Students streamed into Fulton 511 as the Asinine comedians prepared for their entrance behind a set of dramatic, black curtains. Upbeat music, including tunes by ABBA and Wolf Alice, energized the crowd as it filled the lecture hall almost to capacity and prepared for a night of laughter.
Boston College’s sketch and improv comedy group Asinine commemorated its 20th anniversary with a night of audience-interactive improv on Friday night. The theme for the fall show was “20 Years of Bountiful Harvest.”
In similar fashion to its last show, Asinine kicked off the performance with a pre-recorded sketch. The sketch imagined a reunion of the Asinine members with outrageous lies about how they have changed since last regrouping. One member, for example, had gone bald while another had an absurd growth spurt, depicted by the member standing on stilts.
The show then opened with a skit titled “The People’s Podcast with Lydia Hickenlooper and Lyle Lipkowitz” featuring Grace Murnane, MCAS ’25, and Paxton Decker, MCAS ’24. The skit focused on two New Yorkers, the podcast hosts, who have a vendetta against the United States Postal Service after their mail goes missing.
Asinine dimmed the lights in the lecture hall in order to swiftly transition from one segment to the next, with interludes of music and dancing that quickly got the crowd to sing along.
In its nearly hour-and-a-half show, the comedy group fit in many interactive games with the audience and sketches that drew loud laughter and heckling. The rowdy crowd gave suggestions to inspire some of the sketches. At one point, the comedians asked the audience “what is one thing you don’t want to see in a movie theater?”
The Asinine ensemble took on characters and personas that captivated the audience with outrageous absurdity. Quinn Kiernan, co-president of Asinine and MCAS ’22, played a historical reenactor on a school field trip to colonial Williamsburg. One of the students, Daniel Strickland, MCAS ’25, ridicules him, and Kiernan is shown having a meltdown as he realizes he is a failed Broadway actor.
In another skit, international students at BC are met with an eccentric student with a top hat, played by Sara Litteken, MCAS ’24, who recalls the hardship of being born British. The audience would later learn that she was not from Britain, but adopted the identity of a British aristocrat despite being born to American parents.
After various games, often including sexual innuendos, Asinine closed out its show with a make-believe game show in which the audience decided which contestant would adopt an orphan. With dramatic sound effects and confetti poppers, Asinine drew the audience to its feet in a standing ovation once the show came to an end.
Featured Images by Steve Mooney / Heights Staff
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