justArts: Did you have any challenges as director?

Emily Duggan: There was a lot [that went] into [the festival]. We invite other colleges to come perform, so getting in contact with them [was a challenge]. All of the [Boris’ Kitchen executive] board was involved in contacting them and raising money so that we could host them. ... I also don’t have a lot of directing experience—I have acting experience. I’d done Boris’ Kitchen for two years before I started directing, but I’m a very quiet person, I guess. I’m not very good at being an authority figure. I was fine with knowing what the jokes were in the sketches to be able to direct people to the funniest parts—hopefully—but when it came to cracking the whip, that was probably the biggest problem that I ran into. Everyone in the troupe kind of stepped up to do what they could to help with props and giving notes on sketches and stuff. I assistant directed one of our smaller shows, “The Old Sh*t Show,” last year, so … I had that experience, but this was very different from that.

JA: What makes this year’s festival different from past years’?

ED: This year we only invited other colleges. I think we have more colleges than last year, too. And different colleges, some who haven’t been to Brandeis in years—some who I’m not sure have ever come to the festival before. So that’s really awesome. In the spring, we do this sketch competition at [Boston University] called Funderdome, so we meet other troupes there. One of the troupes is coming this year because some of Boris’ Kitchen did stand-up comedy open-mics last summer in Boston, and some kids from the [Boston University] troupe also did stand-up [at the competition]. We met there and networked there, which is a cool thing.

Obviously, the directors and the assistant directors and the producers and the assistant producers change every show. So that aspect is different. We also had a whole different staff for writing coordinators and a lot of new voices writing sketches for us. So that changes things up, too. The diversity of voices is a big thing—there’s a lot of different things to see in our part of the festival. I don’t know yet what to expect from the other troupes, but a lot of them have been impressive in the past.

JA: How does Boris’ Kitchen relate to these other groups? Is there a specific way that the different groups approach sketch comedy?

ED: It heavily depends on who’s writing. I’ve seen a lot of different and really talented writers, just in the three years that I’ve been here. My first year I wasn’t in Boris’ Kitchen, but a couple of my friends were, and I saw the shows. There’s so much diversity of experience with comedy and with sketch and with acting and with writing in the troupe itself. We just kind of audition actors, and then sometimes they turn out to be writers. And we take writers who have no interest in acting to write our sketches, too. A consistent thing with Boris is that the actors have a say in what sketches they’re cast in, so that way if there’s something that they’re uncomfortable with doing, they never have to do it on stage. So everyone is put in a role that they’re comfortable with. I think that the thing about Boris is that they really commit to a joke. Even if it’s not the funniest thing, you just have to treat it as if it’s going to [make the audience] explode with laughter, no matter what. For the sake of the troupe, I’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of really silly stuff, and I love that. I think that’s great. Even if [they] have some doubts about it—like will [the joke] be funny? Will I be funny?—They just go for it.

JA: Is there something that the cast of Boris’ Kitchen is most excited for?

ED: Yeah, a lot of people have the same funny moment that they really like. One of our actors, [Andrew Agress ’17] who’s just a standout performer [who] can take the simplest roles and the simplest dialogues, is playing Abraham Lincoln. There’s a sketch where a bunch of U.S presidents are in U.S. president heaven, and there are some really funny lines. … I don’t know if people are excited for it, but there are a couple of meta sketches. There are sketches where we play ourselves or there are sketches about sketch comedy. The final sketch has a big dance-ish number that everyone’s involved in, so that’s cool.