“What you see tonight has never been done before and never will be done again.”

Arthur Brannon III, LSA senior and co-captain of University improv comedy troupe Witt’s End, is addressing a modest, unsure audience.

“Now who wants to volunteer to have us go through their wallet?”

This was as apt a preface as any for a Witt’s End performance, which on this night consisted of a whirlwind of short, absurd skits that somehow worked in common themes and recurring characters — all invented on the spot, of course.

“Watching one of our shows is like watching a play with disconnected scenes,” Brannon said. “It depends on what kind of night we’re having, but some nights the plot will be really defined, and other nights it’s just not. It just depends on how it happens to fall.”

This particular performance, while often returning to prior jokes or situations (e.g., cheese infected with Republicanism), was certainly not dedicated to any coherent plot. It was more like watching an unrehearsed "Saturday Night Live" episode in super-fast forward, with the decision of when to begin and end a skit entirely up to the actors.

Witt’s End, one of three improv comedy groups on campus, started approximately 10 years ago when a member of another troupe, ComCo, decided he didn’t like the direction ComCo was taking. Soon after splitting, Witt’s End fortified its distinct improvisational style, switching from ComCo’s traditional “short form” structure to “long form,” becoming the first improv group on campus to primarily use this style.

Short form vs. long form is probably improv comedy’s chief distinction. While short form is generally more accessible and quick-hitting (it’s the kind that was featured on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”), long form allows for a more nuanced brand of humor.

“Long form is more character-driven. You have a basic form with two people, two really strong characters, and so you start discovering more about them. The humor from that comes from how organic the relationships (are) and how quickly people come up with things. It’s more about building relationships and exploring that,” Brannon said.

On the other side of the spectrum sits ComCo, the University’s oldest extant comedy group and purveyors of the art of short form.

“Our comedy is a lot more easier to grasp on to,” said Alex Stuessy, Ross School of Business junior and ComCo member. “You don’t necessarily have to be a theater major or somebody who appreciates long form comedy. Our shows usually are a lot more explosive, a lot more fast-paced. And so it’s a lot easier to just jump right into the laughs.”

ComCo was founded in the late 1970s, originally as a sketch comedy troupe that would put on large-scale performances at the Michigan Theater. But in the early 1990s, ComCo took a significant hit when its relationship with University Activities Center (UAC), the University organization that funded the group, soured, according to ComCo leaders. Apparently, Andy Dick was at least partially responsible.

“(ComCo) brought Andy Dick to campus and apparently it flopped … then the head of ComCo got in a shouting match with the head of UAC. We went from being this big performance comedy group to being this small 10-member comedy group,” said Adnan Pirzada, LSA senior and “de facto leader” of ComCo.

Years later, ComCo, aided by the overwhelming success of its non-improv work (like 2007’s written sketch “College Musical,” a parody of Disney’s “High School Musical”), is gradually ascending to its previous heights.

“We’ve actually been slowly building back up. At my first couple shows we were lucky to bring 30 to 40 people out. This entire year, each and every one of our shows has brought 200 to 250 people, so we’re sort of moving back into sketch work,” Pirzada said.

Straddling the long form/short form distinction is the University’s newest improv group, The Impro-fessionals.