Saturday night’s Suspicious of Whistlers “Sharkey Farmers” show filled McMillan Cafe with an audience eager for laughter and spontaneous long-form improvisation.

A series of improv skits constituted the first half of the show, starting with the audience suggestion of “snakes.” The performers were innovative and hilarious, and troupe members’ seamless collaboration enhanced the audience experience.

The characters and themes often overlapped from skit to skit, which tied the first segment together in funny and unexpected ways. Sophomore Candace Borders’ rich, pretentious Tinder date in one scene became a rich, pretentious impulsive liar dealing with her son in another.

“Everyone was really bouncing off of each other to make it a fun time for everyone,” freshman performer Lucas Marschke said.

“I thought the switch-in, switch-out style of the first one with interwoven stories was really funny,” audience member and freshman Brian Zimmerman said.

The second half of the performance happened completely in the dark, with only the voices of the groups’ members to describe the action. Considering that most of the audience was made up of college students, known to the general public for their impatience and sleepiness, the complete darkness of the room was a disadvantage in some regards.

Many audience members who didn’t have seats lay down during the darkened portion of the show. However, taking away the physical space of the stage also opened up the possibility for new types of jokes—like purposefully confusing characters for each other and overlapping voices without disorienting the audience—which made for some especially funny one-liners.

The “Sharkey Farmers” theme of the evening did not play a major role in the show, nor did it address the Left Shark vs. Right Shark debate that followed Katy Perry’s Super Bowl halftime show, which is what I immediately think of whenever I see something related to sharks now. The origin of the name actually came from several group members’ trip to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

“[Senior presidents Mitchell Manar and Katie Goldston] saw a sign that had two towns on it, and it was ‘Sharkey’ and ‘Farmer’ and that was how it was written,” Marschke said. “So apparently since they had been driving for a while and they were being goofy, they put together those names.”

Coincidentally, a shark happened to come up once during a sketch but in a completely natural way. Or was it? (Props to the sneaky performer who brought it up during the dark part of the performance.)

“It really had no significance other than the fact that it was funny,” Marschke said.

The show also served as Marschke’s debut performance as a member of the Suspicious of Whistlers troupe after around a month of intense training with the group.

“I didn’t really know what to expect…which makes sense because it’s improv, so you don’t know what to expect,” Marschke said. “It was lots of fun.”

Marschke started an improv club in high school and has been eager to get into college improv ever since.

Zimmerman, Marschke’s floormate, said, “Having been one of Lucas [Marschke’s] friends since the beginning of the year, it was really cool to see the funny guy I’ve known all year just be himself up on stage and entertain everyone.” He observed, “I saw a lot of the way Lucas [Marschke] normally acts around the dorm on stage, and he just kept making me laugh.”

Suspicious of Whistlers is scheduling two more events for the year. The first is planned for the beginning of April, with a date yet to be decided.