Humor Artists: the improv present

Notre Dame · documented from at least 2013 · founding undocumented — by the group's own account

The troupe: Humor Artists is Notre Dame's improv comedy group — "premier and only," in the campus magazine Scholastic's description of the summer of 2024 — performing improvisational and sketch comedy. In a typical year it plays monthly improv shows at Legends and a sketch show each semester at Washington Hall. The campus press documents it from at least 2013, in the Irish Rover's reviews, through the 2020s; in 2020 it counted thirty-five to forty members drawn from every college of the university.

The founding, printed exactly as it stands: The group does not know when it was founded. In November 2017 it celebrated a joking "100th anniversary," alumni show and all, because no earlier date could be documented — and none is printed here. The campus comedy line this section traces runs The Juggler in print from 1919, the Keenan Revue on stage from 1976, and Humor Artists in the improv rooms of the present; the third of those dates is the one the record, and the troupe itself, cannot fix.

Sources

1. Scholastic (summer 2024) — Humor Artists as Notre Dame's premier and only improv comedy group, the monthly Legends shows and the semesterly Washington Hall sketch show.
2. The Irish Rover — reviews documenting the group from 2013, and the November 2017 "100th anniversary" and the founding the group itself cannot date.
3. The campus record of 2020 — the thirty-five to forty members drawn from every college.