Under the heat of bright spotlights, students swam through the sea, solved murders and diffused bombs.

The surreal impressions and high-stakes action scenes were part of the sold-out, 25th annual SLATE comedy festival organized by the sketch and improv comedy student organization receSs in the Jack Morton Auditorium earlier this month. receSs improvised and joked alongside the GW improv group [insert here], Georgetown Sketch Comedy, The Rubber Chickens of University of Delaware and The Girlie Project from Emerson College before Saturday Night Live’s Jane Wickline and comedian Liva Pierce headlined with their joint sketch show DUKES. 

Lively chatter bounced across the auditorium Saturday night as the audience of about 200 people filed into their seats.

To kick off the night, [insert here] launched into an interactive game where audience members voted a performer off the show after each scene. Passionate cries of “No!” or “Yay!” reverberated across the auditorium as audience members eliminated members of [insert here] without mercy every round. The last [insert here] member standing gave a stirring imitation of a fish on stage, moving his arms to imitate swimming and puckering his face, eliciting giggles from the audience. While their fish impressions were impressive, I was still warming up to the surrealist turns of improv comedy.

Georgetown Sketch Comedy followed with an amusing scene about a man who was taking people’s orders at a deli and referred to all the customers with scathing, yet accurate, descriptions, like “pimple face.”

For their next sketch, Georgetown Sketch Comedy staged a mafia murder mystery with Mario, of Nintendo video game fame, at the center. Donning the quintessential red hat and thick Italian accent, Mario faced interrogation from a gaggle of mobsters. As they grilled Mario, the mobsters mentioned that “the green one is still locked up over that thing with the healthcare CEO,” drawing a connection between Mario’s brother Luigi and Luigi Mangione. The group’s incorporation of topical references garnered big laughs from the audience, and by the time their set ended, the crowd and I had fully warmed up to the show.

The Rubber Chickens took the stage with an improv game called “Montage,” where players would “clap in” to start a new scene that is based on the context of the previous scenes. The first scene portrayed a dad watching his son playing with Lego bricks, a situation that escalated further and further with each “clap in.” The son’s obsession with Legos eventually spiraled out of control as he attempted to build the whole world with his Legos and a massive Lego empire. The Rubber Chickens’ escalations boded well with me, as my bursts of laughter got louder with each ridiculous scene that unfolded. 

To open their set, The Girlie Project launched into a sketch about two teens who encounter a series of babysitters from the silver screen who attempt to wrangle in their angsty attitudes. The lineup of iconic babysitters included Mary Poppins, who the teens referred to as “Mary Oppins,” Nanny McPhee and Mrs. Doubtfire, who of course revealed herself as their father. 

Before the headliners took the stage, receSs closed out the student groups’ performances with a series of sketches, portraying everything from a murderous magician to a close-call bomb diffusion to an unconventional Uber driver who gives customers piggy back rides to their destinations. After their sketches concluded, receSs pivoted to an improvised scene and generated ideas from the random words the audience yelled out. Inspired by the word “slope,” the performers improvised a scene centered around a shoe salesman who was obsessed with touching the feet of customers, whose reactions varied from strong offense to surprising pleasure. 

“That was so much fun, and I can’t believe it,” a member of receSs said ahead of the headliners. “We’re about to have even more fun.”

Wickline and Pierce’s DUKES took up the remaining hour of SLATE. Their set thrilled the audience as they performed a song, with Wickline on the keys and Pierce singing along, about a double date that ended with two girls burning in a fire. The lyrics revealed that the unfortunate outcome of the double date was why they became firefighters: to rescue the beautiful girls but not the ugly ones. DUKES ended with a bang as they sang another ballad about the challenges that tall people, like themselves, face — mainly their inability to become a jockey. 

Ritika Sinha-Chaudhuri, a senior majoring in political science and economics and the president of receSs, said she was inspired by how “tight” Wickline and Pierce’s set was, with every line, movement and sound cue appeared to be deliberately planned. 

“My takeaway from watching such an amazing set like that would be to do more and to do it all with intention,” Sinha-Chaudhuri said.

She said members of receSs originally launched SLATE in 1999 as a way to showcase student-produced comedy to the GW community while also building relationships between GW and other universities. 

“It is very much an all hands on deck effort,” Sinha-Chaudhuri said. “So, it really takes all of us giving our all to make it what it is. And so I think that’s really unique because it creates a space that I think sometimes GW as a school can’t do something that only students can make for other students.”

Sinha-Chaudhuri said preparing for SLATE takes about six to seven months of work that includes finding and booking a venue, securing funding, fielding applications from student comedy groups outside of GW and communicating back and forth with potential headliners for the festival. Past SLATE headliners have included comedians Josh Johnson, Kate Berlant and Troy Bond.

“We got them when they were a little bit younger and affordable, and then they got bigger and out of our price range,” Sinha-Chaudhuri said. “So it’s kind of unique in that way.”

Sinha-Chaudhuri said receSs routinely practices their improv skills for six hours each week. She said members of receSs approach comedy and improv during a show like SLATE similar to the way they approach their weekly practices, just with the added pressure of “performing your best” in front of a live audience.

“I would say all of us approach improv like a team sport, we’re all very close and we’re all really good friends, so it’s really easy in that way to jump into a scene with someone that you trust and you know can trust you,” Sinha-Chaudhuri said.