Comic Relief
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 4, 2001 9:00 p.m.
Photos from Piso Mojado Cast members of Piso Mojado, from top
left, include Jonas Ball, Tom
Flynn, Matt Bibb, Nathan
Johnson, Stephanie Sheh, Anna
Wenger, Arthur Millikin, and Matt
Yamashita.
By Chris Young
Daily Bruin Contributor
Caution: Piso Mojado.
A sketch comedy group whose name means “wet floor”
in Spanish, Piso Mojado will do just about anything to make its
audience laugh.
“People say that we’re something you can’t see
anywhere else,” said group member Arthur Milliken in a recent
interview.
The group, composed of eight UCLA alumni, was formed a
year-and-a-half ago and has since produced four productions:
“Lemon-Scent,” “Yellow Again,” “A
Very Piso Christmas,” and its current show, “Wax On,
Whacks Off.”
The group performs every Wednesday in Hollywood and begins its
newest show, “Me So Piso!” on Feb. 21.
Every member of the group, which includes Milliken, Jonas Ball,
Matt Bibb, Nathan Johnson, Minh Nguyen, Stephanie Sheh, Anna Wenger
and Matt Yamashita attended UCLA. They met through the Shakespeare
Reading and Performance acting group, which is sponsored by the
Department of English and the UCLA Center for Student
Programming.
With its zany and slapstick humor, Piso Mojado finds a way to
insult, joke about or parody just about every member of society.
This includes pop culture topics such as the “Survivor”
television series and the WWF.
“We do anything and everything to get a laugh,”
Milliken said. “We have everything from cheap fart jokes to
expensive fart jokes.”
Piso Mojado, whose influences include comedy group “The
Kids In The Hall,” stands out among other groups in a variety
of ways.
“What’s different about our group from other sketch
comedy acts is that we are much uglier as a group,” Yamashita
said. “In other groups you have people who want to be actors
and actresses like in a sitcom ““ our faces, you
wouldn’t want to see on your television. We’re funny in
a way that a freak show is funny.”
Piso Mojado’s antics do have a certain freak show
tendency, but that’s the way the group likes to keep its
shows ““ funny and on the edge.
“In a past show we had a sketch called “˜Cirque du
Mojado,’ where there was a magic act with
magicians/gynecologists who hypnotized a woman and pulled various
things out of her uterus, including a rabbit and a family of
clowns,” Yamashita said.
The group boasts additional gimmicks that you could not see in
other sketch comedy groups. For instance, when audience members
enter the theater, they are handed a free beer and a small raw
potato. According to members, the beer is for quaffing during the
acts and the potato is for throwing at the stage and performers
when something funny happens.
“(The potatoes) are the audiences way of showing extra
applause, but some people see it as a projectile weapon,”
Milliken said.
The potato idea came to the group due to a fluke. Its original
intent was for it to be thrown into the audience by members.
“In the beginning we were going to throw mashed potatoes
at the audience,” Jonas said. “So I baked a whole bunch
of potatoes at home and ran to the show, but then we thought it was
too late, so we decided that the audience should just throw them at
us.”
Because they have been friends for a number of years, the
members of Piso Mojado have a group dynamic that is unique. They
share a level of trust and togetherness that resembles a family,
offering each other support and advice.
The members of the group also said they enjoy working with Piso
Mojado over other comedy groups because of the flexibility and
creative liberty they have to do whatever whey want.
“It’s hard to have a group of people who are willing
to do stuff so outrageous and ridiculous,” Milliken said.
“It’s hard to go to a comedy group and give them an
idea like, “˜OK, we have this guy onstage masturbating, and
then another guy comes in dressed like a sperm.'”
Producing and performing its own shows according to its
members’ ideas, however, isn’t the easiest feat. The
group members create the productions completely by themselves,
starting with the writing, set and costume building, leading to the
onstage choreography and eventually the actual performance. They
don’t even have a stage crew.
“The friendships we have are based on the work that we do
together,” Milliken said. “By going through the hell
that is putting up a show, a bond forms, and that bond is very
deep.”
Another obstacle for the group is the fact that all the members
have day jobs in addition to their Piso Mojado responsibilities.
They mentioned finding it difficult to put in all the hours needed
to make a show ““ usually about 30 hours a week. Furthermore,
while they are performing one show, they are rehearsing the next
one, as well as writing the one after that. And with all this
responsibility also comes the stress of performing the work.
“We’re always completely terrified that our stuff
isn’t going to be funny, every show,” Ball said.
Whatever the manner in which its exceptional humor strikes the
audience, however, Piso Mojado stressed that no matter what, they
don’t want to alienate the audience.
“To have the audience laugh along with us is a great
feeling,” Johnson said.
COMEDY: Piso Mojado performs every Wednesday at
8 p.m. at the Dorie Theater in The Complex in Hollywood, 6476 Santa
Monica Blvd. The Best of Piso show, “Me So Piso!” plays
Feb. 21, 27, and 28. For questions and tickets call 310-283-3889 or
e-mail [email protected].
