A member of the Chinese Comedy Club performing at one of the group’s stand-up shows in November, 2023. Credit: Fatong Chen
With five official on-campus comedy clubs, Ohio State offers a wide range of available comedy styles to indulge in, whether students are aspiring comics or merely looking to increase their on-campus involvement.
Buckeye Standup Comedy Club, Backburner Sketch Comedy, Chinese Comedy Club, 8th Floor Improv Comedy Group and Fishbowl Improvisational Comedy Group each bring fresh styles to the table when it comes to comedy. With varying membership options, commitment levels and niches, club leaders share what makes their respective groups distinct.
Buckeye Standup Comedy Club
As the only stand-up comedy club at Ohio State, Buckeye Standup stands out. With practices held Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. in Enarson Room 340, the club is open to new members at any point in the semester.
Hayden Moncada, a fourth-year in strategic communication and Buckeye Standup’s president, said the low-commitment nature of the club makes it ideal for those intrigued by the idea of stand-up comedy.
“This is an easy, stress-free way to sort of present material [and] get some eyes on it, and we can also allow a community of feedback, providing different ways to make jokes funny or make [them] better,” Moncada said.
The group also engages in a monthly performance where members can individually show off their material at Donatos Bar and Basement — located at 2084 N. High St. and known by many as “Club D” — Moncada said. He said the show usually consists of 10 student performers and a 10-to-15-minute headliner at the end of the club members’ sets.
“I’ve been able to sort of see them sort of fall in love with this medium because a lot of people say, ‘Oh, I want to do standup,’ but they don’t know really how easy it is,” Moncada said. “It’s just as easy as going up and doing karaoke.”
More information about Buckeye Standup can be found on its Instagram page.
Backburner Sketch Comedy
Backburner — Ohio State’s only sketch comedy group — is open to anyone looking to further their writing abilities, acting skills or general creativity. The approximately 28-member group writes and performs sketches free of charge for audiences in the Ohio Union on a monthly basis.
Unless it requires extra rehearsal time for performances, the group meets every Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Enarson Classroom Building Room 322.
George Worley, a fourth-year in biomedical engineering and Backburner’s president, said the group strives to welcome prospective members of varying creative interests, and their open-membership policy supports such an ambition.
“It’s open membership for a reason, anyone can come in and see what we’re doing,” Worley said. “If you’re curious about how the club works, come by on a Tuesday while we’re practicing for a show.”
Between brainstorming, writing, editing and acting, Worley said sketch comedy requires several different components to bring a show together successfully. He said Backburner’s members range in their familiarity with various creative styles in order to fulfill each of these essential roles.
“If you have the ambition to be like, ‘Hey, I want to make, like, waiting music or I want to make downtime music between sketches,’ you can do that, that’s cool,” Worley said. “We look for people that have a passion for creativity and whatever sort of pursuit they want, and more often than not, that’s with comedic pursuits. Obviously, that’s what the club is designed for, but it’s really open to a lot of different avenues.”
Prospective members can drop by any meeting to learn more or reach out to the club via its Instagram page.
Chinese Comedy Club
Established only a year ago, Ohio State’s Chinese Comedy Club has already brought in high membership numbers — boasting 50 active members — via international students looking for a place to laugh and inspire laughter among others.
All current club members are Asian international students, and the group intentionally explores several forms of comedy in order to appeal to a wide range of interests, Fatong Chen, a second-year in computer science and engineering and the club’s president, said.
In fact, Chen said the Chinese Comedy Club explores multiple expressions of humor, including a traditional Japanese art form known as Manzai that consists of two performers engaging in a fast-paced, laughable conversation, according to Japanese Up Close’s website.
“It is a community which helps Chinese students [understand] about the comedy that’s in a Chinese way, but we are understanding comedy through [American] sketch and there [is] some Japanese Manzai stuff,” Chen said.
Though the club is open to anyone, Chen said members do perform predominantly Mandarin sketch comedy, which can potentially influence non-Mandarin speakers’ ability to engage with content and the club as a whole. Even so, Chen said the club is still open to all.
“We will have some of the posters at the beginning of the semester we will post around the campus, but since it’s mainly about the Chinese — about the Mandarin — comedies, it may be hard if you don’t speak Mandarin, it will be hard for [you] to understand though,” Chen said. “But yeah, if you want to understand about it, you can just join us and see about the performance.”
More information about the Chinese Comedy Club can be found on the group’s BiliBili video page or through its Ohio State Student Activities page.
8th Floor Improvisational Comedy Group
Ohio State’s oldest improvisational group, 8th Floor Improv, limits its membership on the basis of yearly auditions. The club practices three times a week and currently has roughly 20 members.
Aiden Burkholder, a second-year in chemistry and 8th Floor’s president, said 8th Floor never writes scripts or anticipates plots for its shows. Games and general improv structures are the only elements that can be practiced in advance, he said.
“Obviously, you know, it’s not preplanned,” Burkholder said. “But we do basically have frameworks that we set up for how sort of different parts of the show are going to work and a very general aspect of like, ‘OK, this bit is going to have this many people and it might have this sort of game associated with it.’”
Though 8th Floor isn’t Ohio State’s only improv troupe, Burkholder said the group does present a different style of comedy from campus’ other improv comedy club, Fishbowl.
“I think they have a really great strength in sort of physical comedy, and sort of like a little bit more bigger, wackier, sort of absurdist sort of scenes, which are really funny a lot of the time,” Burkholder said. “Our comedy is a little more understated, a little more based on sort of witty one-liners, and sort of the back-and-forth dialogue between characters. There’s sort of slightly different styles of humor in that sense.”
More information about 8th Floor Improv can be found on the group’s Instagram page.
Fishbowl Improvisational Comedy Group
Ohio State’s other unscripted comedy group, Fishbowl Improv, restricts its membership by semesterly auditions, and holds two practices per week to prepare for its biweekly shows.
Auditions tend to consist of improvisational games and scene work before callbacks occur and decisions are made, Natalie Knaggs, a third-year in computer and information science and Fishbowl’s secretary, said. Though it may sound daunting, Knaggs said the audition process maintains a relaxed ambience to ease all prospective members, even those with little experience.
“We’re very beginner friendly too, you don’t have to ever have done improv before to come and audition,” Knaggs said. “In the fall, actually, we’ll do open practices before auditions. So people can come and try without the fear of an audition, but our auditions are really chill and relaxed.”
Mary Mahoney, a fourth-year in film studies and Fishbowl’s president, agreed that the group uses a different improvisational style from 8th Floor, which she said is the main factor that sets the two groups apart. The style differences can be accredited to the different types of people each group attracts, she said.
“I think Fishbowl — at least with the people we have now — it tends to be very, kind of whimsical and creatures and magic, whereas I think some improv groups are more day-to-day-life-based and we do some of that too,” Mahoney said. “But I feel like as a group, comedy style-wise, we tend to go more cartoonish.”
In Fishbowl, strengthening technique and fostering friendships go hand in hand, Knaggs said. The passion each member feels toward the art of improv and sharing its work with the Ohio State community has brought the group together, she said.
“I like shows, and our festival is just really rewarding, but the base foundation of all of that comes from the people in the group and having such great trust and support,” Knaggs said.
More information about Fishbowl can be found via its Instagram page.
