20 Years of Laughs

The Lighted Fools, Haverford’s sketch comedy and improv troupe, celebrated their “20th Hamiversary” with a packed show in Stokes Auditorium on Saturday night.

In 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved, Comedy Central officially went on the air and, on Haverford’s campus, a small group of self described “scraggly misfits” formed an avant-garde acting troupe called the Lighted Fools. Last Saturday, the Fools, who now focus exclusively on sketch comedy and improv, celebrated their “20th Hamiversary” in front of a packed Stokes Auditorium.

The show kicked off with a reunion of many Fools alumni who all performed an improv skit with a setting shaped by audience suggestions. Then after the current fools performed another improv skit, they paid homage to their predecessors by performing six old skits written by alums.  One of them, “Praise the Lord!,” a film-noir spoof written in 2002, really took the audience back in time. The main setting of this particular skit is Yarnall House, once the weekend social hub for Haverford, but now a “quiet” theme house. Despite the age of the skits, the material still appeared as fresh as ever, eliciting boisterous laughs throughout the two-hour show.

If you missed the Lighted Fools anniversary show, don’t worry. They will be performing their winter show in a few weeks, on Dec. 9 and 10, at 8 p.m. in the Stokes Auditorium.
-Matt Fernandez ’14