Here’s an extended version of this week’s profile of the Harvard Sailing Team, the improv team from New York that uses “Ivy League humor.” They performed at last year’s Piccolo Spoleto and again tonight. —J.S. |
No poopy, sexy, farty jokes, please
By Kinsey Labberton
Thurs. Jan. 17, 8 p.m.
Fri. Jan. 19, 8 p.m.
Charleston Ballet Theatre
477 King St.
(800) 514 ETIX, www.etix.com
Our favorite faux Ivy League comedians, Harvard Sailing Team, are back.
As you recall, this New York-based sketch comedy group made a big splash at Piccolo Spoleto last spring, leaving a huge buzz in their wake.
Returning to town for the Charleston Comedy Festival, they promise new songs and new bits, but all with the same outrageously intelligent laughs.
“We’ve made a slow but definite transition,” says co-founder Chris Smith. “We’ve gone from the larval stage to a beautiful butterfly.”
A butterfly that’s cyber-savvy nowadays. The comedy site www.dotcomedy.com has picked HST sketch shorts “Awkward Goodbyes” and “Oprah Drunk Dialing,” which involves teammates Jen Curran and Clayton Early deflecting drunk dials from Oprah.
More of these so-called “viral videos” can be found on their website, www.harvardsailingteam.com. Check out CP favorites, “The Reason for Belly Buttons” and the hilariously sharp “Restless Leg Syndrome.” A sketch that proves those jiggly limbed folks out there aren’t just innocents with the shakes.
It’s a lesson in movement to see nine individuals perform synchronized slapstick. Of the five women and four men in the troupe, all but one of the members trained at NYU’s Tisch Drama School.
There, they took an intensive yearlong improvisation class that helped encourage the members to form the team. Chris Smith with his childhood buddy (and only non-Tisch grad) Billy Scafuri are the main writers, but all members lend ideas and help massage scenes into what audiences see on stage.
People who saw their Piccolo debut may remember a sketch involving a camera. Three members ask teammate Rebecca Brey to take their picture. She agrees then calmly takes the camera, hands it to one of them, and poses for the picture with the other two teammates.
Perplexed, they smile and take the image then attempt again to have Brey actually take the picture of them. This time, she steps away from them, leans down, then scoots the camera across the floor back to them, and gives a warm smile. What ensues is a Waiting for Godot-like farce, where the cyclical action of a warped everyday occurrence becomes the joke.
Like their signature squeaky clean Converse shoes, they manage to keep their show filth-free. That mean’s no “poopy, sexy, farty jokes,” the group says.
So grab your kids, folks. HST is a family affair and free of cover-your-ears moments. So fresh and so clean in fact, they’ve had a sweet 16 party attend one of their shows as well as a 90-year-old women.
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