Laugh Track: No shortage of funny business at Dartmouth

This article is featured in the 2026 Commencement special issue.

There is no shortage of funny business at Dartmouth. Today, Dartmouth’s comedy scene is made up of four organizations: performance groups Can’t Sell Culture, Casual Thursday and Dog Day Players, and the satirical publication The Jack-O-Lantern. 

Each group has a different approach to comedy, allowing for a breadth of creative styles to flourish at the College.

Dog Day was founded in 1993 and officially recognized by the College in 1995. The group was co-founded by Andrew MacDowell ’95 and Christopher Timmell ’95 after the two studied abroad together in Edinburgh, according to current member Rachel Senn ’27. 

Dog Day specializes in long-form improvisational comedy, with scenes ranging from 15 to 20 minutes, giving cast members “more time to build a world,” Ellie Appelgren ’28 said. The group rehearses three times a week.

Applegren said they were drawn to Dog Day by its “collaborative” community.

“During orientation week my freshman year, I went to go see one of their shows, and I really loved how much fun it looked like people were having,” Applegren said. “It seemed like it wasn’t necessarily just an improv group. It was like these people were friends and also doing improv.”

Senn said Dog Day has “great connections” with their alumni, including “The Office” star Mindy Kaling ’01. The Dog Day community has been the “one constant” in Senn’s time at Dartmouth, she added.

“No matter how you are physically or emotionally … you’re going to take time away from your day and you’re going to come and you’re going to laugh,” she said. 

Casual Thursday is an improv group that specializes in short-form comedy. The shortest scenes last two to four minutes, while longer ones span eight to 12 and full shows run for 30 minutes. The group rehearses together three times a week.

The group was founded in 2001 by Chris Plehal ’04 after he did not make the cut for Dog Day, according to member Elsa Poler ’29. 

Poler said she loves creating comedy with Casual Thursdays because she loves “watching people laugh and I love being the source of that.”

Fellow Casual Thursdays member Jillian Demos-Brown ’29 said for her, comedy means “accepting our own flaws and acknowledging them in a cathartic way.”

Demos-Brown added that Casual Thursdays works to build community within the group by promoting “bonding” between class years. The group goes on tour during the winter interim period, going to cities such as Los Angeles and New York to perform improv at other colleges, she said. 

Poler added that Plehal was also the creator of the College’s unofficial mascot “Keggy the Keg,” which is currently operated by Jack-O. Another Casual Thursday alum Mike Trapp ’08 currently works for the comedy website CollegeHumor.

Poler said many members of Casual Thursdays are people who may not have originally planned to go into comedy, but end up pursuing the industry after graduation. She is personally interested in the “backstage” part of entertainment. 

Unlike Dog Day and Casual Thursdays, Can’t Sell Culture specializes in sketch comedy skits, which means that all of their shows are pre-scripted and rehearsed. The group was established during the spring term of 2023 by Connor Norris ’25 and Lulu Alonso ’25, who were also both members of Dog Day. Norris and Alonso now work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.

As aspiring television writers, Alonso said that she and Norris created Can’t Sell Culture to fill a “gap” in the comedy scene at Dartmouth caused by the absence of a formal sketch comedy group.

“We wanted to recreate the feeling of a writers’ room on campus,” Alonso said. “We realized that there’s not really a place for young people to sit around and bounce ideas off of each other and create a project together.”

Can’t Sell Culture also publishes a termly comedy magazine, which Alonso said went “hand-in-hand” with the mission of establishing a sketch comedy scene at the College. 

Former Can’t Sell Culture head writer Sophie Cohen ’26 said she started comedy in high school when she wrote for her school’s satire column. She added that writing sketch comedy skits for Can’t Sell Culture helped her find her “voice as a writer.”

Cohen said her experience with Can’t Sell Culture has led her to other comedy opportunities at the College. On January 9, she opened for former Saturday Night Live cast member Melissa Villaseñor — who performed a stand-up comedy show — at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Cohen has also written and directed her own full-length shows on campus, recently performing an hour-long two-woman show called “I Love TV” with Can’t Sell Culture vice president Eloise Langan ’27.  

Jesse Chan ’26 said he joined Can’t Sell Culture his sophomore fall after a stint in satirical comedy in high school because he wanted to be a part of the “tight-knit community” and the kind of comedy the group was doing. 

He said that, unlike Dog Day and Casual Thursday, Can’t Sell Culture’s novelty and lack of “tradition” allows the group to be “experimental” in their approach to shows. Chan added that the recent addition of live music accompaniments, such as student bands Dizzy and Lotus, to shows has changed the format of their performances from focusing on just comedy to having a wider range of entertainment. 

Connor Killilea ’26 said that the community aspect of Can’t Sell Culture has been a “huge part” of his experience. 

“I think having a group of like-minded individuals… was really the big thing for me, and I think that’s what continues to draw people to join,” he said.

Selina Wang ’29 said the group has been very “supportive” of her development as a comedian. “Can’t Sell [Culture] is a place where you’re able to kind of get a lot of affirmation or validation for yourself as a comedian, as a writer, as an actor or yourself as a person,” she explained.

The Jack-O-Lantern is Dartmouth’s longest running comedy group, and began publishing in 1908. Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, Class of 1925, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich ’68 are among the publication’s notable alumni. The Jack-O puts out a print publication in the fall and the spring in addition to weekly publications on their website and Instagram account.

Jane Earnhardt ’29 said she was drawn to The Jack-O because of a poster they put up during Parent’s Weekend advertising what and how “easy it was” to get involved with writing articles.

“I think the draw of being in a comedy group is that it’s kind of fun to try and hang around funny people,” she said.

Earnhardt also said that writing satire for Jack-O is a useful way to express her feelings about “tough political times at the moment.”

Oz Trost ’29 said he joined Jack-O because it was a great outlet for “expressing yourself and commentating on the world” and that he enjoys the club’s emphasis on spending time together.

“We’ve become a pretty social club this year over the winter and spring,” Trost said. “We’ve had a social basically every week.” 

Trost said the group has become a lot more “flexible” recently, moving into more multimedia formats to reach wider audiences. He added that he is looking forward to bringing back comic illustrations to the Jack-O website. 

On campus, it’s common to find packed Greek spaces for a comedy show, friends getting pranked by the Jack-O or even Keggy the Keg running amok. At Dartmouth, the old traditions don’t fail, even if sometimes the jokes do.