If you’re familiar with the name Smosh, then chances are you’ve seen the improv comedy sketch group on YouTube or another social media platform sometime over the last two decades. However, they’re also establishing themselves in the live event space.
In fact, just this past Friday, the team brought Episode 2 of “We’re All Gonna Die!” Season 2 – also known as their creepy, underwater sci-fi tale “Perfusion” – to Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles.
“The whole show is done using a tabletop role-playing game system called Dread. Basically, it’s like if you took Dungeons and Dragons and took all of the math and character sheets and pencils and paper out of it and just made it a Jenga tower in the middle of everybody,” host George Primavera told TheWrap. “There are only a few rules: If your character does something in the story, which the improvisers inhabit, then I, as the Game Master, ask them to pull from the tower. If they successfully pull from the tower, they avoid danger or death … but if they knock the tower over by accident, they die.”
“We’ve added a couple of other cool mechanics in for the live show element, so the characters have an extra bit of tension ratcheted up where they have to pull a certain amount within a certain amount of time,” he added. “We end up between 90 minutes to an hour and 20.”
So how else does this live stage show version differ from the live-to-tape offerings you can see on Smosh’s YouTube channel, considering it’s a different physical space entirely?
“Obviously, when we’re in-studio, we’re mic-ed up on lapel mics and we can get a little bit quieter, we can let the energy ebb a little bit more. Whereas on a live show, we’re literally playing the background music that would get added in post later, so we really get to ride a very cool vibe on stage. We project a little more, the pace is a little faster on stage and it truly has developed into kind of like a sporting event,” Primavera explained. “Seeing a block tower teeter gets everybody on the edge of their seat in a primal way that requires no prior knowledge about tabletop role playing games or even improv, really. Everybody’s waiting for the tower to fall, and everybody knows that when it does, a character dies.”
Primavera produces the anthology series alongside Jon Matteson, with both performers becoming familiar faces on Smosh. Season 2 cast members also include Amanda Lehan-Canto, Shayne Topp, Angela Giarratana, Courtney Theophin, Jared Goldstein, Eli Gonzalez, Trevor Evarts, Guchi, Tommy Bowe, Chanse McCrary and more to come.
“They were working on a Dungeons and Dragons show awhile back that I consulted on, and then got to know the crew and everybody. I was talking to Spencer Agnew, who was the director of the Smosh Games channel and is still huge over there at Smosh, and we started talking about Dread,” the host recalled. “I love DnD – it’s my first TTRPG love and I do shows with it – but to get actors in super fast, having three rules that are physically in front of them just means that we get to have more fun with the improv part.”
“For the first season, we were just trying to rotate as many Smosh people in as we could, who we knew would crush in this format – both from having done it before and just by being extremely talented and collaborative individuals,” Primavera continued. “This season, we get to play with not only the veterans of Smosh, but also some of their new cast members who are really excited to get on stage and have fun.”
Plus, getting to make “We’re All Gonna Die!” allows the comedians to combat a concerning trend they’ve noticed elsewhere online.
“It’s really disheartening to go on social media and see the doom scroll content of it all often suffused with AI and made for shorter attention spans. You hear the rumors about how people are making TV shows on streamers that are meant for background viewing, and that’s very discouraging to creators who really want to dive into either big themes or big swings with a live performance,” Primavera said. “So getting this runtime is an absolute privilege; to be able to put something this long in front of an audience and know that people are diving into it.”
“That energy is not replicatable. The fact that L.A. has been doing so many comedy shows – both along this genre, but also with the improv musical or a quick, slapdash send-up of other shows – it’s really special that it’s on the rise,” he further shared. “Hollywood would be smart to take advantage of it, because the ephemeral nature of live performance is not something that you can take for granted. Even if you’re seeing it digitally, you’re still there in the moment that it’s happening. That’s very special.”
Season 2 of “We’re All Gonna Die!” concludes with a live taping of Episode 3 on Dec. 5, with previous shows available via a season pass.
