The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

With hilarity for all

By Dan Carlson

Chuck Norris in a vagina, JFK’s assassination and a rabbit-hunting sports broadcast were all part of the second annual Beanpot of Comedy last Saturday in Blackman Auditorium.

The sold-out showcase, hosted by NU ‘ Improv’d, featured Boston College’s Asinine and Suffolk University’s Seriously Bent and included a mixture of skits and improv.

With seven of the members graduating, NU ‘ Improv’d wanted this show to be special.

“We want this to be a big send-off,” said Chad Cooper, co-founder of the group and a senior communications studies and history major.

Before the start, the lobby outside of Blackman Auditorium was abuzz with both cast and audience members. Improv’d members handed out T-shirts and encouraged the crowd to write down random examples of famous people, locations and objects to use in the performance.

The show opened with a mock contest for the Beanpot of Comedy mascot. Contestants included a hockey player confused by the “Beanpot” part of the title, a girl and her nun puppet (because she said the root of comedy is Jesus), a dancing “Pablo Francisco,” who wore blue shorts and a tie around his head and a dancing “Star Jones,” played by Cooper.

Co-founder of Improv’d, senior journalism major, Liam Hales, came onstage next and entertained the crowd with a stand-up routine, covering topics from Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito to the holidays to men in the locker room.

The first comedy group on stage was Seriously Bent. They performed a skit of interconnected scenes that ran for about 30 minutes. Starting with a sexually-suggestive massage, it included everything from a gang-rape version of duck-duck-goose to children playing red rover.

Asinine took the the stage next and performed several short skits and some pieces of improv.

Their first skit was a couple infuriated with their foreign house help after they find their trash barrel toppled over. Their “help” is Gollum from “Lord of the Rings”- who ate their real dog.

They went on to narrate a mock sports broadcast of a rabbit hunting competition, as well as a skit about instant messages between a male and female classmate.

The NU ‘ Improv’d segment began with Will Ritter, a senior political science major, doing a stand-up act on being single and meeting women online.

Northeastern’s part of the show included improv scenes and games based on suggestions from the audience. They acted out the JFK assassination in a one-minute scene, then a 30 second scene, then 15 seconds and then finally a one second scene.

They also performed a hybrid of charades and telephone. Cast member Tushar Patel, a sophomore chemical engineering major, acted out, by audience request, a famous person – Chuck Norris, in a place – a vagina, who died of Attention Deficit Disorder. Patel “roundhouse kicked” the air to play the part and pointed to his female cast member’s body part to get his act across.

The night ended with all three groups onstage, acting out the “world’s worst” suggestions made at the beginning of the night, including world’s worst first date, pet, sex position, party and hooker.

“It was really funny,” said Aaron Seese, a freshman biology major after the show. “I honestly didn’t think it was going to be that good.”

Megan Lewis, a middler biology major, also enjoyed the show and noted an improvement.

“It was way better than last year,” Lewis said. “There was more improv than skits this year.”

Audience members were not the only ones who were impressed with the final outcomes. The cast was also pleased with their performances.

“It was amazing,” said member Jon Cunha, a middler communications major. “I was very happy to hear it was sold out.”

Hales said he hopes the Beanpot continues at Northeastern even after he is gone.

“I really like the fact that it brought so many aspects of comedy together,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better send-off.”

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