Eight members of Tufts' Stand-up Comedy Collective (SUCC) tonight will go up against comedians from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the preliminary rounds of a national contest sponsored by television network TBS.
Eight students in the collective have been rehearsing weekly for the fourth-annual Rooftop Comedy National College Comedy Competition, for which they qualified as individuals in a Tufts-wide competition last month, SUCC founder and president Matt Nazarian said.
The team comprises seniors Brian Agler and Irene Richardson, juniors Nazarian and Ian Donovan, sophomores Sabrina Gordon and Matt Stofsky and freshmen Tyler Corey and CJ Graham. Their performances will be filmed and made available online for voting next week.
If successful at tonight's competition, a team of four winners from each school will move on to a higher round and stand up against the competition's 32 participating schools.
"They will represent the school for the rest of the competition," Graham explained.
After several more rounds of voting and selection by a panel of judges in May, one team of four comedians will win prizes and the opportunity to perform at the "TBS Presents Just For Laughs" comedy festival in Chicago in June.
Nazarian said that while competition throughout the national contest will be stiff, he is optimistic for the Tufts team's chances.
"It's going to be a real competitive thing to get in the top four. I think our chances are better than last year," he said.
"I don't know if I expect to win … I'm a little more optimistic," he added.
Nazarian said Tufts' winners' opposition in later rounds would depend on who succeeds at regional rounds of the competition around the country.
"It depends who wins. It's like a bracket," he said.
Graham was confident that the Tufts team's talents would stack up against their opponents.
"When I found out that we're performing against MIT, I searched the names of the eight members of the MIT team on YouTube and had seen a couple of their videos," Graham said.
"They are nowhere near the robots that can do stand-up comedy," he added.
Graham said added exposure online would be a benefit of participating in the contest.
"Being able to tell more jokes and maybe have a video that they put it up online is something I might want to have," he said.
Nazarian said he got SUCC involved with TBS's competition in 2010 last year.
"I was looking for a competition for myself and then I found this one that was for teams of college kids for different colleges," he said.
Nazarian said their success tomorrow will also depend on feedback from the audience, and that the show is open to the public.
He added that the Tufts group represents a wide spectrum of comedy techniques.
"Everybody in our group has different styles," he said. ‘Some are more sarcastic, others are clean. People have different personas that they go up there with."
Tufts' team of eight, along with the MIT contestants, will perform tonight at Mottley's Comedy Club in Boston. Online voting for the final winners will begin April 8.
Minyoung Song contributed reporting to this article.
