By Casey Gannon
“Well, buckle up, this is our edgiest show yet,” assistant director and host Joey Barber exclaimed.
Maryland Night Live, a campus comedy group that is structured like the popular NBC comedy show “Saturday Night Live”, held their third season performance on Nov. 18 at the Stamp Student Union’s Hoff Theatre.
Maryland Night Live is a newer campus comedy group. It was formed in the spring semester of 2019, and its first season debuted on May 6, 2019. Each show is referred to as a season since it is structured like a television show.
The line to enter Hoff Theatre was wrapped around the Stamp food court as students were eager to see the show. The show was filled with over a dozen comedy skits, two stand-up comedy acts and two live musical performances. Maryland Night Live opened with a game show titled “Fix That Shell” in which a student impersonated President Wallace Loh and was asked questions about the university.
Junior theatre major Justine Morris has been involved with the group since its first season. The group’s founder and good friend of Morris, Walker Green, asked if Morris would have an interest in getting involved in the group.
“When we originally started Maryland Night Live, he reached out to me and asked me if I would like to be a part of the show and I was their stage manager for the first season,” Morris said. “And, I have been since the show started, I was the stage manager for the first and second season.”
What interested Morris in Maryland Night Live was that it was a new comedy organization on campus, and there were new opportunities that would come with a fresh organization.
“I was very drawn to doing sort of a grassroots comedy organization in terms of figuring out how that was going to work and putting on that production,” Morris said. “It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever done before. And, it’s so interesting and so exhilarating to put together because it’s such a unique process.”
As a stage manager, Morris can observe all of the aspects that go into the production.
“I think my favorite part is, as a stage manager, I like seeing all of the pieces get put together.”
Hannah Davidson, a sophomore journalism and sociology major, attended the show to support a friend. Davidson’s favorite part about Maryland Night Live was the live music performances from Benny Roman and Peter Kim.
“I liked the musical acts,” Davidson said. “Especially [Roman] because he wrote his own songs.”
In past seasons, Maryland Night Live has been produced on the weekends. Davidson’s only suggestion was to have the show run a tad shorter since it was on a Monday night this season.
Taneen Momeni, a sophomore journalism major, is a comedy writer for Maryland Night Live. She got involved after writing an article on the organization during their first season.
“I saw that they were having like applications to be a writer and I was like, two days before the deadline,” Momeni said.
She wrote two comedy sketches for this season of Maryland Night Live. Momeni said that writers are encouraged to write sketches that appeal to their own sense of humor. A goal of Momeni’s would be to perform a stand-up act one day.
Momeni hopes that in the future, Maryland Night Live will recruit more members and continue to expand the show.
“Not many people on campus know that it’s a thing. You have to be a writer or a major in theater to be involved,” Momeni said. “I think if you just want to do something creative on the side, whether it be like stage crew or the band or writing and acting, I think it would just be really nice to get more people in on the action.”
Feature photo courtesy of Casey Gannon. Cast members from Maryland Night Live perform a sketch in the Hoff Theatre of the Stamp Student Union on Monday, Nov. 20, 2019. The sketch was based off of the famous chef, Gordon Ramsey, being overbooked and rating meals from “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Master Chef Junior” at the same time.