Families break up for various reasons, from divorce to death to … graduation?
At least that’s the case for My Mother’s Fleabag, which held its Spring Big Show on Friday and Saturday, marking not only the comedy troupe’s 45th anniversary but also the graduation of its senior class.
“First and foremost, it’s a family,” said Will Sweeney, one of My Mother’s Fleabag’s graduating seniors, in a February interview with The Heights.
It was a special show for senior directors Sweeney, Libby Howenstein, and Henry Durning, all MCAS ’25, as it was their last performance with a group that defined their college experience.
This year’s Big Show began with a well-edited and hilarious introductory video explaining the location change from their usual venue in the Vandy Cab Room to Fulton 511. The video followed the directors as they searched for a new venue, spliced with interviews from fellow Fleabaggers either looking for a new location or just bad-mouthing the now-forsaken Vandy Cab Room.
After the video and some quick introductions for the seniors, the troupe jumped into their first game. Double Blind relies heavily on audience participation, where an audience member puts two Fleabaggers into a position to begin the scene. Audience members then yell out “freeze” and two new actors swap in, coming up with a new scene based on whatever positions the audience froze the other two in.
The next game was Growers and Shrinkers. The scene starts with two actors, but a new member is added periodically until eventually five Fleabaggers are on stage, the scene shifting with each new member. The actors then start to peel off until it’s just the original two, making for an unpredictably amusing skit.
Following that was the game A to Z. A director asks the audience for a letter, and the participating Fleabaggers must start each sentence with the subsequent letter until they get back to the original. Despite a gaff or two with the letter order, the two Fleabaggers delivered a humorous scene about a forgetful pirate looking for his treasure. If anything, the mess up made it all the more funny.
Pan Left Pan Right was played after A to Z. This game consists of four Fleabaggers and four different scenes. A director yells “pan left” or “pan right,” switching out the participating actors.
An audience member chose a starting word, in this show, “beast,” which each scene had to incorporate, whether that was just by calling another character a beast or playing on the word for a “bee sting.”
Another sketch relying on audience participation, My Movie featured four Fleabaggers coming up with movie titles that match the two initials given by the audience. If the director likes the title, they will ask for the tagline that, if deemed creative enough, the Fleabaggers will do a scene based on. The director can pause a scene and ask for an expansion on whatever their fellow Fleabagger throws out there, the scene showed off the Fleabaggers’ creative prowess.
Next was 185 “blanks” walk into a bar. An ongoing skit from Fleabag, members take turns coming up with jokes that end in a punchline related to whatever “blank” was given to them by the audience.
After the entertaining 185 “blanks” skit was Emotional Zones. The stage is separated into three different zones, each for a different emotion. Two Fleabaggers create a scene based on an audience-given location, and as they move across the stage, their behavior changes to fit whatever emotional zone they’re in at the time. This made for quite an acting spectacle.
The second-to-last game was Scene Dub, one of the night’s more creative scene concepts. Two Fleabaggers take the stage to act out a scene based on an occupation given to them by the audience. Two other Fleabaggers are sent into the audience with headphones to watch the scene without hearing it. They are then tasked with trying to recreate the scene of the first two without hearing any aspect of it.
The final game was Day in the Life. An audience member is brought up and interviewed by a director. After hearing about what a typical day in their life sounds like, the whole troupe tries to act it out. Of course, they add their own humorous takes on what the audience member shared, turning a mundane day into an outlandish and entertaining experience.
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