History

How Did this happen?

~66 million years ago – An asteroid hits the Earth, killing most large animals. Fortunately, this group didn’t exist yet, and therefore survived.

Fall ’95 Brown freshman Rod Sanders enters Rice University. He was a member of the high school version of ComedySportz in Brownsville, Texas.

Fall ’95-Spring ’96 Sanders creates the name Spontaneous Combustion, recruits initial members.

Fall ’96 Spontaneous Combustion (SpoCo) performs its first show.

Fall ’97 – Trademark Black T-shirts unite humor and style.

Spring ’97 – SpoCo holds its first auditions.

Spring ’97 – Thresher writes up an article on the newly performing club.

Spring ’97 – First Owl Weekend Show. As described by Laura Duke (Brown ’98):
“It was an amazing success. We were honestly shocked at how many people came, and we were very well received. I don’t remember it very clearly – natural adrenaline high. So awesome.”

Spring ’99 – SpoCo performs its first off-campus show at the University of Houston. Show goes so well that nobody talks about it ever again, nor do we venture off-campus again.

Fall ’00 – Eric Libby invents the term ‘spegma milkshake.’ The world is never the same.

Fall ’01 – Rice President, Malcolm Gillis, mentions Spontaneous Combustion in his matriculation address.

Spring ’01 – SpoCo has its first ever drunk practice. Murder chain was played with the location of Erotic Disneyland, an occupation of a fluffer, and the murder weapon of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Spring ’02 – The Yale Purple Crayons travel down to Houston and put on a combined show with Spontaneous Combustion in Hamman Hall.

Fall ’02 – Bringing together a cappella and improv comedy, SpoCo performs its first combined show with the Rice Philharmonics. We sang a cappella, they did improv, and we joined it up at the end to create the game of Radio—improvisational a cappella (while raising $400 for a Houston soup kitchen). Filled up 500-seat Hamman Hall.

Spring ’03 – SpoCo goes on the road, travelling up to battle Washington University in St. Louis’ Mama’s Pot Roast in the style of ComedySportz. We learned never to do a clean competitive format where you don’t have any fans.

Fall ’20- SpoCo ventures boldly into the realm of virtual improv with its podcast, The Lighter Side (available on Spotify here).

Spring ’21- SpoCo makes its triumphant return to in-person performances. There is much rejoicing.

Now- You visit our website and (hopefully) decide to check out our next show!