Two days after Brandeis alum and Last Comic Standing finalist Myq Kaplan '00 came to campus, the organizers of FEANY, the department within Student Events in charge of entertainment activities were still jittering with excitement as they prepared for their weekly meeting. Fina Amarilio '12, Elena Korn '13, Eva Ying '12 and Rachel Nelson '13 were able to sit down with justArts in the Students Events office to talk about how they organized last Tuesday's Night of LOLs, discuss who ImprovBoston is and reveal exactly how Brandeisian and awkward Kaplan is.

JustArts: How was the turnout for the event?

Fina Amarilio: One hundred and fifty people came, which was a great turnout, especially on a Tuesday night, and they were all really into it. So, overall, I think it was a great success.

Elena Korn: I thought it was great. A lot of people showed their support and came, and I think they were highly entertained.

JA: Did you all meet Myq Kaplan?

Rachel Nelson: Yeah, he was cool, a little bit nerdy and Brandeis-y. I was surprised at how short he was.

JA: Really? How tall is he?

Rachel Nelson: He's taller than me, but I think he's around 5 feet, 3 inches.

FA: He's really funny in person and very smart. You can tell just how smart he is based on what he says. It also helps that he went to Brandeis, so we get him. There's a type of mutual understanding. He knows the type of people who go here and all of the stereotypes.

JA: Did he make Brandeis-specific jokes in his performance on Tuesday?

FA: Well, when he went onstage, he was so funny, and he was like, "I've paid Brandeis for so long, and now I'm getting a little bit of it back."

EK: He made a lot of Jewish jokes and talked about the Brandeis owl.

JA: What did he say about the owl?

EK: Kaplan made jokes about our sports teams, about how, against all of the birds we could have chosen, we had to choose the owl-the one that always looks like it's reading. [laughs] Something like that. I love that.

JA: Could you tell me a little about the opening act of the night?

FA: Devon Hermenau '11 emceed the show, and ImprovBoston, a local sketch comedy/improv group opened the show. I spoke to ImprovBoston, and they were very nice. Elena worked more closely with them.

RN: We chose the group because we wanted someone to warm up the audience, get them laughing. Two stand-up comedians in a row would get people bored. It'd be nice to get the audience involved early on, get them in a good mood for when Myq comes on.

JA: What was the difference between ImprovBoston's act compared to a stand-up routine?

FA: There were five or six of them. Also, you don't just sit there and listen to one person for a long time; you kind of interact with them.

RN: It wasn't scripted; it was improv, obviously. It was completely off of the top of their heads. I didn't know they had a keyboard player with them. She carried their thoughts with her music. There was one act where they had to act out a horror film, and she played this type of horror music just off the top of her head. The audience participation was good and bad because they could shape their act based on what people screamed out in the audience, but then also, if you can't think of something funny, you can't think of something funny, you know?

JA: Tell me more about ImprovBoston's use of audience participation.

RN: They did some games where they pulled up people, and they did some games where they went out into the audience and asked certain people and they did some games where they stayed onstage and asked people to shout out things.

JA: What's going on for Student Events? Anything exciting for the future?

FA: Nov. 13 will be Louis Louis; it's our theme week for the fall semester. You might remember it's called Bronstein in the spring-[it's] basically the same thing. Last time, our theme was Louis Jr. and featured Nickelodeon shows. So our theme this year is "Cruise to Paradeis: S.S. Louis Louis." It's actually organized by another department within Student Events, but the theme is really cool. There's parties and a Caribbean street fair. It's going to be really fun, with nine events in 4 days, and they're all themed events.