The William & Mary Bedfellows, a new addition to the College’s comedy scene, will present its sophomore effort Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m. in the University Center Commonwealth Auditorium. The show is loosely titled “The First 38th Biennial Silver Dollar Pancake Picnic Luncheon.” Tickets are $2 per person, but pairs of students can gain admission for the price of one ticket.
p. The show follows the success of the group’s debut, “College According to Roman,” which the Bedfellows produced last fall.
p. The Bedfellows perform sketch comedy, according to junior Dean Edwards. “Our show is absurdist, although all sketch comedy is,” he said. “It’s hard to escape that strain. We aim to provide a different means of presentation. I would compare it to Monty Python — we want to combine film and live action on stage.”
p. For those familiar with the comedic stylings of 7th Grade Sketch Comedy, there will be some differing elements to the Bedfellows’ show, including a longer piece, approximately 20 minutes in length, which will be more like a sitcom or a one-act play. There will also be a musical interlude between the two halves of the show.
p. In the wake of recent campus events, such as the Sex Workers’ Art Show and Tracy Morgan, the show promises to be edgy, but not vulgar. Edwards said the group was trying to appeal to a broad spectrum of people while still considering the college student age group. The show is described as “touchy without being disgusting.”
p. Edwards was realistic, though. “You can’t always please 100 percent of the people.”
p. Edwards said he and the other students that make up the Bedfellows met mostly through campus theater productions. “I knew a lot of people, been in various plays with people that had the ability to write and produce,” he said. “In our case, it was about making a venue through our collective means. We aren’t here to compete with the other groups. Our goal is to diversify comedy on campus.”
p. After the group came together, Edwards said the brainstorming session to figure out what to call themselves was arduous. “The decision was hookah-induced, a result of autonomic thinking. It was a great struggle,” he said. “There were a lot of eunuch-based names at first. Ultimately, we realized that none of us were eunuchs, so it didn’t really fit.”
p. From there, the discussion shifted to ideas that fit more with the age of the College. “We looked at more archaic words, and ‘bedfellows’ isn’t really used in everyday speech,” Edwards said. “It’s just ridiculous, that’s a good way of describing it.”
p. If ‘Picnic Luncheon’ is well received, Edwards said that the Bedfellows are planning to perform an encore performance March 4, which will be loosely based on the “Vagina Monologues.”
