This past weekend, Oberlin’s premier improv troupes, the Sunshine Scouts and Kid Business, hosted the annual Oberlin College Improv Conference. This year had a special twist: The main event of the conference saw the comics compete in a vicious face-off against Baldwin Wallace University’s troupe, Faces for Radio.

This joint show was promoted on Instagram with some pretty gnarly trash-talking in videos posted by the two troupes. Clearly, there’s some very serious bad blood between the two school’s theater programs. In August 2024, Baldwin Wallace made the shocking announcement that it would be searching for a new program director for their world-renowned Musical Theater B.M. program. It was announced the same month that Victoria Bussert, the previous head of Baldwin Wallace’s B.M. program, was hired by Oberlin to be a professor and the director of Oberlin’s Music Theater major, a new addition to the Conservatory. 

Many students who had been in Baldwin Wallace’s Musical Theater B.M. program followed Bussert to the Music Theater program at Oberlin. However, not everyone in the program transferred. As the Theater B.M. students outside of the Musical Theater program saw many of their peers move on, the situation developed into a bit of a cross-school controversy. 

“To anybody who was not invited to come back over or not offered a spot after their audition … [it felt] like they were in a sinking ship,” Jonathan McPherson, a third-year Theater B.M. student at Baldwin Wallace and president of Faces for Radio, said.

However, as the newest members of Oberlin’s conservatory have started to settle into their new school, any tension that existed between the two student bodies is long gone. In its place is a somewhat sportive rivalry — or, at least, as “sportive” as a rivalry can be between two clans of theater kids. This faux rivalry set the stage for what was to be a truly epic improvisational comedy event, if there ever were such a thing.

In years past, the Oberlin College Improv Conference has brought in professional improv troupes to teach master classes. This year, due to budget constraints, OCIC decided to save their money by collaborating with a student troupe instead. College fourth-year Sasha Borislow, co-president of the Sunshine Scouts, anticipated that this would help to foster a more carefree and welcoming environment.

“Nobody was a professional,” Borislow said. “Everybody was having fun, and we were able to build bridges between improv comedy communities in colleges in Northeast Ohio.”

There were two shows between the troupes, in which the teams took turns playing short-form games. The first took place at Fynes Hall at Baldwin Wallace Friday, April 24, and the second was the next day at Oberlin’s Cat in the Cream. The shows were structured identically, with the same rotation of games being played both nights. The vibes of the audiences, however were incredibly different.

The Baldwin Wallace crowd brought the energy all night. It was genuinely exciting, and that fabled school spirit was almost palpable.  The vibe at the Oberlin show, in the sanctuary of our own Cat in the Cream, though, was quite different. There were fewer people, and while the improv was as sharp and exciting as ever, the aspect of the student rivalry was not nearly as present. It didn’t feel like a sports event, but rather a relaxing night out with some friends.

“It was wild, because the crowd was so different, it almost felt chill,” Raina Thiegs, Baldwin Wallace third-year and Faces for Radio vice president, later said, referencing that for the broader Oberlin community, this “rivalry” may hold less weight. “Because [Bussert]’s only been in Oberlin a year and there wasn’t all that history, I think that they probably weren’t invested.”

This weekend showed that improv at Oberlin can really be fantastic. Everyone was on their A-game, with impressively clever extemporization and an infectiously fun energy. 

At Oberlin, that effort doesn’t always get the attention it deserves from the student body. Still, College fourth-year Kate Heffernan is optimistic about the future of Oberlinn improv, as long as the troupes continue to grow and make space for anyone to try it out. 

“The more people that are practicing it, the more [of an] audience it will bring,” she said. “If it’s more of a frequent thing to go to, then I think it’ll have the same attention that Study Break for a cappella has, which everyone knows about because all their friends are in it.”

Overall, OCIC was a fantastic way to bring together two troupes and turn what had been a difficult situation for many people into a night of community and comedy.

“As things are starting to move forward, it’s important that you’re able to make fun of the situation and introduce levity and take a step back and go, right, it’s not as serious as it looks,” McPherson said.