Dani Gagnon
Features Editor
If you read the Voice or at least the A&E section or have ears on campus you might have heard Michael Hatchett ’16 screaming for the 15th time on any given day that Chris Gethard is coming to The College of Wooster this Saturday, April 23. Gethard is a comedian, actor and writer who despite his budding fame can still appreciate that his name is spelled Get-Hard.
Gethard at age 35 has managed to preoccupy himself with a myriad of projects from his own talkshow, The Chris Gethard Show, which airs on New York City public access, to podcasts and to authoring a collection of personal stories entitled A Bad Idea I’m About to Do..
Gethard primarily works as an improvisational comedian out of Manhattan’s Upright Citizen Brigade Theater (UCB). Since he attended Rutger’s University and began taking classes with UBC in 2000, Gethard has practiced, developed and honed his trade into a performance that contains more honesty than audiences may ever expect to encounter on the stage surrounded by the world of spectacle and artifice.
It is his honesty that Gethard retains throughout his work regardless of media. Whether he recounts his stories on stage to an audience feet away from him or to an audience watching him through the digital realm or through the pages of his books or through earbuds on his new podcast called Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, his comedy is relateable and sincere to audiences in any format.
Hatchett ’16, WAC comedy director, commented how Gethard “brings a sincerity and honesty to comedy that is rarely seen and much needed.” It is true, Gethard does not hold back in his performances and seemingly rarely hesitates to divulge incredibly detailed and personal stories of himself in more than a little compromising situations in effort to create the bond between audience and performer that’s often muddled and disjointed in the modern entertainment scene.
His work varies between mediums and shifts to best represent his attempts to access a sometimes sedated humanity in entertainment. He has a YouTube series that documents when he walked from Los Angeles to Bonnaroo relying on the help and goodwill of people he met on his way. Gethard in one way or another manages to access the best in people and the parts that may not often be displayed.
Wooster’s student body, with its wide range of interests, may be the perfect audience for Wooster.
“He’s the perfect fit for Wooster,” Hatchett said. “Every year I try to bring comedians that I think work really well [for the student population] and I know he’s going to knock [it] out of the park.”
The “park” is going to be McGaw Chapel on Saturday, April 23 at 8 p.m. and is sure to be filled with all the students, faculty, staff and strangers that Hatchett had the opportunity to talk the ears off of until they agreed to come to the performance.
In all seriousness, Gethard has been praised by many and rightfully so. NPR’s host of This American Life Ira Glass has repeatedly publicized and discussed Gethard’s work and tweeted “For everyone who keeps asking: that great podcast we excerpted this wk is Beautiful Stories by Anonymous People.”
As Hatchett concluded his comments, “He’s one of the best comedians in the world and we are lucky to have him.”