Piscapo’s
Arm Find First-year Following
By John Macdonald Piscapo’s
Arm, Oberlin’s only sketch comedy troupe, put on their first
performance of the year at the Cat In the Cream Monday night. Packed
with first-years and scattered upperclassmen, the nine-member troupe
made it clear that there is more fine comedic fare to be had on
campus than just improv. Their two hour-long performances were not
flawless but certainly entertaining. Considering that auditions
for new members are being held this weekend, there’s little
more Piscapo’s Arm could have done to make their group more
appealing to new students.
One might assume that being the only sketch comedy troupe on campus
would make building a solid fan base an easy thing to do and entertaining
them even easier. Yet this hasn’t been the case for the group.
“I always hear people say, ‘Don’t we already have
two improv troupes?,” cast member ad senior Michael Connor
said. Many people come to Piscapo’s Arm shows expecting to
see the kind of improv comedy made famous by Oberlin troupes like
Primitive Streak and The Sunshine Scouts.
The very nature of sketch comedy can also make successful amateur
productions difficult to pull off consistently. While audiences
at improv shows tend to give the actors and actresses the benefit
of the doubt whether they just pulled out a killer one-liner or
fell flat on their face, sketch troupes have to have their lines
right, their acting down and their jokes killer every time if they
want to impress. The chemistry on stage and the writing have to
be there. “There’s more leeway [in improv shows] because
you know it’s being made up,” Connor said. “The
crowd is just like, ‘Holy shit, they just made that up!’”
Despite these hurdles, the Piscapo’s Arm performance Monday
night at the Cat was a success. An eager student body hungry for
live comedy made the first of the two performances a standing-room-only
affair, and despite all the stifling humidity produced by all those
chuckling bodies, the second show was also well-attended. Everything
from Oberlin student cliches, such as voice majors and socialists,
to environmentalism, was fodder for the troupe’s comedic canon,
and the majority of the crowd loved what they saw.
I
n part this positive reaction was stirred by the troupe’s
decision last year to switch from a long-sketch format to a faster-paced
show with little comedic “interludes” interspersed between
shorter sketches. By minimizing down-time between scenes, the group
sought to maintain the highest possible energy level. As senior
co-director Mark Kornblume explains, “[We’ll] take the
end of a sketch and rewrite [it] to flow into the next one.”
This fluidity worked in the group’s favor as an “interlude”
provided one of the night’s better moments. Senior Aaron Mucciolo’s
“dramatic reading” of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
was a joy to witness. Alone on stage and with the score in front
of him, Mucciolo simply read aloud the opening few lines of the
piece. One of the great musical treasures in Western culture suddenl
yseemed utterly absurd when Mucciolo yelled with all the flair and
conviction of speaker at a political rally, “E flat!”
and “Quater rest!” until he was red in the face.
But the true gem of the evening was Connor’s parody of Steve
Irwin, better known to fans of his TV show as the fanatical and
fearless “Crocodile Hunter.” Irwin and his wife Terry,
played by Carolyn Hayes, set out ot find the perfect first-year
specimen, who, according to Irwin, is characterized by “dried
vomit on the corners of their mouth” after a hard night of
drinking.
Connor’s far-from-perfect Australian accent was easy to overlook
given his limitless enthusiasm and his uncanny resemblance to Irwin,
and the interaction between the dismayed student they found to “tag”
(junior Seth Hrbek) and the two hunters was hilarious. Connor who
wrote “Croc Hunter,” wasn’t the only cast member
who displayed talent for comedic writing.
Hrbek’s “Mime Sketch” with its unique blend of
sketch and improv techniques, was superbly done, as was sophomore
Jessica Bedwinek’s “Russian Babysitter.”
The performance only seemed to drag when Piscapo’s Arm began
to rely too much on their penchant for low-brow humor or self-referential
parodies of Oberlin College students and events. “Sexcretary”
and “German Chicken” both fell prey to the former, while
“Tornado,” a sketch that imagines various Oberin “types,”
such as voice majors and environmentalists, being blown by a tornado
during a college tour, left anyone not familiar with Oberlin’s
idiosyncrasies completely out of the loop.
But after four years of playing to Oberlin audiences, Piscapo’s
Arm has learned to roll with the flat sketches and still come out
on top. All the smiling first-year faces at the Cat Monday night
promise that Piscapo’s Arm will have a whole new generation
of students whom they can entertain for years to come.
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