This Friday and Saturday, the sixth annual Comedy Extravaganza, or ComEx!, will be held in the Greene Theater of the Tufte Performance and Production Center. The festival, run by the Center of Comedic Arts, will include performances from student comedy performers and troupes.
On Friday, the festival begins with the Emerson Mainstage Improv team at 7 p.m., who will perform a long-form improv segment called “The Movie.” Performers will act out an improvised movie based on suggestions from the audience. Emerson’s Rising Stars of Stand-up is set to follow at 9 p.m., which will include seven stand-up routines from student performers.
On Saturday, events continue with Comics of Color, an entirely POC-run comedy troupe, who will perform at 6:30 p.m. Their set features stand-up, improv, sketch comedy, clowning, and dance, and will be accompanied by a live band of Emerson students. After that, at 9 p.m., contestants will compete toward the Jess Ilias Clavelli Comedy Award for a panel of judges, as the final event of the festival.
This year’s ComEx! will be hosted by senior comedic arts major Lily Monday, who previously won the Clavelli Award last year for her physical comedy routine. Monday believes that ComEx! helps nurture aspiring comedians, allowing performers to not only perform in front of a large crowd but also be critiqued on their sets.
“It makes you feel like the comedy you’re doing has value,” Monday said. “We all do so much comedy at Emerson that it all gets blurred together, and you don’t realize that what you’re doing is actually really great until these judges come in and are like, ‘Yeah, it is great.’”
Monday, who is currently studying at the Emerson Los Angeles campus, will be flown out for the weekend to host the show.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all these people compete, because I know a lot of them and everybody’s putting their best foot forward for a weekend,” Monday said. “It’s going to be super hard for the judges to decide, and I’m glad I have no part in that, because they’re all so talented.”
Comics of Color will be performing an hour-long set of stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy, with stunts and dance numbers. The troupe, as the name implies, is comprised entirely of performers of color. Head writer Sophie Canon joined in the fall of 2022, when the troupe was newly created and spaces dedicated to comedy performers of color were rare.
“When I was a freshman, I was the only Black girl in my grade in the whole program. If I was at Emerson before Comics of Color was a thing, I would have felt so much more limited,” Canon said. “Comics of Color gathers everybody—it doesn’t matter what major you are or whether you’ve tried comedy before. You can really leap in and do sketch, improv, or stand-up for the first time.”
Notably, the performances will be synced to music from live music from students Tucker DeLollis on drums, Amelia Oei on bass, and Nathan Hilyard on piano and clarinet.
“It’s ‘Comics of Color,’ but hey, they never said we couldn’t have white people playing instruments for us,” Canon said. “It’s a form of reparation.”
As a comedian, Canon believes that events like ComEx! are essential to foster a sense of community in the Emerson comedy department, connecting student performers with one another as well as exposing their work to people in the comedy industry.
“I’m so busy all the time making people laugh, and that’s my dream,” Canon said. “I’m lucky I get to do it here with so many people of color, and to organize them and lead them—I have to say thank you and give back, it’s only right.”
As of Wednesday, April 2, all performances are sold out, though a standby line will open 15 minutes before each event to give out unclaimed seats.
