A good comedy show may offer an unforgettable night of laughter, but sometimes it brings even more.
The 10th annual Charitable Laughter show will have its first and only performance this Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Iron Gate Theater. All five comedy troupes of Singers, Musicians and Comedians — better known as SMAC — plan to pull all their tricks to raise the spirits of their audiences — and money as well.
“This is a really cool thing because all five of the comedy groups are going to perform together,” College senior Noah Goldstein, chairman of Mask and Wig, said.
This year’s beneficiary is the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, the third-oldest school of its kind in the country.
“We chose this organization because this year’s Penn theme is the Year of Sound,” Chirag Pathre, administrative coordinator of the Performing Arts Council and chair of SMAC, said. “There are so many different events going on [at Penn] but we want to make our event related to the whole community.”
Asked whether the performers will make any adjustments in their performances for deaf audiences, Pathre answered that while he believes some students from the PSD will attend, the show would still be geared primarily towards members of the Penn community and the neighborhood.
College senior and Bloomers chair Layla O’Kane confirmed Pathre’s comments. “There will be members from [PSD] to be in our show, but we aren’t going to have any arrangements in our performance especially for them.”
Instead, SMAC hopes to help the beneficiary through donations, Pathre explained. Tickets go for $5, and SMAC expects to raise at least $500 for PSD from this annual one-night show.
Aside from the show’s charity aspect, many of the performers are excited merely to collaborate with other campus comedy groups.
“We started preparing for the show from the beginning of the semester,” Pathre said. “This is also a great chance for the comedian community to work with each other.”
Especially excited are the groups’ new members, who will give their first performances at Penn this Saturday night. “We are going to have four freshmen performing this time, and other groups have their own as well,” O’Kane said.
