College Avenue Players

of Rutgers University

www.collegeaveplayers.com

What is CAP?

Here is a brief history of the College Avenue Players as told by Fuzz, a CAP veteran from long, long ago:

The College Avenue Players were around as a Rutgers organization back in the late 1970's/early 1980's (we know this because I once saw an old issue of the Scarlet Letter Yearbook). At some point, however, it faded away... Fast forward to the 1988-1989 school year. CAP is officially reborn. The group was started by Steve Kaiser, a Rutgers College student, because there was no theater for non-majors available on College Avenue, and this was considered by all to be a bad thing. Jay Glick (a name you'll hear again and again) comes on board as Technical Director, and for the first year they are essentially a two-person board, with Steve doing all the administrative duties and Jay Stage managing and lighting the shows. The put on a total of two shows (that I'm aware of): The Inspector General and Lysistrata, featuring Jaki Demarest in the lead role. Please note that there was no connection to any of the fraternities... The following summer, the guys get together with a couple of friends who had spent the year/semester in England and had brought back the Comic Relief sketch book. Comic Relief in England is an annual thing, and one year they published a book full of classic comedy sketches so that people could collect money from friends for charity while being very silly in the process. This idea stuck, and in the fall of 1989 CAP debuted Comic Relief! This was where I first met everyone, and the model of multiple sketches, directors, actors and stagecrew all coalescing in Scott Hall was born. At this point CAP was a "Real" Rutgers College organization with a president, vice- president, treasurer and secretary on the board.

Since then everything is kind of a blur, and I don't have time to type it all but here are a few key points:

We did do musicals once. We put on a production of Hair with RCPC, performed in the student center (RCSC MPR as it was known then), and it didn't suck. The following year was Psycho Beach Party, which, in my humble opinion, sucked. After that RCPC decided that they didn't need/want us around, and ran around telling everyone it was all their idea in the first place, but we remember, ah yes we do, when they came to us saying they wanted to do musicals, but didn't have any idea about how to act, dance, sing etc., and could we please help? [BASTARDS]

The fraternity thing... over the years, Comic Relief has occasionally brought in a buch of people from the same frat house, and sometimes they stick around, and others follow in their wake, so it may have seemed like we were part of a fraternity. Earlier on there were a whole bunch of talented guys from Kappa Delta Rho, and then lots of boys and Girls from Gamma Sigma, and later some ADE types, but they all just happened to be in the same fraternity. It did, however, make the cast parties a lot easier to organize, and usually a lot bigger...

At some point it became clear that a lot of our members weren't Rutgers College students, and couldn't occupy one of the voting seats on the board. We came up with the compromise idea to create three additional positions to recognize the input of these non- Rutgers College types, and because the board was too damn lazy to do the work... The original three were Dan Beliveau as Literary Advisor, who basically read endless scripts, wrote a whole bunch, and took on the role of CAP historian. He could tell you some stuff. He also started in Comic Relief I, playing the queen in a short episode of Blackadder 2, opposite me as his leading man (!). Next up was Michael Sacks as Publicist, who got to put the ads in the Targum, make up and hang flyers, get people in to review shows, and generally use his very loud voice a lot. Finally, the Production Coordinator was myself. I basically got to produce all the shows, or find someone else to do it, and check up on everything to see that it was running smoothly (which it never was) or try to fix stuff. After several years of this craziness I finally called it a day in the mid- to late-nineties in order to get on with finishing my degree, get married and generally get on with life.

CAP was some of the most rewarding fun I have ever had in my life. I met and made most of my very best friends there, and I shall never forget some of the fun I had.

Today CAP still starts off its season each year with "Comic Relief", now in it's 14th year. The show is designed not only to amuse Rutgers audiences with sketch comedy from shows like The Kids in the Hall, The State, Mr. Show, and Saturday Night Live, but to bring as many new prospects into the club as possible. With an average cast of around 50, not including crew and directors, it gets a lot of people involved and is a lot of fun. Comic Relief is followed by two other shows, a full length and a night of one-acts. The second semester features two full-length shows and ends with "Wacky Hijinx".

While there is a lot of emphasis on sketch comedy in the club, the College Ave. Players are awfully proud of their ability to do all kinds of shows. In the past, CAP has served up such ecclectic fare as Rumors, Twelve Angry Men, and The Children's Hour. We've never done a musical, because musicals suck. All of our shows, of course, are held in Scott Hall 135. It may be just a lecture hall, but it allows us concentrate more on the actual show than, say, constructing giant set pieces. Our lack of both funding and facilities have made us Rutgers' underdog theater group, and that's just the way we like it.

Scott Hall is located on the northeast corner of College Avenue and Hamilton Street in beautiful New Brunswick, across from the world-famous "Grease Trucks". We are easily accessable by Rt. 18, which is in turn accessable by Exit 9 off the NJ Turnpike