You had to be there

offoff1_small.jpg
offoff2_small.jpg

The audience at the last summer performance of Off-Off Campus started cackling at Alex Yablon’s Australian accent soon after the nine-member troupe took the stage Friday and laughed, often uproariously, well past the 10 p.m. ending time. The performers managed to keep straight faces throughout the show, cracking smiles only as they took their bow.

The show, directed by Drew Dir, AB’07, an Off-Off veteran, featured a parody of the opening sequence of Disney’s The Lion King and continued with more irreverent skits. The cast lampooned the U of C scene with a sketch in which an eager suitor (Dave Maher, AB’06) offered a specific list when queried about his interests (“semiotics, otters—when wet”) to his paramour (Sarah Rosenshine, ’09), who responded by saying, “You just recited my Facebook profile!” In another sketch, Melissa Graham, ’09, portrayed a man at a bar. Resisting advances from a waitress, Graham deadpanned, “You don’t want to get involved with me. I’m awkward. Real awkward.”

Framed by musical interludes, brief skits about replacing the characters on popular television shows with babies, and another about variations on the word “Google” (goo, gull, ghoul), the show continued with two sketches about clueless radio hosts. Yablon, AB’08, played a grumpy public-access host who objected to establishing a pizzeria in town, claiming that it “suggests intravenous drug use” among the youth: “You may as well have an opium den.” Kit Novotny, ’09, played host of a program called Meet History, and her stilted Midwestern accent made her sound, as one audience member pointed out, like “an android running out of batteries”—and made the crowd crack up.

After the show, when cast members could loosen their faces, they spilled out onto the front steps of University Church, giggling, to greet their adoring public, many of whom had gathered on the stoop to congratulate the performers.

Rose Schapiro, '09

Photos (left to right): Off-Off spells "google"; the troupe takes a bow.


August 11, 2008