formed between members of the org.
“We’re all friends,” Keller said. “And you kind of have to be friends with people to do improv together, because it’s so much about being collaborative… and trusting [your scene partner] to pick up on your random bullshit that your brain is coming up with on the spot.”
“It’s a great way, I think, to make friends and to be silly and goofy but still be putting something out into the world,” Winchester added.
For questions, email [email protected], and for updates on upcoming shows, follow their Instagram @macfreshconcepts.
Bad Com
When sketch comedy is the name of the game, Bad Com is the place to go. Expressing a different set of performance qualities and a spiritual difference from improv, this org is for writers with the drive to perfect and hone their jokes.
“I had done Fresh Concepts improv my freshman year, and I left that team, and I remember my favorite part of doing Fresh Concepts was the sketch show that they did in the spring,” Finn Veerkamp ’25 said. “I decided to audition for the org that does that all the time.”
Auditions for the group involve a multi-day process of an initial open registration segment followed by a series of more scrutinized callbacks. When coming to your first audition, you should be ready to display cornerstone comedic skills, such as your ability to take on an unfamiliar character and your sense of timing. If you’re lucky enough to make the cut, you have 24 hours to write a prompt, to which a Bad Com member will give an impromptu response to test your on-the-spot abilities
Once the group’s decided iteration is together, they spend a multi-week process brainstorming sketch ideas, writing scripts and rehearsing before the show is ready for the stage. The ideas for sketches can come from everything from the workshopping of the full squad to random concepts popping into members’ heads at 3 a.m. One important group rule is that each respective sketch writer is not allowed to perform in their own sketches, instead focusing on the written aspects and direction.
“A lot of times it’s like, you have your sketch, you wrote it, and then people are on stage doing it, and it’s actually getting laughs, and you sit backstage biting your nails, looking at it, like, oh shit. It’s really working. It’s really happening,” Reed Lefevre ’25 commented on his favorite Bad Com memory: the first performance of a sketch he personally had written.
Chemistry is a huge part of the org; group comedy doesn’t flourish in settings where individuals are butting heads. When joining Bad Com, students join more than just a team — they join a community and a group of friends. For many of the members, it can be their first experience being involved in a collaborative creative space.
“The beauty of Bad Com is that in being around the Bad Com environment, and working with each other, everyone’s ‘funny’ comes out in their own way in the show,” Veerkamp said.
Each group leader expressed fondness about the friendships that had been formed in their time with the org over the years, that came about from everything from the shenanigans of bouncing around random ideas in the early development process to the satisfaction of the last rehearsal finally refining the chaos before going live. For those with a history in theater, this is not dissimilar to the social dynamics of a dramatic ensemble — it just has the added flavor of a cast’s inside jokes sometimes making it directly to the final production. By the time the curtain falls on each Bad Com season, they find themselves tight-knit friends and better artists as a result of how they mesh with each other.
With all of the work that goes into each semester’s show of final drafts, the audience can expect new jokes not just in each show, but in each individual sketch. This fall semester, Bad Com has set their performance dates for November 22nd and 23rd, the weekend before Thanksgiving Break.
For questions, email [email protected], and for updates, follow their Instagram @_badcomedy.
As the two comedy groups on campus, Bad Com and Fresh Concepts have been long-term rivals. But according to Fresh Concepts, the orgs support each other’s shows and consider each other frienemies.
“I have been waiting for two years now for us to do a joint show with Bad Com where we do sketches and they do improv or some other thing of the sort,” Keller said. “Sometime in the future, I want to see that.”
On the state of their rivalry with Fresh Concepts, Lefevre and Veerkamp were quick to come up with witty analogies for improv vs sketch: “It’s like committing manslaughter or premeditated murder.” There’s a good spirit and humor that registers in their poking fun — naturally, of course, for a comedy group — and it seems that the friendly competition brings out the best in each org.
Will these orgs put away their differences and collab? Perhaps this can be the start of an enemies-to-lovers plotline.
