Maddie Napaver performing alongside MU Players in the Victorious Cabaret.
@PLAYERSMU / INSTAGRAM
Joshua Reichard, Asst. Arts & Entertainment Editor / Asst. Social Media Editor
Manhattan University (MU) offers many opportunities for students to become involved in the performing arts, allowing them to create, connect and perform outside of the classroom.
Groups like the MU Players, Scatterbomb and Constant Dopamine provide students with opportunities to explore their interests in live theater, music, improv and comedy while connecting with other students and putting on shows for the broader campus community.
These student-run organizations are creating a culture where students can step outside of their usual responsibilities, try something new, and find a sense of belonging on campus. Thanks to the multiple creative outlets available to students, the performing arts culture on campus becomes central to the university’s identity.
Constant Dopamine, a recently founded comedy group, began by posting sketches on their Instagram and YouTube pages before expanding into hosting live shows throughout the school year. The group writes and performs comedic sketches centered around on-campus experiences that resonate with their primary audience of MU students.
The Quadrangle spoke with Constant Dopamine members about the group’s founding, their creative process, and how the jokes they tell directly relate to students’ experiences.
Declan Boyle, a senior political science major and one of the group’s founders, described how the group came to be.
“Constant Dopamine Live!” event.
@CONSTANT_DOPAMINE / INSTAGRAM
“We were all members of Scatterbomb, the improv group, which has sort of been the only comedy group on campus,” Boyle said. “We got together and thought [Constant Dopamine] really had a lot of potential at school and even beyond.”
Boyle went on to explain how many of the sketches include references to MU culture and poke fun at common student experiences on campus.
“A lot of the jokes are for students,” Boyle said. “You know, if you’re not a student here, you wouldn’t really understand them.”
Colby Hicks, a junior political science and communications major and a founding member of the group, added that joking about the university can bring students together.
“We talk about stuff at school because everybody here has one thing in common, and it’s that we’re all students at the same school,” Hicks said. “Being able to talk and joke about the institution that we’re all part of, I think, develops a good sense of community.”
Alex Delo, a junior mechanical engineering major and founding member, added his perspective.
“I think it definitely brings people together because it’s a way to chat about [our] issues or problems [as students],” Delo said. “It’s like ‘oh yeah, I also experienced that’… making it funny is just a good way to talk about it.”
Beyond scripted comedy, Scatterbomb, a well-established on-campus improv group, hosts themed live shows that encourage audience participation and bring the community together.
The Quadrangle spoke to Kristina Bopp, a junior civil engineering major who serves as the vice president of the club. She explained the structure of their live shows.
“We try to follow a fun theme every show, and I feel like we make it a very welcoming environment from the second that we walk on stage,” Bopp said. “We ask the audience to give us some words. From those words, one or two of us can tell a story, and from those stories, we perform a bunch of different skits, whether they’re long or short, whether they go on a random tangent or not.”
Bopp values the community of the group and highlighted the friendships she has made.
“We’re all so tight-knit that it feels less like we’re a big group of people in a club, and more like we’re a bunch of best friends that get to put on a show every other week,” Bopp said. “We’ve been able to develop it more as a friendship kind of thing rather than just coming in two days a week to perform.”
Similar to Constant Dopamine, many of Scatterbomb’s improv sketches feature references to the university’s traditions and customs, which only students would understand. A highlight for Bopp was an improv scene that directly poked fun at the Microsoft transition that the university experienced in the Spring of 2026.
“We had a bit going [the] last show where I was looking at a computer with one of my ‘classmates’, and I mentioned how much of a pain in the butt Microsoft Outlook is, and the two-factor authentication,” Bopp said. “We’re definitely able to tie it into MU, and it’s one of those things where everybody leaves going, ‘I got that.’ It’s all on the fly, but it will always somehow tie back to the school.”
Bopp added that Scatterbomb is ready to expand and is looking for more support from the community.
“We are a smaller performing arts group, but we want more,” Bopp said. “We’re proving time and time again with every show that we deserve more. Especially with our open mic event that we have going on. That will show that we can branch out.”
Bopp also serves as the vice president of MU Players. Like Scatterbomb, the group hopes to expand and believes it could do so with the right support from the university.
“On the Players’ front, we have had consistent sold-out shows for the past three years that I’ve been here,” Bopp said. “We are bursting at the seams, ready to do more.”
Performing arts can also give students the opportunity to step out of their usual academic routine. The Quadrangle spoke to Maddie Napaver, a sophomore chemical engineering major, who had the opportunity to play the role of “Trina Vega” in MU Players Victorious Cabaret. The show featured various scenes and dance numbers inspired by the early-2010s hit Nickelodeon show Victorious.
“It was just a very welcoming and comforting environment because they made sure that it worked around what I had going on,” Napaver said. “Everyone was super comforting and accommodating to everything that everyone had going on.”
Napaver enjoyed being able to step out of her usual routine as a chemical engineering major. She emphasized that the performing arts can give students an opportunity to try new things.
“In class, I’m a chemical engineering major in labs all day, and then at night I get to sing and dance and be Trina Vega,” Napaver said. “I think it gives a lot of people a space to feel welcome and safe, and just have a good time and show off a different side of themselves that makes them feel confident.”
Napaver also emphasized the importance of increasing visibility and financial support for Players.
“I think that a lot more people should know about what’s going on,” Napaver said. “Go to the performances. Help fund it. It is a very underfunded space, and I think [MU Players] deserves as much attention as other clubs are getting… I just think that there’s so much room for it to grow, and I think it deserves every ounce of growth that it gets.”