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With four individuals portraying over 100 characters, “Nobody Panic (But the Emergency Exit is Locked): A Sketch Show” tackles what the show’s playbill calls “the weird, wonderful hell that is young adulthood.”

The show uses comedy to explore the uncertainties and fears that accompany becoming an adult.

“Thematically, it’s a show about that feeling you have when you’re our age and the world feels like this giant amorphous abyss and you know you need other people on your side,” said Gabbi Boyd, a senior theatre studies major who is the writer, director and a performer in the show. 

Along with Boyd, this show includes three other performers, and the four together form the ensemble which will portray over 100 different characters featured in the show.

“What’s been cool is that, although Gabbi created all the sketches, we each have been important collaborators throughout the whole process,” said junior acting major Sophia Foldvari, a member of the ensemble. “Gabbi has been so open to improvisation and working together to create something we all are connected to.”

However, this kind of openness in a creative process comes with its own set of challenges — one of which is to stick to the lines in the script.

“It’s been challenging to stay on script during scenes because the process has been so fluid and collaborative that sometimes during sketches we will improv a little too much and get off track of the script,” Foldvari said.

For the most part, everyone who worked on this project was new to this genre of performance. Additionally, with any work of comedy comes the struggle of actually making it funny.

“Comedy is timing and language and movement, so we’ve been in rehearsals for months perfecting that type of stuff, but comedy is also honesty and spontaneity, and we’re all improvisers and it’s our nature to play,” Boyd said. “The show’s definitely not the same every night, and we have a responsibility to play with intelligence and know when improvising something is going to make what we’ve rehearsed funnier and when it’s not. It’s a finely tuned machine with a lot of weird, ridiculous moving parts.”

Like any type of theatre, or art in general, the goal of this piece is to entertain while simultaneously being thought-provoking.

“I hope audience members leave thinking,” Foldvari said. “There are a lot of themes in this show and my hope for every audience member is to take away a different understanding of a topic they otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Sketch comedy in particular approaches these themes from the angle of scenic comedy. This show includes everything from satire and situational comedy to physical comedy and live risk.

Boyd said this show found its inspiration in the style of The Second City, an improvisational theater troupe in which comedy legends like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Steve Carrell started out.

“This production is smart and funny and something not a lot of people get a chance to see and experience,” Foldvari said. “Sketch comedy is something so many people enjoy whether it be on TV or online, and I’m so excited for people to come see a live sketch show here at Ball State.”

Overall, this show promises to be entertaining, to say the least.

“It’s a cliché metaphor, but watching a great sketch show feels like a rollercoaster," Boyd said. "You get jerked all over the place and you’re smiling the whole time, and you’re moving from silence to screams within a second. And then when you get off, you’re left with this lasting feeling in your stomach.”

That’s what we want the show to feel like. It’s a huge joyride, but you leave feeling changed. I hope people laugh until their stomach hurts and find a little bit of themselves — their fears, their hopes, their thoughts about the world — in these characters.”

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