by Taylor Brethauer, Editor-in-Chief
The improv comedy troupe, Scatterbomb, hosted another hilarious show, partnering with the English department. On Friday, Nov. 16, Hayden 100 was filled with students eager for the annual “English Night.”
The annual tradition of English Night is when Scatterbomb invites English professors to tell a crazy or funny story from their lives. The troupe then creates improvised scenes inspired by details of their stories.
The first professor was Deirdre O’Leary Cunningham, associate professor of English. She began talking about when she teaches the Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, students will ask how the characters stay so long at such a terrible party.
O’Leary Cunningham usually agrees, until she experienced a terrible party of her own at a neighbor’s house. She eventually admits that she made her baby daughter cry so her and her husband find a way to escape.
Scatterbomb took to the stage to begin performing scenes based on anything that came to mind while listening to her story, the first scene with Jenn Bueti and Kevin Donald.
The two are counting money when they realize there is some missing and call in their wait staff. The staff is questioned until the scene reached its peak level of absurdity and was ended to begin a new scene.
Donald, Meredith Taylor and Moira Delaney sit around Aeden Roney comforting him as he cries.
“Does this mean Rusty isn’t coming home?” asked Roney. It wasn’t until Taylor began sifting through Roney’s unpleasant vomit that the audience finds out that Rusty was Roney’s favorite penny that he accidentally swallowed.
The scene cuts to Roney meeting with his dietician, played by Brendan Hanney. Roney explains he’s been eating money, including cryptocurrency. This puzzles Hanney as he asks how that’s possible. The scene then cuts to Roney out on a date with Bueti, with Donald as their server.
“Our specials today are the Dolla Dolla Burger, a Checkbook Salad and a shrimp bisque,” said Donald. He also mentions a Chase credit card dessert.
“It’s just a credit card for dessert and you just eat it whole […] it’s expensive but it’s worth it,” said Donald.
The scene ends and switches to Sydney Waitt and Bueti out eating together. Waitt tells Bueti she is vegan, except Bueti remembers Waitt not being vegan the day before.
The scene cuts to that, where Waitt gets excited about eating a giant steak.
“We see she’s wearing a full leather jumpsuit,” said Donald from offstage, creating a mental image for the audience.
Waitt explains to Bueti that she has an idea for melted cheese on a steak. The scene cuts to Waitt pitching this idea to Roney, who freaks out.
“I mean, I don’t think Sears was the right place to come to but you can do big things with this,” said Roney to Waitt.
Donald then hears of this idea and starts throwing chairs and screaming because of his excitement and shock over the steak idea.
“Don’t do this in the lawn mower section,” said Roney. Donald keeps pantomiming getting on a riding lawn mower.
The scene ends with Roney telling Donald about two more ideas: a hot dog with a bun made of steak and a cup of water, but the cup is more steak. Donald screams again and rides the lawn mower off into the store.
The last scene based off of O’Leary Cunningham’s story featured Taylor, Hanney and Bueti. Taylor and Hanney are complaining about their dirty house before guests come over when Bueti shows up saying she can clean it for them.
Hanney is skeptical since Bueti is asking for them to leave their house while she cleans. But Taylor continues to talk about each item in their house based on the quality and the price she could sell it for on eBay.
Bueti then invites in her workers, Roney and Delaney in to help clean, but Hanney is still skeptical.
The scene ends as Delaney hilariously points out, “but I have this squeegee.”
The second half of the show featured Rocco Marinaccio, professor of English. He talks about how he doesn’t like costumed characters, especially those at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
He talks about cussing out and strangling a guy in a parrot costume that was in his hotel lobby and how terrorized he was by this giant bird.
The audience was in shock and filled Hayden 100 with uproarious laughter.
Scatterbomb took to the stage again, this time with Bueti carrying Donald in with handcuffs. Roney joined the scene as well.
Donald was being arrested for messing with Goofy and Bueti and Roney were playing the cops. Donald kept spitting in their eyes to keep them from questioning him.
“I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re pulling off in Magic Kingdom, but this is Animal Kingdom baby, and we got saber-toothed tigers,” said Roney.
Eventually the scene transforms into Walt Disney’s return from being cryogenically frozen for multiple years. Delaney, playing Disney, tries talking to Donald.
Bueti and Roney attempt to pitch a song to Disney and Hanney, who came in to the interrogation room as the Disney fact-checker, judges them for attempting to take advantage of a guy who was frozen for many years.
“Well we pitched a live action movie about Donald the Duck before,” said Roney.
They cut to the set of that movie, where Roney plays Jared Leto who is performing method acting as a duck. Everyone on set is getting annoyed with his approach and Donald suggests someone else to play the role of the duck, including the Aflac duck.
“Everything has been downhill since 30 Seconds to Mars broke up,” said Roney.
The scene quickly crumbles into chaos as Roney has to attend tutoring sessions with the on-set tutor. He eventually gets fired as the scene changes.
The show ended with a scene between Taylor and Hanney, where Hanney, as the husband, was expected to be doing things for his wife without being told to do so.
The scene takes a dark turn, as Donald and Bueti, playing cops, tell Hanney his wife has murdered fifteen people. “You gotta keep on top of that,” said Donald to Hanney.
Donald ended the show by thanking O’Leary Cunningham and Marinaccio.
The final show of the semester is scheduled for Dec. 7 in Hayden 100 and will have a holiday theme, with ugly sweaters encouraged.