For their first Underground Comedy Night, Iowa State’s Stand-Up Comedy Club (SUCC) had an almost full house in the Black Box on the third floor of Carver.

               Currently with between twenty and thirty active members SUCC has more than quadrupled in size in the last four years. Originally starting out as a few students who took Gavin Jerome’s Honors Seminar, the group was very close.

               “I kind of walked in and I was like ‘I haven’t taken Gavin’s class. Can you let me in?’” Matt Banwart, the president of SUCC says. “And they were like, ‘yeah, we’ll let you in.’ So, I was the first exception to that rule.”

               Since then SUCC has been welcoming to any student who wants to learn more about comedy and push themselves with public speaking. However, with only one to two shows a semester, there was not enough time for students to be able to perform with an event hosted by the club.

               This led Matt and the Vice President of the club, Josh Popoola, to decide to host their own event.  With the M-shop being a more expensive option, they decided to host the event somewhere cheaper, the Black Box on the third floor of Carver. This decision helped them figure out the name for the new event.

               “We’re going to call it the Underground Show because it’s not at the prime venue” Matt recalled. “We’re going to do our own thing.” And they were very successful for their very first time putting the show together.

               “We were pretty full tonight…We might have to switch venues.” Matt said. There were six comedians performing during the show and all were successful in keeping the laughs coming. With jokes ranging from one liners to full stories the audience got to experience many unique styles of stand-up comedy. Faisal Hafeez had an entire set filled with one liners that audience couldn’t stop laughing to and Jobe Fee wore his iconic red leather jacket.

               There are four more Underground Comedy Nights already planned with the next one being on March 2^nd.  “The pipedream of this club is kinda…to see alumni of this club go on and be successful and come back and have this rich comedy culture.” Matt continues, talking about hopes for the future of the club and the individuals who participate in it. “My favorite things is to watch people come…we have so many members who are afraid of public speaking…they’re killing it…watching people succeed makes me so happy.”

               The electric environment makes me want to go back and see other performers at future shows. With an almost full house for their first show it will be interesting to see how they grow and improve as a group and as individuals.