Rutgers Night Live is ready to serve you a hot, steamy plate of original live sketch comedy this weekend. Should you eat it up? Read what director Dan Conroy and founder Dominick Nero had to say about their beautiful improv baby. Spoiler alert: bourbon, trolls, nightmares.
1. What is Rutgers Night Live?
DC: Rutgers Night Live is a brand new approach to theatre at New Brunswick. With all original sketches written by cast members, the show takes inspiration from the age-old program Saturday Night Live, incorporating musical guests, a host, and a news segment in each show.
RNL gathers members from Improv Troupes No Diving and A 4 Effort, as well as theatre groups such as Cabaret, and College Avenue Players, and even writers from The Medium news team.
RNL is the only organization on campus devoted to creating truly original content. Other clubs perform cover songs, they act out famous musicals– Rutgers Night Live was built from the ground up by a group of committed, fearless students, devoted to quality and originality. They had no Professor show them the ropes, no Alum to teach them how to run a production. Everything was done in a way they saw fit, and a great comic style has been born out of this hard-earned method. The troupe will lose a ton of its founding members after their spring show, but the tradition of RNL has taken Cabaret Theatre by storm, and soon enough, all of Rutgers will realize that this group of ambitious comedians is doing something really important for the University’s culture.
2. What’s your writing environment like- A writer’s room, one mad genius, or child laborers?
DC: I myself like to start an idea after two solid weeks of bourbon drinking and high-stakes bear gambling. By day 13 I have a revolver by the bed and a weepy song in my heart, without a pair of pants in site. A friend usually finds me covered in my own vomit and despair, and after I get some coffee in me and a warm chamomile bath, I start writing my nightmares.
9 out of 10 times, it never gets in.
3. What do you take most seriously about live comedy?
DC: Keeping the atmosphere light and uninhibited. The purest comedy for me is comedy that is not pressed down and bogged down with little details. The funnier your comedy is to you, the funnier it will be to the audience. Structure is important, but so is enjoying your craft.
On a serious note, Dom had this to say: “It’s weird seeing a dream come true
4. If you could have any host (alive, dead, whatever), and any musical guest in the world, who would they be? Kenneth B. Cop and Muffin Lord are options, but Nickleback is off the table.
DC: Host- Robert Goulet
Guest Host- Robert Goulet with a pan-flute (Zero Mostel on Hurty-Gurty)
5. If we come out to see Rutgers Night Live, what are the most exciting/funny/shocking things we can expect to see? Leave us filled with wonder.
DC: If you pinkie-promise to come see RUTGERS NIGHT LIVE V: DEATH YOU TO THE KING, you will be guaranteed:
*Trolls!
*Lunch-Ladies!
*Wheelchairs!
*Swashbucklin dandies!
*Celebrity pleads for money!
*Ham of mass destruction!
*Harry Potter references
*Cat Men!
*Cat women!
*THE ORIGIN OF COMEDY
*Robots!
*The Drab Four!
*Inaudible Superheroes!
* Dads that double as eagles!
AND SO MUCH MORE (NOT REALLY!)
Where: Cabaret Theate
When: Friday, September 28th: 8:00pm
Saturday, September 29th: 8:00 and 11:59pm
Crissy Milazzo is a contributor for the Rutgers Review online and in print.