Though Eddie Murphy, Gilbert Gottfried and Jim Belushi won’t be present for Parents Weekend, students can still treat their parents to an SNL-inspired laugh.
On Friday and Saturday evening at ARTS/West, Ohio Valley Live will perform Parents Rock!, a sketch comedy show featuring live ’80s rock music from local band Holy Spicoli.
“It’s like a rock concert plus Saturday Night Live,” said Matt Swintek, the lead guitarist for the band.
Ohio Valley Live is a branch theater group of the Ohio Valley Summer Theater, a nonprofit organization that has done community summer theater for 62 years. OVL debuted last spring during Moms Weekend with Manic Moms.
“We were successful revenue wise and got a lot of positive feedback,” said Marlo Tinkham, the managing director of OVST and the director of the show. “There were moms getting up and dancing in the aisles.”
What differs OVL from OVST is the desire to develop a profit-sharing model in which stipends would be available for actors and musicians after the company reached a certain goal. OVST does not pay any of its actors.
“I hope it turns into an employer so I can make a living the way I want to,” said Leslie Heskett, an actor for OVL.
All of the sketches used in Manic Moms and Parents Rock! are from Shadowbox Live, a nonprofit in Columbus. Tinkham said actually seeing Shadowbox shows sparked the idea to bring sketch comedy to Athens. Since then, Shadowbox has been coaching and mentoring the group.
Part of the educational process involves helping OVL create its own sketches — the main goal for Tinkham and the company. The intention is to have a few original sketches incorporated into the next show during Moms Weekend 2014, Tinkham said.
These original sketches would discuss topics closer to home such as Athens and the university, Heskett said.
In both Manic Moms and Parents Rock!, the sketches focus on the interactions and conflicts between parents and their children while the songs are well-known classics such as “I Love Rock n’ Roll.”
“It’s a perfect formula,” Swintek said. “You have a kid and a parent on stage and then a kid and a parent in the audience. It’s like they are watching themselves.”
Of the five actors in Parents Rock!, four were also in Manic Moms and said their experiences in OVL are some of the only times they have ever done sketch comedy.
“I love the variety,” said Heidi Wilhelm, an actor for OVL. “In one night, I play five different characters.”
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