Primitive Streak set to close season with style

In high school, they were probably the type of kids who would always get busted for cracking jokes. In college, they are the kids who call themselves Primitive Streak. Primitive Streak will present its final show of improvised comedy this Friday evening at 10 p.m. at the Cat in the Cream Coffee House.

If you have seen the group, you understand why it is difficult to capture the experience in the square columns of a newspaper article; depending on on-the-spot improvisational acting, Primitive Streak is anything but square. If you are a Streak regular, Friday's season finale at the Cat will undoubtedly offer some of the most memorable improv of the year.

This year's Streak cast of twelve is a particularly memorable one. Unlike any cast in recent history, the same twelve members of the group have been working together all year, without the usual turnover of members at the end of the fall semester. Performing over eleven shows in the spring semester alone, Primitive Streak has been very active, highlighting the semester's performances with an East Coast tour over spring break.

The four-sight tour was based in New Hampshire, and gave Primitive Streak some valuable non-Oberlin performance experience with dates that included shows in a high school and at a divinity school. It was the comedy troop's first tour ever and performing out of the Streak-friendly Cat in the Cream Coffee House was a challenge. The consistency in the cast, that which has given shows in almost every available performance space in Oberlin, enabled the group to come away from the tour more together than ever. If they can make people in a divinity school laugh, the Cat will present few challenges.

"People came up to us after and said 'Thanks for doing a show here. All I have been doing is reading the Bible for 15 hours straight. It's nice to hear sentences that don't begin with 'And'," said Streaker Greg Pierce.

"The group has so many solid people. We could have never gone on the tour if there weren't so many strong people," said college senior Jeremy Ellison-Gladstone, director of the group.

"The tour made us a lot tighter. It was really great, and a bonding experience. I never even thought that I wanted to kill anyone," says senior Streak member Dave Marcus.

Sophomore Jane Blaney agreed with a snorting laugh and a knowing wink.

Marcus is one of the five graduating members of Primitive Streak who, together with seniors Hannah Cabell, Emily Henning, and Matt Baxter, will deliver their final Streak performance on Saturday .

"Of course it is going to be pretty emotional," said Marcus. "Being up there is an experience that I know I will never have again, performing with these people, performing to the kind of supportive crowd that is always at the final Cat show."

The final performance always brings a particularly large crowd to the Cat in the Cream and, with an anticipated crowd of suggestion-screaming Obies that will number somewhere near 400 people, it is one of the Cat's biggest events of the year.

The show Friday will close Streak's season in a very ambitious way, with a two hour show in which they will premier seven games never before seen.

Friday, during dinner, or a stroll in spring-time Tappan Square, start thinking of the wittiest suggestions you can because, as always, audience participation will create Friday's show from scratch. You'll laugh you'll cry, you'll scream "Sloppy Limbs!" at the top of your lungs in hopes of a tee-shirt. Friday night is sure to prove that the members of Primitive Streak are still the funniest kids in class.

Primitive Streak performs Friday at 10 p.m. at the Cat in the Cream Coffee House. Doors open at 9 p.m. and it tends to get crowded, so show up early. The performance is free.