Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a four-part series profiling the origins of several student performance groups on campus.
For a comedy troupe, the Dog Day Players has a surprisingly violent history. From provoking a cappella groups to covering its members in condiments, the group boasts a rich array of traditions and comedic moments both onstage and behind-the-scenes.
According to a majority of alums, the Dog Day Players, established in 1994, evolved from another comedy group, Said and Done.
"It's sort of a brutal creation story," member Fred Meyer '08 said.
Said and Done was an open comedy group that anyone could join, but in 1994 some members decided to split off to form a more exclusive sub-troupe. The resulting schism spawned the formation of the Dog Day Players and the dissolution of Said and Done in 1995, Meyer said.
Although other Dog Day alums interviewed by The Dartmouth agreed with Meyer, this origin story might in fact be a myth.
Andrew MacDowell '95 asserts that he founded the Dog Day Players after being exposed to improv comedy on a Foreign Study Program at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to being interviewed by The Dartmouth, MacDowell had never heard of Said and Done, he said.
The troupe's name came from the saying "Every dog has its day."
"I never really understood it, but it always sort of stuck in my mind," MacDowell said. "It speaks generally to the notion of success and minor fame. There are also a lot of dogs on campus. And, D' is also a big letter at Dartmouth. It just seemed catchy, for a number of reasons."
The group's first show took place in the Lone Pine Tavern, which became One Wheelock in 2009.
"We were really flying by the seat of our pants," he said. "We'd had a total of three rehearsals at best before the first show."
According to MacDowell, the group was not official until Erica Rivinoja '99 registered it with the College.
"I was there for the infancy of the group, the version where things were really not formalized," MacDowell said. "It was great for what it was, but it's really remarkable what it's become."
In MacDowell's day, the group's performances were "simply playing theatre games" primarily improv but also integrating some skits into the repertoire. The group has since fluctuated in the mix of long and short-form improv featured in its shows.
"Dog Day is always sort of shifting the balance between how much long-form and short-form it does," Meyer said. "My freshman year was mostly short form quick wit. Long form has more artistic presumption and is possibly more difficult. You rely on your power to create a compelling character. Over my next three years, we did a lot more long form."
According to Colin Murray '04, the shift from short-form to long-form improv happened during his junior or senior year. It was a "difficult transition" for some people, who were more comfortable with the "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" format of short-form.
"It's an entirely difficult skill set to create characters to sustain through multiple scenes," Murray said.
The Dog Day Players are known to be a close-knit unit with an abundance of stories and traditions behind the scenes.
"Most of my memories are not even improv-related," Annabel Seymour '09 said.
Take the group's tradition of hosting Dog Day formals, for example, which began in 2004 in part because half the group was not involved in the Greek system.
As might be expected with comedians at the helm, the event quickly spiraled off-course from the format of traditional Greek formals.
"It was so regimented and scheduled, we kept trying to up the ante on how much stuff we could fit in," Seymour said. "I added a talent show."
Another popular tradition is "Blitz Your Favorite A Cappella Group Day." Started in 2000, it is as the name suggests a day in which every member of Dog Day fills the inboxes of various campus a cappella groups with a stream of bizarre and hilarious messages. The messages include fake a cappella audition tapes, apologies for nonexistent offenses and unsolicited advice.
Problems sometimes arise when those monitoring an a cappella group's account happen to be first-year students. In Spring 2010, one a cappella group almost reported the group to Parkhurst because they thought Dog Day was harassing them, Dog Day president Chris Whitehead '12 said.
"It's a compliment you guys are legit if you're on our list of a cappella groups to mess around with," he said. "Humor is not about being mean, it's about exploring truth. We blitz for 24-hours straight, it's about thinking of creative ways to make people's days a bit funnier."
Often, a cappella groups will play along, generating increasingly absurd email dialogues.
"I feel lucky I have managed to stay in touch with enough people in Dog Day that I'm still included in the [a cappella] blitzes," Hannah Chase '06 said. "I'll wake up in the morning, go to work, open my computer and have like 40 emails from people I don't know. It's the best."
The senior show, another longstanding tradition, was started during the late 1990s. The expectation for the outgoing seniors is to drink and be covered in food.
"You had to be lying in a pool of sticky condiments and food," Chase said. "We were totally covered in crap, the floor was even worse. I remember taking a shower in the downstairs bathroom after."
Dog Day's annual 24-hour show in front of Dartmouth Hall started in 2002, offering the group's most dedicated followers non-stop improv, even in the early hours of the morning.
"At 4 a.m. probably our only audience was asleep in sleeping bags in front of Dartmouth Hall," Murray said.
For some members, the most outlandish moments have occurred on the road.
"The funniest things happened probably when we were not at Dartmouth," Chase said. "We traveled a lot, sometimes to the oddest venues."
At a recent competition at Harvard University, for example, Whitehead and Henry Hutcheson '12 managed to convince a large group of Harvard students that Whitehead and Hutcheson were in their French class.
The Dog Day alumni network is extensive, ranging from producers and writers of shows such as "South Park" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," to Rachel Dratch '88 of "Saturday Night Live" fame to Mindy Kaling '01 of the hit television series "The Office."
Murray, who was in Dog Day at the same time as Kaling, is amused by her character on "The Office" because Kaling often mocked the sorority girl stereotype as a Dog Day member.
"We used to be friends on Facebook but she defriended me to create a fan page," he said. "But I'm not too bitter about that, I'm mostly just bitter about not getting into the Aires."
MacDowell has unfortunately lost touch with most of the original members, but every so often looks the group up on Google "to see if it still exists," he said. "I think it's really remarkable that this little group we started in '94 has continued, and I can't wait to see it perform again."
The Dog Day Players maintain their love for improv and each other even when away from their lives as students. A number of former and current Dog Day members were in New York City this past summer. Every Sunday, Dog Day Players ranging from '13s to '99s would perform in Washington Square Park, collecting money from passers-by in a hat. They then used their earnings to get pizza together, Whitehead said.
"Some people hadn't done it since college, some were now doing it for a living," he said. "To me, that embodies Dog Day. There's a meaning to it, beyond just a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same group at the same time."
Joining Dog Day freshman year, Seymour felt the group already had a history much like Dartmouth itself, she said.
"I felt this rich history because there was always talk about the old times," she said. "It keeps the traditions alive, like the greater Dartmouth trend."
Seymour added that Dog Day never ceases to be a part of her life, which is a good thing.
"It's kind of a microcosm of Dartmouth," Whitehead said. "You can always come home to Dog Day."
