Second City will return to campus to perform live from Centennial Hall this Saturday night to perform and improvise scenes on controversial topics such as race and women’s rights.
They are an acting and improvisation group where famous “Saturday Night Live” alumni such as Tina Fey and Chris Farley started to become household names.
Green Co., one of three Second City touring companies, will perform “Happily Ever Laughter” on Sept. 28 at 8 p.m.
“Second City is really known for more satirical comedy, and that is something that we are really going to be implementing…issues that [students] are going to be dealing with, such as young voters [and] people going into the workplace,” said Green Co. cast member Rachel LaForce.
Molly Calhoun, special events committee co-chair, whose committee partnered with the Multicultural Programming Board to bring Second City to Augustana, knows people will come to the event, since Second City is so well known and established, and also, “they don’t hold back.”
Along with not holding back, LaForce also said how diverse her company was when she compared Green Co. to Fox’s television show “Glee.”
She believes that there is at least one character on “Glee” that everyone can connect with and understand since all of the characters are so diverse, just like the members of the company she is a part of.
“College is such a transformative time in your life, and you’re really trying to figure out who you are and what you believe in,” said LaForce. “Green Co. really has that opportunity (to display that diversity) and tries to take advantage of that opportunity by not just representing a white, male background.”
Sophomore Tyler Memming, who saw Second City’s Red Co. perform last year at Augustana, thought the group was funny and “really interactive” with the audience.
He enjoyed one of their improvisation games that involved four scenes with two actors in each. The scenes would rotate every time the current scene became too inappropriate.
“They weren’t hysterical, but they were worth a good, hardy chuckle,” said Memming, who will most likely go see the group again on Saturday.
When discussing Green Co.’s upcoming performance, LaForce said the group is “always custom tailoring” its shows so that they keep the routine new at every college they perform at.
Along with keeping their material fresh, LaForce said that performing at a new college “is a new opportunity for us, and we try to figure out the cool places where people hangout and really assimilate ourselves onto campus the short time that we are there.”