Picture this: The lovechild of Saturday Night Live and “Monty Python” is born and performing its first-ever variety sketch comedy show. Five of Central Connecticut’s very own students teamed up and put their wits, pens and comedic talent together to write the campus’s first-ever Live Sketch Comedy Show, “Discount Comedy.”

Every semester, the Theatre Department presents student-produced works, but this year the tables took a turn in the writing of this show. Discount Comedy was the first of its kind and was a sketch-heavy showcase of the writers: Hunter Bustamante, Ricky Hamilton, Liam Foley, Steve Kalpin and Clark Otis.

Last semester, the department presented a three-day series of fifteen-minute shows and as Hamilton and Bustamante sat in the back of the production the light bulb idea illuminated. The duo was discussing their favorite skits and as they watched the show Hamilton and Bustamante both agreed they enjoyed “the three different shows, back-to-back-to-back and the variety,” according to Hamilton.

“With talking about ‘Monty Python,’ it kind of clicked in my head, I thought, ‘I don’t think anyone ever has really done a sketch variety show as a student-produced work,’ and at that moment, I just wrote the entire opening monologue in my head,” Director and Producer Hamilton said. “When the show was over, I was like ‘Hunter, Hunter. I gotta talk to you about an idea.’ And I discussed it with a couple of other people who were immediately on board.”

The show, like most productions, also heavily rely on the actors on the stage but this piece included several individual elements s opposed to a full story. Since this was purely student orchestrated, the writers banded together to choose the cast, ensuring not to overwhelm actors already cast in the CCSU Theatre play “Troilus and Cressida.” Once the casting calls had been received Hamilton and the other four writers asked talented actors to partake in their upcoming excursion: Dan Ayotte, Bustamante, Sara Courtmanche, Chris Drexler, Liam Foley, Chris Gallagher, Kalpin, Jess Maclean, Ryan Phelps, Ryan Sehmi and Emma Wilcox.

Kaplin was the lead writer among the quintuplet, but he was also an asset as part of the 11 actors list, while Bustamante was the lead player in the setlist. After the posting of “Troilus and Cressida” cast list, Hamilton swooped in and took a chance on this previously undone idea.

“I saw a bunch of people I liked that didn’t go in and I thought to myself ‘when is there going to be another time where I can actually do this, this could be a sign that all these people are in [the play],'” Hamilton continued. “If there is going to be a time, it is going to be now.”

The show graced the audience with original skits such as, the anonymous support group for fatherless adults, who soon discover all of them have the same father: Bond, James Bond or the Miss Connecticut pageant, that enabled a vengeful judge to get back at the girl in middle school, who nicknamed him Poo Poo Pete after a tragic pudding accident. The writers also put their own quirky spin on their favorite sketches like the hot sauce challenge but in this instance, it was thwarted by the “shows” producer.

The dedicated students on both the writing and acting side were able to learn from this experience how to operate in a self-made production from start to finish. Hamilton recollected that his favorite time spent on this show was the writing process since it enabled him and his fellow writers to broaden their ideas and bounce them off each other.

“Everyone had a mutual respect for me and the process and [I liked] just going in and spit balling these sketch ideas because I had a bunch of them, which I would throw out on the table,” Hamilton stated. “When you have a bunch of people that can really contribute to the idea, they can then throw out things you wouldn’t have even thought of.”

With one-month writing process and two-months cold readings and rehearsals, the gang was able to produce a show that hit maximum capacity each of the three nights (four performances) it presented: March 22, Mach 23 and March 24 with two showings.

“It is that collaboration process that was truly the most enjoyable and fun, that and just having these sketches and then having these table reads sharing our thoughts about what we like and what our audience would like,” Hamilton concluded.