Page 6
University Daily Kansan, November 5. 1982
Entertainment
Two students create uncommon radio comedy
By VINCE HESS
Staff Reporter
"Tired? Bored? Ugly? All three?"
"Then you need to listen to the Bentford Samage-neck Vegetarian Hypsallergic Infal-
ture."
So goes the promotion for a show on campus radio station JKHJ 91 FM.
Cary DeWit and Peter Gust write, produce and perform in the show, known in short as the "Weekend Comedy CureAll." A new five-minute-long episode of the show is broadcast at 10:20 p. m. each Friday. Each show is repeated at 10:20 p. m. Saturday and 2:40 a.m. Sunday.
Two KU students have made use of their interest in humor and radio broadcasting in the United States.
Peter Gust, Prairie Village junior, and Cary DeWit, Shawnee Mission senior, take a break during the taping of their program,
*Weekend Comedy Care-All* "which will be broadcast at 10:20 p.m. today on JKHK 91 FM. The pair writes and produces the
The show was first broadcast the week of Oct. 8 and will end the weekend of Dec. 3.
DeWit, Shawnee Mission senior, recently described the show as a cliffhanger with
"It's very silly " he said.
Gust, Prairie Village junior, said the show was "silly. zany and a whole lot of fun."
The two main characters in the show, Smiilin Jack Grandpa, played by DeWit, and his young grandson Skiper, played by Gust, have run into the likes of the Animal Husbandry Liberation Organization, the Militant Shakepearians and the Sirem Half Goon.
IN THE FIRST episode of the program, Grandpa and Skipster dress as ducks and ride around a lake in a motorbottle. They encounter the AHLO but escape and, in the second episode, they are attacked by a group advancing the mandatory teaching of Shakespeare for children starting at age 4.
From there, the two are taken hostage by a space ship. During the adventures of Grandpa and Skipper in space, the show spoofs, among others, how to survive on a planet, people who eat pizza and telephone operators.
The show also has comedic advertisements and public service announcements.
In tonight's episode, Grandpa and Skipper contend a Bulgarian whose meal is interrupted by the crash of their space ship. Suddenly a loud voice reads a public service announcement.
The message urges listeners to chew foods, such as steak, thoroughly.
"Chewing foods gives full nutrition which builds stronger bodies so people won't beat you in the fight."
DeWit said that he and Gust got the idea for the show last summer when they were dice jeckes
for KJHK. Gust wrote a half-hour comedy script for the station, DeWit said, but the station had not planned to do it.
The pair submitted a revision, DeWit said, but the station rejected the script again. However, he said the station agreed to let them write an official material for the special features series.
Rey iwrin, Prairie Village senior and former manager of the special features series, said KJHK listener surveys last spring indicated an interest in interview shows and in comedy. At this fall's enrollment, he said, the station signed up people interested in working on special
DEWIT AND GUST submitted the 30-minute program, but Irwin said he proposed the five-minute shows because he had not heard their work. He said he was surprised by the
"I was really impressed by show one," he said. "They're really clever."
Dale Gadh, associate professor of journalism and radio TV film and adviser to KJHK, said that DeWit and Gust were the first students to propose doing a feature series for the station. Finally the station has had to recruit students to cover the press on a subject, such as how to fight inflation.
Gadd, who teaches a course in screenwriting, said he had thought the show would consist of what many other beginning comedic writers have done, including an obvious deviation from the normal is considered funny.
However, he said, he was surprised when he listened to the first episode.
"I thought that it was very sophisticated comedy," he said. "The guys are great."
Gadd said that in his four years at the station, no other students had written original comedy.
DeWit said he was considering a career in radio production, and Gust said he had been interested since high school in writing comedic sketches. But DeWit said he, he was not sure of his writing ability.
AS FOR THE IDEA of a continuing series with two major characters, Gust said. "It just kind of
"There's no better place to find out than college." he said.
Gust said the episodes were compilations of humorous ideas that he and DeWit occasionally wrote down.
"A lot of it is spontaneous ideas," he said, "when we revise these ideas when we sit down to write them."
The pair writes a script every weekend, DeWit said, and writes two weeks ahead.
Writing an episode takes at least five hours.
DeWit said, and production work, such as doing the voices and adding the sound effects, usually takes longer.
DeWit said they did not know whether the show had regular listeners other than their friends.
"We get a lot of feedback from people we've never met before — at parties, running around the park."
Gust said he had heard most favorable comments, along with some constructive criti-
"The last show we've had on has gotten the best reaction so far."
Gadd said the station would conduct a listener survey later this semester to obtain comments on the station's programming, including the "Weekend 'Comedy Cure-All.'"
ONE OF THE BIGGEST problems for the pair has been production work, Gust said. Neither DeWit nor Gust had worked extensively with special effects, and sometimes the pair has had
to improvise when a desired sound was not available
In the show to be broadcast tonight, Grandpa and Skipier are scheduled to return to earth in a space ship after their odyssey in space. The script calls for the ship to crash onto earth and bounce around to different continents. However, and no tape of a "boing" sound was available.
Gust said that he and DeWit had done most of the voices for the program, including the voices of women, although they have asked some friends to help out.
"We just went ahead and said it," he said.
Gust said the most enjoyable aspect of the program for him was the opportunity to be
"You start out, and you just have this idea," he said. "This little idea makes you laugh.
DeWit. Gust. Gadd and Irwin all compared the
program to the comedy of Monty Python and National Lampoon
"It's not true satire," Gadd said, "but there is some social comment."
GADD SAID the pair set up humorous situations well and also used sound effects well.
"You've got to follow it," he said. "You've got in really neat for some of their stuff."
DeWit and Gust said they were not sure what they would do next.
DeWit said they might do live comedy at local clubs in addition to a program on JKHK.
The name of the program has been the pair's biggest obstacle so far. Gust said, but the name is often not obvious.
"It was a hard thing coming up with the name," he said.
But, he said, the ideas for the scripts were easy to obtain.
'They just pop up in your head.'
Dance to spotlight big band sounds
Gordon Lee "Tex" Beneke, a former member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, will bring his own 15-piece orchestra to KU to play at the Kansas University p.m. tomorrow in the Kansas University Ballroom.
Beneke and his 15-piece orchestra will play, among other songs, "Moonlight Serenade." "In the Mood," "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "String of Pearls," B.J. Pattee, associate director of the KU Alumni Association, said Wednesday.
An 20-piece band, the Crimson and Blues Bothers Swing Band, will play at a dance for the classes of 1940-49. The members, Pattie said, are members who played in campus dance bands in the '40s.
"KU's Fabulous Forties" is the theme for Homecoming. Benedek was a member of Miller's group in the early forties. Although his band played on for many years after the war, Miller was presumed lost at sea in a plane crash in December 1944.
The subtitle of the dance will be "Music in the
Miller Mood."
Bands," Pattee said. "When people went out, they went dancing in huge ballrooms. Everyone was danced."
The popular bands of the time were Big
Shelly Stucky, Hutchinson sophomore and public relations chairman for SUA, said that the dance would be like those that Pattet described, that the band would also play some newer music.
People of all age groups are expected to attend the dance, she said.
The Alumni Association, which is co-sponsoring the dance with SUA, is having the dance because the classes of the '40s are having a reunion. Pattee said.
This is the first year a reunion for a whole decade of classes has been held together, she said, and the idea seems to be successful. There are over 1,000 tickets have been sold by the alumni office.
Other Homecoming activities include a
parade, starting at 2:30 p.m. today at the Chi-
lori Campus and then returning to campus for 1940s alumni. The buses leave at 3:45
p.m. today from the front entrance of the Union.
Tex Beneke
On campus
TODAY
CATHOLIC CENTER WORSHIP will be at 12:30 p.m. in Danforth Chapel.
HOMECOMING PARADE will be at 2:30 p.m. on Jayhawk Boulevard, from the Chi Omega house to the X-zone parking lot. Floats will be displayed from 7 to 9 p.m. in the X-zone.
BIOLOGY CLUB will meet at 4 p.m. in the Sunflower Room of the Kansas Union.
MARANATHA MINISTRIES will meet at 7 p.m. in the Pine Room of the Union.
ASTRONOMY CLUB will meet at 8:30 p.m. in m.son Lindley Hall if the skier is clear.
MID-AMERICA REGIONAL Institutional Research Conference will be all day in the Union.
search 'Umerterbe will be alu ünyi in the UBM.
SICHIN ANNUAL Career and Job Opportunities conference will be all day in the Big Eight Room of the Union.
"OPERA IS MY HOBBY," with James Seaver, feature in *Memoriam*: Maria Vittorio Serrano.
TOMORROW
SIXTH ANNUAL BLACK ALUMNI-
STUDENT Career and Job Opportunities
conference will be all day in the Big Eight Room of
the Union.
"THE VINTAGE JAZZ SHOW," featuring Michael Maker with "American Misselly," was an effort to bring the music back.
"THE JAZZ SCENE," with Dick Wright, will be at 10 a.m. on KANU 92 FM.
ALUMNI RECEPTION for the School of Law will be from 9:30 to 1 a.m. at Green Hall.
ALUNNI RECEPTION at the School of Business will be from 10 to 11 a.m. in the Watkins Room of the Union.
MARANATHA MINISTRIES will meet at 7 p.m. in the Alderson Room of the Union.
"THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK,
with Dick Wright will at $ p.m. on KAU 92"
Layers of reality, illusion and irony in 'Night Music'
Desiree, an actress, played by Cathy Paddock-Hill, Lawrence junior, dictates a letter as her maid, Malla, played by Andrea Dulin, Dallas, Tex., sophomore, takes notes in "A Little Night Music."
Bv ANN WYLIE
By ANN WYLIE Entertainment Editor
Reality and illusion shift and change as easily as scenery moves and characters trade lovers in a Little Night Music." The setting and action带动这个故事在 a play, and, once another play within those.
"A Little Night Music," presented by University Theatre and the Department of Music, opened last night at University Theatre in Baltimore at 8 p.m. today, tomorrow, and November 11-31.
Review
The set, designed by David McGreey, Wichita graduate student, includes three screens depicting a moonlit forest and lake, which suggest reality. However, each screen is painted with a red velvet curtain, suggesting the stage, draped over it.
One scene includes a play, so the stage holds another stage.
Theatre boxes compose part of the set, and they are usually filled with the Lieder quintet, five characters whose job it is to watch the action and comment on it.
Also, there is always an audience. Someone is always on stage who is not involved with the action, but who watches other characters act, as if he, were watching objects, in a play.
Watching is important in the play. Some of the first words uttered in it refer to watching.
"You said I should, watch," Fredrika, an actress's daughter, told her grandmother "in an open house."
Fredrika is played by Tanya Shuffer, Lawrence High School junior
Also, characters often stand in the corner shadows of the stage and watch as they are
discussed by other characters. But this is not reality; they are not affected by what they see or hear.
The real audience is always watching, too, as actors move, visibly, behind screens and on and off the stage.
"A Little Night Music" is set in turn of-the-current Sweden. It is about elegant city couples having romantic encounters at a Swiss chateau on a night night, "a night when the sun never quite sets.
One song, "The Sun Won't Set," is about the white nights and helps explain the madness that goes on in the play — it was not all natural.
"The sun won't set. It's as dark as it's going to get. Perpetual sunset is rather an unsettling thing," the song says.
In the play, Frederick, a wealthy lawyer played by Alfred J. Lata, lecturer in chemistry, has married Anne, a woman nearly 30 years younger than he. Anne, played by Elizabeth Gesling, Ottawa graduate student, is still a virgin after 11 months of marriage.
The smiles are for the young, who know
The musical won six Tony Awards. Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics and Hugh Wheeler wrote the book, based on Ingmar Bergman's film, "Smiles on a Summer Night."
Frederick visits his old girlfriend Desiree, the actress, played by Cary Paddock Hill, Lawrence junior. She is involved with an aging bussar.
The hussar and his wife, Charlotte, played by Margaret Humphreys, Sherman Oaks, Calif., junior, intrude on the weekend, and the romantic shem ruhan begins.
Desiree again falls in love with Frederick. She persuades her aging mother to invite him and his wife and son, Henrick, who is in love with Anne, for a weekend in the Swedish countryside. Henrick is played by Paul Schneider, Lawrence sophomore.
nothing; the fools, who know too little; and the old, who know too much.
Sondheim's score is entirely in waltz time or variations on it. Members of the cast use waltz movements even when they are not specifically dancing a waltz.
"The entire show moves as to a waltz." Gregory Hill, assistant professor of theatre and speech and drama and director of the play, said recently.
The songs amuse and entertain, as well as further the action of the play, as most Sondheim songs do — "Company" and "Follies" are two of his other musicals.
"The music tells the story as much as the scenes do," Hill said.
"Send in the Clowns" is the most famous, but not the most important, of the songs. The clowns are the fools that the night smiles on, after it first seems to frown.
Another song, "The Miller's Song," deals with the practicality of love, Petra, a play, played by Sabrinia Hamble, Merriam sophomore, sings it. Although she's romantic — she dreams of marrying the Prince of Wales — she knows she's about love and enjoy her youth while she can.
"There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed. And there's many a tryst and there's many a bed . . . And a girl must celebrate what passes by." she songs.
The funniest songs are as amusing for the action that accompanies them as for the words. In "You Must Meet My Wife," Frederick sings of Anne's virtues at Desertree tries to seduce him. He writes that she shygrasses him on Anne's qualities as a wife, shaming her eyes and ready to roll down her stockings.
Another ironic song is "In Prate of Women," which the hussar sings when he doubts his lover's strength.
"The least that I can do is trust in her, the way that Charlotte trusts in me," he says.