Joe Lieberman VS Iran: 5 Other Things He Wants to Destroy

(Published in The Fairfield County Weekly) 6/14/07
According to the former democrat Joe Lieberman, the U.S. needs to bomb Iran soon. They’re apparently getting out of hand. Thank God he made his secret independent trip to Iraq that everyone knew about as soon as he arrived, because we wouldn’t know any of this without him. I mean, the man’s voice alone is mesmerizing, never mind his passionate inside information about Iran, a country we had no idea was a threat.

He said Sunday on the CBS interview show “Face the Nation” that there’s a base in Iran near the coast of Iraq that’s training soldiers to kill other soldiers. American ones. Like, 200 of them. It’s not that the recent death toll has made me numb to, say, other death tolls, but 200 isn’t that many.

“If they don’t play by the rules,” Lieberman said, “we’ve got to use our force.” Shockingly unaware until now that we’re at war, Lieberman is doing everything he can to make sure we all know he’s pissed at people who are pissed at Americans.
“If there’s any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development,” he said, “We can’t just talk to them.”

Wait, we can’t? Oh right, the war thing. Yeah, you’re probably right. Bomb the shit out them, and don’t forget their families. But whatever you do, don’t talk to them, Joe. Sit in front of an American flag and talk to Bob Schieffer. He’ll televise it on a Sunday morning, and then by Monday the Iranians will know your plan. They’ll up the training power, build another nuclear weapon plant and put one of those nifty black bags over your head. Then you can talk to them. You brave, resourceful little white-haired man.

But Lieberman loves his country, aside from the fact that it allows porn on the internet, and he just wants to shield us from harm. He sees his window of bombing opportunity, and he wants to take it. And if he stays down there long enough, they might even let him push the button.

In fact, he told one of the Weekly’s many correspondents in Iraq, while on a short break at Baghdad Country Club, “I’m not going to say napalm is a good idea. But I will say that if you accidentally misquote me, it’ll sure look like I said that.”
As a sign of good faith, and in an effort to ensure everyone knows his plans before he acts, Sen. Lieberman sent the Weekly a list of 5 other “entities” he’d like to destroy, “As soon as Americanly possible.”

5.) All “Planet Earth” competition. I want to be able to know that when I pick up an HD DVD of an earth documentary, that it’s going to kick ass. I’m talking never-before seen footage, a clear picture, the whole thing. This is the only way to save “Planet Earth.”

4.) Gas stations. Do you even know how expensive gas is? Well, it’s crazy. I say we knock ‘em out one at a time, until we get to the top. Like Bruce Willis would.

3.) Dandelions. You know what I’m fucking talking about. Green is in, and together we can keep America’s lawns fashionable!

2.) McDonalds. My wife and I are going on a mission next month to Darfur to educate the people of the dangers of McDonalds soft-serve ice cream, which is gaining popularity at an alarming rate there.

1.) Immigration in Iraq. If I’ve learned anything here in Iraq at all, it’s that terrorists depend on people from other countries. Weapons, money, women. They don’t come from Iraq. I say, nobody gets let in who’s not already in. That way nobody can help the terrorists. Trust me, this one can work.

Midi and the Modern Dance:

(Published in the Fairfield County Weekly 5/31/07)
Everyone in the crowd at Toquet Hall in Westport is in high school and nobody on stage can legally drive yet. The band looks young, acts young and talks too much. Lead singer Omeed Goodarzi nervously rambles about his favorite foods, his undying love for every person in the crowd, and he admits the glasses he’s wearing are not his own.

Lead guitarist Sam Abelow tightens his strings, keyboardist Mikey McGovern tightens his tie, Jack Aldrich tightens his snare, and bassist Akbar Mirza just stands there.

Toquet Hall, a small, old concert space near the Westport Public Library, employs both Goodarzi and McGovern as board members, and they help book and promote bands that fill the place. Tonight it’s mostly full with about 50 people inside. The sign outside says it’s a “teen coffee house,” but there’s no coffee to be found in the place. What you do find is a bunch of energetic young people fiending for original music they can dance to. They’ve brought their own coffee.

“OK, let’s do this,” Abelow says. Goodarzi slowly calms down, closes his eyes and grabs hold of the microphone. He instantly ages five or six years as the first line escapes his mouth. “If I could dance, side by side with you, a glance / Maybe a wave or two / Could you? Could I? Could we?” It’s not always his lyrics that pull you in, but the command he has over his vocal chords.



The band kicks in. An impressively intricate drum beat, a mature, jazzy keyboard and guitar tone, a delicate and mellow bass line and a soothing harmony come from the young rockers on stage. The song “Mother May I” builds into a sophisticated waltz, and the crowd sways at the band’s feet. In the same song, intricate turns into loud, jazzy turns into distorted, delicate turns into commanding and soothing turns into eerie. But it’s all carried out nicely by Goodarzi’s controlled and passionate voice. The crowd isn’t swaying anymore. They’re going nuts. Arms are flailing, teenaged girls are singing along and screaming their names. Everyone is front is dancing, and the band is loving it.

Meet Midi and the Modern Dance. They are the self-proclaimed best band in Westport. They’ve only been a band since January, but after their May 18 Toquet Hall performance, they were picked up by Boston record label Hotel Valkenburg with intentions to record, promote and book shows.

Move over, John Mayer…

Well, OK, maybe not, but wouldn’t it be great to tell him to?

Midi’s tight live show and their surprisingly professional-sounding EP make the band full of promise. They’ve been in and out of bands with each other, and Aldrich is currently a singer and guitarist in another band, but, according to Abelow, “This is the combination we think works the best.”

These sophomores at Staples High School are sophomores in the true sense of the word: They’re realistic enough to know that they haven’t been playing for too long, but they’re youthfully disillusioned enough to believe they’ll never stop making music together. “Basically,” says Goodarzi, “I never want to compromise music for anything else. And I always want to have these four guys helping me out.”

McGovern says the band benefits from not sounding like many other bands in Westport. “I feel like we kind of have a different, like, feel to things,” he says. “We don’t really have as much punk influence. We have more stuff in 3/4. We try to do instrumentation and we try to incorporate those kinds of sounds.”



Ambience, intense lyrics, beautiful singing voices and basically anything that’s mature, intelligent rock is what they seem drawn to. They mainly listen to popular indie bands like Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, the Decemberists, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Stars and Sound Ambulance, but they also enjoy more notable bands like U2 and Radiohead.

Midi’s inexperience is offset by their easily noticeable mature sound—despite the fact that Midi’s members barely took any lessons. Mirza says, “I did take a couple lessons, but they never helped me.” And all of lead singer Omeed Goodarzi’s bandmates agree that he’s been a naturally gifted singer since the age of 12.

Goodarzi, who is also the main songwriter, is a charming, young Iranian-American. His voice is the first thing you notice when you press play. He might not know how good his voice is, or even how it got so good, but he’s not imitating anyone, “because you don’t want to sound too much like anyone else.”

With zero vocal training, he attributes his skills to his mom’s cooking. “My mom,” he says, “she sings classical Iranian music, which is really strenuous on the voice. She is always singing and cooking. Her two main hobbies.”

The Goodarzis left Iran during the Iranian Revolution in the late ’70s and early ’80s and have been supportive parents since the beginning. “I can’t remember Omeed showing excitement or connection to anything but music,” his father says. “These guys have a vision.”

The band’s vision has most recently been packaged in the form of a five-song EP. It was recorded and produced by Sam Abelow in his parents’ basement, using the equipment his father bought him. Oh, and Mr. Abelow just so happens to be one of two architects on the small team responsible for creating Sterling Sound Studio in New York City, which has been the site for dozens of influential recordings, from alternative rock to world music, jazz and even classical.

Midi and the Modern Dance’s EP doesn’t sound like a 15-year-old produced it in a basement. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t sound like 15-year-olds are playing guitar, bass or keyboard. It definitely doesn’t sound like a 16-year-old is singing on it, and it doesn’t sound like a 16-year-old is drumming. Maybe it’s the equipment and maybe it’s the money, but it doesn’t really matter. Sound is sound, and the thing sounds clear, mature, and the songs are varied enough to showcase their budding and wide-ranging indie-rock talents.

The song “Clear Black Snow,” for example, starts with a slow, teasing build-up complete with some Arcade Fire-esque lyrical stylings, with an emotional Iranian touch. It’s somber, but not boring and it’s peaceful, but not lame. It’s a short song with a quick but well-deserved climax, and it ends with a great do-wop vocal segment.

“All I Know” displays the band’s playfulness and rock know-how (even more so in concert). It’s only an EP, but this would be the single if they were in a position to choose such a thing. Could the guitar tone be reminiscent of the Strokes? No. That would be way too awesome. But it might be the case. And once again, the most striking part of the song is Goodarzi.

“Grey Light,” opens with sounds of the ocean, or perhaps rain, soft drum beats, a thick jazzy guitar and an echoey Goodarzi. If John Mayer’s voice has an overly-breathy, trying-to-be-sexy thing that gets old quick, well, Goodarzi does it better. Get ready to waltz to this one.

The band may have found the perfect vehicle for their vision at the The Hotel Valkenburg label. The innovative Boston-based company will not ask Midi and the Modern Dance to sign anything, or to share their creative rights. They just want good musicians to meet good musicians, and that’s what’s happening in August, when Midi heads to Boston to record a split EP with Dear Ulysses, one of their biggest influences. The guys couldn’t be more excited to be a part of what Aldrich calls a “utopian indie commune.” That commune now consists of three Boston bands: Dear Ulysses, the Peasantry and Murals. They’re all friends and they all record, practice and hang out together in a studio they all help run.

According to its founder, Jordan Kelly, who also started Dear Ulysses, “Hotel Valkenburg is somewhere between an indie record label, recording studio, management firm, merchandise manufacturer-designer and booking agent. It’s like a safe haven where artists can come create, record an album, make some money.” So, if you were a new band with no friends outside of Connecticut, that basically sounds too good to be true.

Well, lucky for Midi and the Modern Dance, Hotel Valkenburg says they’re the ones that are too good to be true. “They are extremely talented,” says Kelly in a late-night email. “I mean, I can remember my high school band, we were just awful. I don’t even think we played a show. Furthermore, Midi was just the sound I was looking for, and as it stands Midi will remain my main focus.”

With this chance of a lifetime, or at least a teenage lifetime, the guys are feeling pretty carefree. “I don’t have any stress,” admitted guitarist and EP producer Abelow. “My dad paid for all my equipment,” he says. “And I didn’t work for it, at all.”

And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a rich kid thing. When all you have is time, money and zero worries, it can be endlessly easy to waste the time and the money doing nothing but being 16, and maybe doing some drugs. But the young members of Midi and Modern Dance are not doing nothing. And they aren’t doing drugs, either. “We’re all basically straight-edge,” says McGovern.

Time will tell if they’re doing something significant, but it’s no stretch to say that the combination of their stage presence, vocals and strong songwriting has the power to carry their music out of Westport and out of New England.

“We live in a rich town with a lot of really rich people,” says Goodarzi in an alley outside Toquet Hall. “They are able to put us in situations that maybe we deserve, maybe we don’t.” He looked up and behind him and the others as if to suggest Toquet Hall is one of those places.


You can probably find Midi and the Modern Dance practicing in the Abelow household basement or on stage at Toquet Hall, making the kind of noise that maybe, just maybe, will bring them somewhere of rock-significance. You can see it when Abelow looks like he wants nothing more than to get lost on stage in a jumping fit of guitar spasms. Or when Goodarzi runs through a crowd of less than 50 banging on a tom drum, not knowing he’s whacking people in the head with a broken drum stick. Tell the drummer who strapped a tambourine to his foot at an acoustic gig at Barnes and Noble that the music he’s making isn’t fantastic and original. They won’t even listen to you. There’s always a teenager ready to ignore you if you claim rock is dead. And if enough young people don’t listen, then the claim is not true. In Midi and the Modern Dance, you can find five such teenagers.

Alex Claydon's Band: Upcoming CD, Tour, Lunchaboxes

Photo by Elyse Raby

(Published in The Mirror 5/3/07)
If you're in your own band at Fairfield, there are limited exciting outlets available for your talents. The Levee attracts a total of 50 people per week, and half of them go to Prep. The Dolan Chapel is amazing in theory, but it's a chapel-turned-study hall and everyone knows a priest or something hung himself from the rafters way back when. The BCC and Jazzman's aren't bad, but they are intensely makeshift and sadly lame for a college band. That leaves the smelly Gonzaga Auditorium, the few chances to play outdoors and I don't think I've ever seen a student-run band play at the Quick Center or in Alumni Hall.

The point is, it's not exactly easy to get yourself out there as a band at Fairfield. Unless, of course, you're Alex Claydon's band. If you're Alex Claydon's band, you've played all those places and more, and you've been excited about every single one of them.

Currently Claydon and his regular band, whose name is in the works, are in the studio recording their first album. AJ Piper '08 is still Claydon's regular second-hand (or voice) man and the rest of the band is made up of non-FU musicians. Will Whatley is on drums Pat Cardone is on bass and the group is lucky to have Jen Durkin, from the band Deep Banana Blackout, lending her vocal talent to some of the tracks. They're recording in Monroe, CT in the back rooms and attic of a music store/school owned by musician and sound engineer Jim Swaine, who's doing all the recording for the band.

And after visiting the studio for a recording session last week, it's clear that the process might be more time-consuming than any Engineering class or Philosophy term paper ever completed at Fairfield.

With five songs completed, and at least five more to go, the band isn't even at their halfway mark and they started in mid February. Claydon said this is mainly because they've been juggling classes, work, recording and playing live. Meticulous attention is being paid to every inch of tape that's recorded and from the sounds of "Life Times Too" and "Hold it Down," two finished tracks, it shows.

From seeing the band play live and from hearing his new recordings, Claydon's influences seems to include Allman Brothers Band, Simon and Garfunkel, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton and other tried-and-true musicians with a real knack for creating real and exciting music for anyone who's got ears.

They plan to have all the parts to every song recorded to for a demo CD before the end of the Summer, with a CD finished around the start of school in the Fall. The tracks will be fully mostly unmixed at that time, which means they'll need the finishing touch of a producer. Claydon said the band might be called The Americans by then, but the album name is still up in the air.

His sound engineer, Swaine, is a busy man who'd working into the morning for these guys on at least a weekly basis.

He said, "I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it was a goo project." He couldn't explain what kind of music it is, but he mentioned classic rock. He said it's good that they don't sound like someone else.

"This is no genre stuff, man," he said.

It is always exciting, but also empowering, to hear about the real hard-workers at Fairfield. And there are plenty of talented musicians on campus, and they're all worth checking out as many times as possible, but Claydon and his band have made it their business to be as present as possible. And now you can expect a full-length CD from them in the Fall.

To keep up on the progress of the band's work or to just listen to some tunes, visit www.myspace.com/alexclaydon

The Rolling Stone Interview: Executive Ediotr Joe Levy

(Published in The Mirror on 4/5/07)
It seems that every senior at Fairfield University ends up with some sort of internship at some sort of magazine, PR firm or financial giant. Being no exception, I've found myself working for Rolling Stone in New York City.

The internship has allowed me to take a backstage look at how one of the world's most historically significant magazines works. Most recently I was able to talk with executive editor Joe Levy in his office to talk about the selection process for a cover, the close of the magazine's MTV reality show, "I'm From Rolling Stone" and what actual editors look for when hiring new writers.



Sean Corbett: The magazine survived its first reality show, are there any plans for a second season?

Plenty of us would be happy to do a second season. It really depends on if MTV is interested in doing a second season. And that I don't know. I know a lot of people who do shows with them who don't hear until deep into the process whether they'll do another season. The guys who did "The White Rapper," which was a great show, won't know whether they'll come back to do another. And that was one of the best rated shows on VH1 this season. What they're looking for exactly, I don't know. This isn't a show they went into thinking it would be their top-rated show, although that would have been nice.

SC: Was this originally an idea put forth by MTV or by Rolling Stone?

This is an idea that kicked around a lot, in one form or another. It's something that many people inside the magazine and outside, and in fact people walking down the street might have had after Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" came out. That was five years ago. And almost instantly after it came out, people said "Oh, you've got to do that as a TV show." And doing that as a TV show would have necessitated finding some 15 year old kid who was and insipid genius. So, that did seem one hurdle. The other of course is that, it's just not like it was in 1974. It's not a matter of that magazine not being like it was in 1974, it's entertainment journalism that's not like it was in 1974. It's no longer a matter of waiting around at the stage door and talking your way onto the bus after a gig. It's much more business than that, and everyone knows it.

SC: What were the main intentions behind the show? Was it intended to attract a younger demographic to the magazine?

Certainly I think one of its intentions is to bring the magazine to an audience that might not come naturally to us. With that said, the main intention of the television show was to make a good television show.

SC: And you feel that happened?

Well, you tell me. You know, I guess it happened, if it happened for you. Yeah, I think that the show had certain obstacles to overcome. First obstacle being that the act of writing is not inherently dramatic. You know, the dramatic part of it is struggling to find a story and making a deadline. This is not cliffhanger television stuff. Our intention was to avoid the trappings of a reality show. We wanted to make it about the work, and not about the hot tub or the interpersonal conflict. And it generally did a good job at delivering something that had a more documentary feel than a reality cliche feel.

SC: What do you say about the criticisms of the show, like jumping on the reality show bandwagon?

Well, we hope it was different from a reality show. And honestly, we're a little late to jump on the reality show bandwagon. Which may, in fact, be the criticism. Jumping on the bandwagon is something we should have done while the bandwagon was still picking up speed. If we were jumping on the bandwagon, we'd have to jump on the game show bandwagon. And I would love to find a way to turn the magazine into "Deal or No Deal," but I'm not sure how.

SC: Do you think this show is bridging the gap between MTV and Rolling Stone, two of history's most influential forces in music and entertainment?

You know, the common complaint about MTV is that they don't show videos anymore. Just as the common complaint about Rolling Stone is that we don't cover music anymore. And I've worked here for 10 years, and for a good portion of that time I was the Music Editor and I had to edit 60% of the pages in the magazine. And I'd get a little amazed and pisses when people say we don't cover music, and literally 60% of what's in the magazine, sometimes, is music coverage.

Similarly, I guess MTV has some right to be a little pissed that people say they don't show music videos when by God they do show music videos from five in the morning until nine a.m. That's four solid hours of music videos. People who make those criticisms of MTV mean they don't show them during prime time anymore. They do show them in the morning before school and they do show them in the afternoon, after school. They are there. The show is certainly intended to show MTV as interested in music, and interested in music journalism. And to find another way to put music on their network. For us, it's a chance to highlight the music content of Rolling Stone.

SC: Do you think a show about beginner music journalists reflects a desire for new music journalists, a new voice in the business?

Sure, I mean there's always a need for new voices, broadly speaking. There's plenty of room for new voices, and more encouragement and possibility for new voices in music journalism now than there every was before, and that's simply because the world online journalism means something now. And it really didn't five years ago. The act of music blogging is a very, very different thing than music journalism. And the prominence of Pitchfork and PopMatters as destination sites for music obsessives on the internet really give young voices a place and a kind of leverage a place that they didn't have five years ago.

SC: Do you and other editors look to the blogs for new writers?

If, as a young voice, your hope is to break into Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly or Spin or Altertaive Press, you're trying to the exact same thing that about 7,500 other kids who own a couple of Stooges bootlegs and the new Arcade Fire record would also like to do. And the odds are not good.

The fact that online blogging, or PopMatters, gives a young voice a place to develop and find a voice, is great. That's not the voice of Rolling Stone, and while we are constantly looking for new voices, we're not looking for that blog voice. I'm looking for someone who understands a little more about reporting and a little more about magazine writing. But we have always kept an eye and an ear out.

What I look for is somebody who has more experience than their college newspaper, and who has done something in-depth or intelligent. Original ideas, good writing. I don't want to make it sound too easy, but these are things that are not as common as you'd hope.

SC: Would you say you have a dream job? Interviewing bands, important friends, one of the best music journalism resumes in the world?

Well, I mean, I don't know. When I started doing this 20 years ago, if you told me this is what I'd be doing now I would have said something sarcastic and turned up whatever Replacements record I was listening to.

SC: Now that you have it, is it a job you love?

For me, it's been a great job. You know, I've been here close to 10 years. I love music. I love writing. I love popular culture. I love the variety of things that we cover in Rolling Stone and that I'm able to work on at Rolling Stone. So yeah, for me it's great. And I still get to be sarcastic and listen to Replacements records, so that's cool too.

SC: I read in the online chat posted on Rolling Stone's website that someone asked you about the direction of pop music. You said there are still great bands among the crappy ones, making great albums. You cited non-mainstream pop artists like Of Montreal and The Arcade Fire. Are they worthy of a Rolling Stone cover?

I would love that to be the case. I have to tell you that the cover is there, in part, to sell the magazine, and that I don't get to put my very favorite band on the cover once a year. I would love it if someone would give me one cover to do whatever I wanted to with. I think that it's quite possible that the Arcade Fire is worth a cover, but I actually think that they have to engage an audience a little more before that happens.

SC: So the criteria and process for choosing the cover story, it seems, is about what's most popular at the time. How do you know when it's time to do a Panic! At the Disco cover, followed by Fall Out Boy?

Well, it's a mystery criteria and process. It is not the case that thing that sells the most records is going to automatically go on the cover. It's just not true, otherwise we would have done a Nickleback cover by now.

You can't point to one figure that people seem fascinated with. Or, if there is one figure, they don't seem fascinated in what that figure is doing, they seem fascinated in that person's life falling apart. Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears. Nobody's interested in what Lindsay is doing on screen, or what Britney might do on record. You're interested in what they're doing in the bathroom of whatever club they're visiting.

And in times like this, it's not obvious what to do with the cover. We did a Panic! At the Disco cover, we did a Falout Boy cover. They actually happened closer together than we originally meant. We weren't planning on James Brown dying. But I wanted to do a Panic! At the Disco cover because to me they were a teen pop band. You go to their concert and it's actually like going to an N'Sync concert. Those mother fuckers could put on a show. It's not about whether I like their songs.

And then when the cover comes very close to a Fall Out Boy cover, yeah, it feels like we are suddenly trying to latch onto the emo bandwagon. And it's hard to, because the emo bandwagon is covered with tears, my friend, it is covered with tears.

But, for me, the idea of putting Fall Out Boy on the cover came from the fact that here was a rock band who wanted to make a great record and sell a lot of records. The idea of a band of their nature hiring Babyface to produce a couple tracks. I love Babyface. I think Babyface is a great, great R&B producer. And, to me, it recalls great moments in pop where people were interested in crossing boundaries. Reaching out to new audiences.

SC: What is the most important thing for aspiring music journalists to learn?

A lot of writers are good at describing their opinions, and are less good at articulating something about the relationship between the performer and the audience. And I have to admit, since I'm capable of forming my own opinions, I'm really more interested in someone who can tell me something about the music and possibly an insight into the relationship between the performer and the audience. And it's not easy. Writing about music is hard. I was amazed when I read the Bob Dylan autobiography at how interesting and evocative and dead-on his descriptions of music were. Because I read them thinking, Wow. I know he's a genius and all, but it really isn't fair that he can do this better than other people, as well. It just doesn't seem right.

The oldest advice about writing is to write and read as much as you can. And that holds true. Hunter Thompson talked a lot about typing the writers he loved. Sitting down and typing out a page of Hemmingway or Fitzgerald, to learn how it worked. Now there's a guy who took that idea of reading to the next level. He wanted to literally figure out how it worked, and teach himself the rythms of their prose. And the really interesting thing about Thompson, who started out as a journalist, a daily newspaper guy. An armed forces newspaper guy. The interesting thing about him, sitting down typing several pages of Hemmingway, is there's a writer who's very unlike Hunter Thompston. Who's not florid or Gonzo. Who's controlled and lucid. It shows you that in order to write the way someone like Thompson did, you really have to have the basic skills down down rock-fucking solid. You have to be able to write in the paired-back, lucid manner if you want to take the hinges off, put ether on the floor-boards and drive to Las Vegas, you can.

Theater Fairfield Outdoes Itself, or Why You Should Leave Your Stupid Dorm Room and Do Something

Photos by Theater FU

(Published in The Mirror, 3/8/07)
Have you ever written a play? I mean, really written a play. Maybe you’ve sat down and thought about it, but have you ever spent weeks or months working on lines, character development, mixing humor and dark sarcasm, while at the same time keeping set design, sound cues and lighting in mind? I’d say that few have.
And at Fairfield, those few are seniors Darci Fulcher, Jodie Pfau, Dan Scivoletti and Jared Mezzocchi. Together with Wendy Scola ’08, the team of writers and directors scattered their leadership roles throughout the three one-act plays.
Mezzocchi, somehow right around the same time he finished filming a mind-blowing theater/film project, wrote the terribly honest and ultimately uplifting “Merry Christmas,” which was directed by Scola. Time in the play actually flowed in reverse. The opening scene showed an angry father screaming the truth about Santa to his young son on Christmas morning.
You slowly learned that it’s a legitimate backlash against his wife, who was sleeping loudly with the neighbor on Christmas Eve. But it’s all good, because the play ended with the family happy and the couple in love, all thanks to clever and careful usage non-linear story telling.


Evan Barden ’08 and Elizabeth Thompson ’09 played an all-too believable married couple while Kira Gustafon ’10, and I mean no disrespect, played an excellent and completely adorable young boy. She almost completely became a human puppy – very fun to watch.
Thompson played a perfect tired-of-something, sneak-around wife. At the end of the play, which was actually the beginning, it’s amazing to think that her seemingly pure character is capable of ruining Christmas. But then again, Barden’s character played a pretty big role in that, too.
Speaking of which, it’s important for all future casting teams to know that Barden, with the snap of anyone’s fingers, can go from insanely deranged and frighteningly angry to delusional and depressed to maniacal, and then with another snap he can pull off a loving father willing to give up anything for his wife and child. If there’s a future play with Barden in it, go see it.
Scivoletti penned the brilliant and colorful supervillian comedy “Henchmen,” which was directed by Mezzocchi. It was funnier than what’s on TV and what’s in the theaters, combined. Think: Sarah Silverman Project, Zach Galifianakis, mid-nineties Ben Stiller and late-nineties Dane Cook. Scivoletti knows how to write.
They saved it for last in the line-up of the three, and when the set started to roll out, everyone was already laughing. It was like a movie set, complete with working vault doors, collapsible brick walls, a completely evil kitchen and a water cooler. The audience didn’t even know what to do when a re-bearded man, Jeremy Shea ’10, with a volcano strapped to his head named Lavabotomy walked into Green Baron’s office to interview for a side-kick job. Shea’s comedic timing alone would have saved the play, if it needed saving.
He didn’t get the job because Green Baron, Tone da Costa ’08, doesn’t like to kill people, and Lavabotomy does. This caused for some insanely funny battle sequences, while Green Baron’s secretary packed up her desk an quit her job.
Everything was brightly colored, with dark lines, as if it were all drawn for a comic book. Scivoletti said, in a very “Hollywood Squares” kind of way, he was trying to “achieve world peace” with this play. The serious reason behind it was “comedy needs to have meaning.”
The audience not only carried their laughter pains out the door with them after “Henchmen” closed the evening’s plays, many had no choice but to carry life lessons out with them, too. Life lessons like, if you’re a super villain who wants to take over the world, it’s OK if you don’t want to kill anyone in the process. It’s virtues like this that can make you a more powerful tyrant, a more memorable character and a better friend to your annoyed secretary.
Pfau and Fulcher wrote and directed “Do You Realize?,” perhaps the most important of the three. It was a play about the dangers of relying too much on what other people think about you, and it didn’t come across as cheesy. Don’t ask how they did it.
Conversations between the simply dressed cast members included revealing exchanges between a punk-dressing son and his disappointed father, a soliloquy from an older sister to her younger sister about growing up and staying true to yourself no matter what TV and mean friends tell you. The play comes from a group on campus called “Project Peg,” which is trying to raise some serious beauty awareness. The play held a wonderful message for anyone with a body: “Stop fixing it, it was never broken.”
Each playwright created from scratch, with the help of many friends/co-workers, some of the best and most original theater to have graced any stage, anywhere. To say the performances were impressive would be to sell them short. The performances were professionally shocking and ultimately inspiring to know the actors, crew and directors go to school here.