After years of being on the road and being performed at colleges, Chuckleball, a sports musical revue created and produced by Rutgers alum Jason Goldstein, will open off-Broadway this month at New York City's Snapple Theater.
Chuckleball is a "unique theatrical event" in which "four actors impersonate dozens of top athletes, has-beens and soccer moms in about 30 musical numbers," according to press notes.
Chuckleball was conceived in 2003, while Goldstein was pursuing a masters degree at Rutgers soon after his 2002 graduation from Livingston College.
"I first took the show to Joe Mancuso's Theater Appreciation class and did a workshop," said Goldstein, who while at Rutgers founded the Livingston Theatre Company. "It was hastily done but the audience response was phenomenal."
Goldstein, after seeing the response at Rutgers, was hoping to take Chuckleball on the road to universities everywhere, and in the summer of 2005, opened in New York to prepare itself to do so.
"People saw it and began asking us for bookings and we began sending it on the road," Goldstein said.
Goldstein and his collaborators constantly update the material in order to keep up with the changing headlines. The newest version is titled Jailhouse Jocks.
"This year's show is called Jailhouse Jocks because right now there is a lot of criminal stuff going on with sport celebrities," Goldstein said.
He is, of course, referring to recent events in the news such as Michael Vick's dog fighting case and OJ Simpson's Las Vegas robbery.
But it's not just sports fans who will understand and enjoy Chuckleball.
"Things like steroids in baseball, the George Foreman grill, David Beckham - they're household names," Goldstein said. "It's written so you don't really need to know anything about sports to have a good time. If you just kind of half listen to the news or read the last page of the New York Post, you'll know what's going on."
Goldstein continues, "A lot of people get intimidated by the sports thing. They think, I'm not going to like this show because I know nothing about sports … If you're a diehard sports fan you're going to get it on a different level then if you're not. But if you're not a diehard sports fan, you're going to get it on an even different level."
Chuckleball is also aiming to reach college-aged audiences, having been successful at past student orientations at Rutgers, selling out the last 3 years to packed crowds at the Livingston Student Center.
"The show is targeted at a very broad audience but especially college students," Goldstein said. "College students tend to really respond well to it."
Chuckleball is modeled after the long running, largely successful musical revues Forbidden Broadway and Capitol Steps, which are Broadway and political parodies, respectively. But he realizes the merging of sports and theater in to a revue show might strike some as an odd pairing.
"A lot of people think that sports and theater are not a natural match," Goldstein said. "But what's interesting is that sports and theater have gone together for many, many years."
"I think you have to take a chance with this show," Goldstein said. "We're not targeting just your strict theater goer or strict sports fan - but people who like to laugh and have a good time. People like myself, who have just as much fun going to a basketball game as an opera."
Chuckleball: Jailhouse Jocks will run for 10 weeks at the Snapple Theater in Times Square. Tickets are available through Ticket Master or at the Snapple Theater box office. Student Rush tickets, priced at $25 each, are available the day of the performance with a valid student ID.
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