Comics Crack Jokes for Charity

A crowded Sanders Theatre echoed with laughter as comedians hailing from Saturday Night Live, the Tonight Show, and Curb Your Enthusiasm performed in Comedy for a Cause Saturday night, raising almost $10,000 for earthquake relief efforts in Pakistan.

The show was sponsored by the Harvard Concert Commission (HCC) and the Earthquake Relief Coalition. Tyler O’Brien ’07, one of the shows’s co-producers and member of the HCC, said that the HCC and the Coalition worked well together.

“[The Coalition would] use their infrastructure and fund-raising capabilities to motivate people and we’d handle the production of it,” said O’Brien, who is also a Crimson editor. “It’s a model that the HCC was interested in experimenting with for the future and so we went with it.”

Rabia G. Mir ’07, a member of the Earthquake Relief Coalition, said, “This was our last event and we’re really excited that it went so very well. The last two months have been very grueling but also very rewarding to see how Harvard has come together to support our cause.”

Zak Tanjeloff ’08, who was also a co-producer, said that one of the reasons the show was so successful was that most people do not have a preferred type of joke. “With comedy, it’s different than with music, because no one has a particular taste for a particular type of comedy,” Tanjeloff said, referring to the failure of the HCC’s planned Wyclef concert. “Funny is funny....Even if it’s not Chris Rock out there or Robin Williams, people are still going to come and pay money for charity.”

He also said that it wasn’t difficult to find comedians interested in the event.

“A lot of people expressed a lot of interest and unfortunately couldn’t come, but we got a really great lineup and we’re really excited to have all these people,” Tanjeloff said. “They’re great comedians and they packed the house.”

The HCC plans to make Comedy for a Cause an annual event with a different beneficiary each year.

But according to Lauren P.S. Epstein ’07, another of the show’s co-producers, the organizers were initially unsure of how Harvard students would react to the use of comedy to raise funds for a natural disaster.

“I was a little nervous about having comedy of that nature on the stage of Sanders (and for such an emotionally-charged cause), but everyone had a great time,” Epstein wrote in an e-mail.

Lisa Lampanelli, for example, made jokes about race, sex, and the disabled.

“I’ve given black men more openings than affirmative action,” she said.

But students generally responded positively to the event.

“I thought it was absolutely hilarious,” Shai D. Bronshtein ’09 said.

“It’s the kind of stuff you shouldn’t be laughing at, but then you realize that it’s okay in the spirit of humor, and you kind of just let yourself go,” Emily S. Etheridge ’09 said.

Adrienne M. White ’08 said “It was fun seeing people who I normally only see in Comedy Central.”

Scheduled to end at 10 p.m., the show lasted longer because the audience was reacting so well to the comedians that they didn’t want to end their sets, according to Epstein.

“[The Harvard students] were really great,” said Todd Barry, a comedian who has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. “They got everything, of course, because they’re smart. And they’re polite and very enthusiastic. It’s all you can ask for.”

Modi, who was the emcee for the show and has toured with Howard Stern, also appreciated the audience.

“I knew that they couldn’t be uptight; I knew that they would be so cool and open to all types of comedy,” he said.

The comedy show was one of a series of events sponsored by the Earthquake Relief Coalition, whose goal is to raise $50,000 for the relief effort. Of the $10,000 raised from the show, $1,100 came from direct donations.

Members of the Earthquake Relief Coalition have been working since October to raise funds.

Owais Siddiqui ’07, a member of the Coalition, said that the group was awaiting a decision from Massachusetts Hall to see how far away it was from meeting its original goal.

“I think once all is said and done, I think we’re going to be around $2,000 short of our goal, but that number depends on what Mass Hall gives,” Siddiqui said. He also said that University President Lawrence Summers’ office had been supporting all of the group’s events by contributing to the events rather than matching the money raised.

“We’ve had five very successful events and it’s really a tribute to how much time and effort people have put into making this a success,” Siddiqui said.

The seven comedians featured in the show, who participated free of charge, were: Modi, Lampanelli, Barry, Azhar Usman, Mitch Fatel, Judah Friedlander, and Kevin Brennan.