The group consisted of five members, who performed on a stage for an audience of about 250 to 350 people, said Miguel Vila, artistic director of Dead Parrots Society and Western senior.

Although some performers may get pre-stage jitters, while Vila was on stage, he said he didn’t feel a thing.

Noel Wamsley, Western junior and Dead Parrots Society member, said she found the competition to be a lot of fun and felt a rush of adrenaline when she was on stage. She said the group rehearsed two to three times a week, and connected through doing activities together such as singing songs.

“We just wanted to make our school proud, make our families proud, and it was just an emotion of excitement,” she said.

Wamsley said the competition was in two formats: toaster montage and coffee date. The toaster montage was a compilation of scenes made up, and then one is acted out until the end. The coffee date had two people as main characters who act out how they met each other, she said.

Vila said of the 12 groups who participated, 10 were the winners of regional competitions, and two were wild cards chosen by voters online. The teams consisted of anywhere from four to 12 people per group, he said. Once the teams were through the four preliminary rounds, the top four advanced to the final round, he said. The Dead Parrots Society won the final round.

Alison Luhrs, Western senior and business director of the Dead Parrots Society, said Western was the first non-Illinois team to win nationals at this competition.

“I knew I was doing a good job because I can’t remember what happened (during the performance),” she said.

“(Waiting for the results) was the worst 10 minutes of my life, but it was followed by the best seven hours of my life.”

Luhrs said 20 minutes before the semi-finals a woman stole personal property from the improv groups, including some of the Dead Parrots Society’s. But since they were so focused, Western sophomore Jake Barrow said they were able to “put it aside.”

Luhrs said the event itself was like a sports event, with a referee and anchors who made jokes. Since the Dead Parrots Society played the ukulele during the semi-finals, the commentators called their group the “Big characters, ukuleles, and being unapologetically weird” group, she said, which she said she found hilarious.

When performing, Barrow said he thinks since the group knows how each others’ brains work, they can perform better together, he said.

“Trust is a big part since you’re creating this unique world together,” he said.

Vila said improv is an art form, where each scene is a game. He prefers what the Dead Parrots Society does, which is long form opposed to short form, because there is an emotional connection to the audience.

“You can make a penis joke and get a laugh,” he said. “But when you get laughs about a known character, those kinds of laughs get audible reactions. The audience will ‘aww’ or sigh.”

In the competition, the performance was 25 minutes per group, which is a cut from what the Dead Parrots Society is used to. Luhrs said a performance is usually 45 minutes. Even so, she said it was a great show.