Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

When Justin Kaufmann of Schadenfreude opened last night’s Traffic show – A Celebration of Chicago Sketch Comedy - by classifying his troupe as “regular” (compared to kevINda which is, umm, African-American), it was pretty clear that I had better loosen up and pluck that pin out of my — well, you know.

And yet, nothing (let me repeat: nothing) could have prepared this genteel Southerner for the spate of offensive, appalling, embarrassing and (ultimately) hysterical sketches presented last night. Even I couldn’t keep a straight face when kevINda offered a theory on the private sex life of Martin and Coretta King. And, yes, actually, it is totally obvious that Curious George is shrewdly designed to indoctrinate children towards pro-slavery political views.

And thanks to Schadenfreude, I will never be able to utter “backburner” or “ambidextrous” again, which will surely hamper my ability to make intelligent conversation. And forget about eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in public. (Seriously, folks — what’s going on there?)

I’m not convinced that kevINda and Schadenfreude solved racism, per se, but they did make me laugh so hard I cried. That’s the same thing, right?

This entry was posted by Michael Vinson on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Traffic (08). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.