When Sam Roos ’09 meandered around campus on Sunday morning, he wasn’t reminiscing about great classes, intense conversations or lasting friendships. He told audiences at the Shapiro Campus Center Theater that night, in a one-night-only performance of the sketch comedy show “Evil,” that only one thing was on his mind. All that Roos could think about as he looked at the architecture of his alma mater was how many buildings he wanted to have sex in and how many he ended up smoking marijuana in alone. 

Roos’ scene partner, Amy Thompson ’11, seemed perplexed at this: all she could think about was how many buildings she’d wanted to smoke in alone and how many she’d ended up having sex in. Roos later explained that the content of their jokes was pretty different from what the duo really experienced. In an interview with the Justice after the show, Roos described being back on campus as “almost like a waking dream, because so much is so familiar, and yet it is so not [his] anymore.” Thompson added that being back made her feel like a ghost. 

Thompson and Roos, who are both the writers of “Evil” first met as members of Boris’ Kitchen during their time at Brandeis and continue working together after they each moved to Chicago. Roos is now based in Los Angeles and is pursuing a career writing for television, while Thompson is an understudy for the Second City sketch group’s touring company. 

‘Evil’ is entirely their own product, though, and the show touched on plenty of different approaches to and styles of comedy. Some sketches relied on clever wordplay and ridiculous sounds, such as a faux advertisement for the restaurant “Slan Clamwich’s Clam Sandwiches” that utilized a complex set of tongue twisters delivered by Roos. 

A recurring sketch combined vaudeville with audience interaction and had Thompson, disguised as “The Great Expediter,” picking audience members to come onstage and do scenes with her. Other sketches reveled in their own absurdity. The audience roared at the last scene, in which Thompson — who stands at only five feet, according to an earlier sketch — came onstage on Roos’s shoulders, dancing to “All That Jazz” and shouting, “Tall! Tall!” 

Frequently the sketches would shift gears or add new elements halfway through the scene. The aforementioned “Clam Sandwich” sketch started with just a challenge of Roos pronouncing several tongue twisters correctly but then developed into a more plot-focused scene, where Roos’s impatient father struggles with a daughter who just can’t deliver the last line of their commercial right. 

Roos and Thompson say that both their writing and performing have evolved since leaving college. While at Brandeis, Roos says, he “had in my mind a very distinct separation between writing a sketch scene and improvising. And the more we worked in Chicago, where the line is very blurry, [the more] that sensibility incorporates itself. At the end of the day, it is mostly scripted, but I feel like we’re comfortable trying new things, whether it’s in a writing meeting or a rehearsal, or onstage.” 

In writing meetings, the pair quickly agreed that the biggest and best change to their dynamic is a greater willingness to be blunt and direct with each other. “We bicker all the time,” Thompson said, laughing, “But it’s without consequence, bickering.” “And I always feel like sometimes in the moment I would be so frustrated with you,” Roos added, “but because we’re close friends, the second the meeting is over I’ve never carried any of that with me … To be able to give each other blunt, direct criticism is the best thing.”

But ultimately, according to Roos, returning to Brandeis for a performance reminded “Evil” why they decided to get involved with sketch comedy in the first place. “Nine years ago I showed up at Brandeis thinking, ‘I think maybe I want to do comedy.’ and like, just keep doing it. Just keep doing it, and nine years later, maybe the University will pay you to do the comedy.” 

“I can’t echo that more,” Thompson nodded. “It’s just the hardest in the beginning and if people don’t have the stomach to do it than no one ever would. And you got to stick some years out, right? …And Brandeis taught me to be resilient.”

“[If] we both hadn’t been chasing that we wouldn’t be here now. That’s that safety net of friendship. And Brandeis, for sure,” Roos agreed. The two turned to each other and high fived.