KU Presents! Opens Season Oct. 8 with Improv Musical for a Hilarious Evening
By Susan L. Peña
KUTZTOWN, Pa. – “Shamilton! The Improvised Hip-Hop Parody Musical” is coming to Kutztown University’s Schaeffer Auditorium 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, to open the KU Presents! 2024-25 season. The production, created by cast members of the famed Chicago improv musical group, Baby Wants Candy, is sure to lift any drooping spirits with improvised raps and songs, dance and music, and plenty of laughs.
Tickets for “Shamilton” are $35; $31 for students and seniors and can be purchased at the KU Presents website or by calling the KU Presents! Box Office 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, at 610-683-4092. Established to be the center of cultural life at Kutztown University, KU Presents! serves the campus and community by bringing world-class live arts that entertain, educate and enrich.
Appearing as a special guest with the cast and band will be renowned beatboxer Mark Martin, who won the American Beatbox Championship in 2016, appears frequently on MTV and has given a Tedx talk on beatbox and education.
According to “Shamilton!” director Al Samuels, a cast member of Baby Wants Candy in their regular appearances at Second City in Chicago, “Shamilton!” is not designed to be a parody of the beloved “Hamilton!” musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, but rather an homage, loosely based on its structure and style.
The way it works, Samuels said, is that the audience is asked to call out names of historical, currently famous or even fictional characters to be the protagonist (for example, Rasputin, Mary Todd Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Harry Potter or Taylor Swift). The cast selects a few, and the audience votes on these. After the winner is selected, the cast and band launch directly into the show.
“They have to be up-to-date on current events, history, popular culture, and politics,” Samuels said. “The cast members are all trained in musical improv, as well as singing, dancing and acting. We rhyme, so we have to practice constantly; you have to set up and pay off in rhyme.”
What rhymes with Rasputin? How about shootin’ and disputin’? You get the picture.
Samuels said Baby Wants Candy specializes in creating on-the-spot musicals based on audience suggestions (“Sweeney Toddler” or “Kidz Boppenheimer, for example) for Chicago’s Second City venue, which he remembers attending during his childhood in the Chicago area.
While attending Dartmouth College in New Hampshire as a business major, he and his classmate, Rachel Dratch (SNL alum), joined the improv group at college and he took acting classes. After graduating, he was on his way to a corporate job when he decided to bag it and go back to Chicago to pursue a performance career, continuing as a grad student to study performing, writing and directing. “I would do this for free,” he said. “I love it so much. And it’s fun for the audience because it’s just for them; no one else in the world gets to see that exact show.”
Samuels said directing and rehearsing the traveling show mostly consists of practicing the overture and choreography, and practicing creating raps, which requires fast reflexes. “The music never stops. You have to stay with it,” he said. Only highly trained, experienced improv artists can succeed at this.
While the audience will notice a resemblance to “Hamilton!” in the overture, the music is original, created by the band, which Samuels called “the true talent in the show. They create a new score for every show.”
“The show is so much fun for us, and we love the interaction with the audience.”