By Colleen Good

Deep from within the tomes of the Mac Weekly’s archives, a rare interview with Bad Comedy has been uncovered. While the first half has been lost forever to the sands of time, the fragments which remain provide a rare glimpse into the troupe and the lives of its sorely misunderstood members. Top researchers investigated into the lives of these strange miscreants and social deviants, and formulated detailed accounts of how four members found their way to this very strange sketch (not improv!) comedy troupe-Bad Comedy.

Morgan Sonnenschein ’12, the youngest in the group, stumbled upon the group due to his experiences with comedy in high school. After trying out for both comedy groups: Bad Comedy took him in, accepting him for all of his mathematical tendencies.

James Mallek ’10 was lured in from the most trusted of sources-his parents. On a tour of Macalester, Mallek’s parents were told that those interested in tech work should look to Bad Comedy. Little did he know, the “tech” mentioned consisted of a loudspeaker and a laptop.

Emma Liliedahl-Allen ’10 stumbled upon Bad Comedy auditions by mistake when wandering around campus with her roommate, Lara Avery ’10, freshman year. Both got into the troupe. Emma described auditions as “like your first time-not really that memorable.”

Ben Glickstein ’09 also tried out with his roommate. However, he made the cut and his roommate did not. The following year, members wrote a skit ridiculing his roommate’s audition-and cast him in the lead role.

These are just some of the twisted people who have come together to create the strange troupe that is Bad Comedy.

A piece of an interview was also unearthed. Here are some revealing tidbits.

The Mac Weekly: Why don’t you tell us about your approach to comedy?

BG: My freshman year we voted in two sketches that had main characters who were without very much good research or character work-you could say they were retarded. It was problematic because one, the sketch was a joke that everyone understands. It’s unacceptable to be portraying this character, so it’s funny to be portraying this character. Two was uh. in poor taste.

It’s been important that we to broaden the scope of what we’re saying that’s inappropriate, to target many, have a wide range-

EL: So everyone’s fair game.

BG: Although really in this show, the Fall 2008 Bad Comedy show, “The Struggle for Livelihood in the Time of Globalization,” Helen Keller is about the only offensive sketch. I mean, besides drugs and sex and incest and dildos.

EL: Nothing too bad, really.

JM: We may have offended the people who enjoyed “The Da Vinci Code.”

BG: The offensive part of the Printron sketch was not necessarily the concept, but the fact that there was actually going to be printed porn spewing out of the computer, and hopefully all over the audience and landing in people’s laps. That part in performance would be kind of.questionable.

EL: Last year we did Roboface in response to the black face that happened at the [politically incorrect] party, the letters and the campus-wide discussion. We wanted to enter into that discussion.through drama.

BG: In Roboface, there was a character who was wearing a very typical Macalester Halloween costume that I’ve seen many years in a row, which is a cardboard shoe box, opened up like this so that the wide part fits on your head, wrapped in tin foil with eye holes with lots of knobs drawn on it. The idea was that basically in the far future, there was a robot uprising, with robots demanding equal rights. Eventually, equal rights were granted. And there was a human character in the sketch who was dressed as a robot, hence “roboface.” And that was awful! Now, its okay, but after the liberation of robots, no!

TMW: Do you have anything you want to leave our readers with?

BG: Other than not being the improv troupe.

JM: That’s a key point!

BG: Key point: we don’t do improv. Also, you should audition next year. You should come to our shows. We have two shows next semester. So that’s going to be big.

JM: We don’t have the shows in place yet, so we can’t tell people to bring a poncho if they need it-which they have in the past!

BG: .That’s a good point. Bring a poncho. Just in case.

EL: And thanks to our dedicated fans! We know who you are. We recognize your laughs and your smiles.

JM: Yes, we do stand back stage and recognize specific laughs.

EL: . at specific jokes, for specific reasons.

BG: So we know what you’re laughing at; we know how twisted you are.

EL: We know you.

JM: And we’d like to learn more laughs.

BG: Laughs of different sorts of people. It’s kind of our focus-grouping, so if you have never come to a show, or if you don’t think we’re funny generally, you should come and just laugh really loudly at the things you do like, and those things will be featured more prominently in the future. We hope. Maybe.