By Nia Beckett, news correspondent
On Oct. 2, Northeastern’s Council for University Programs, or CUP, hosted a night of laughter with comedian Chris Gethard, a Broad City actor and host of “The Chris Gethard Show.” Students gathered in Blackman Auditorium to watch Gethard’s hour-long stand-up comedy show.
The show took place at the beginning of what CUP Comedy Chair Sarah Lytle referred to as “Red Black Panic Attack” – the week around midterms in which college academic life starts to pick up.
Stand-up comedian Christi Chiello, who debuted on “Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battles” in 2016, opened for Gethard. Chiello’s half-hour performance included riffs on her very unique voice, a Clint Eastwood impression and her newest standard for men that she dates: straight.
“Once you go Chiello, you will start to like fellows,” Chiello said to the crowd.
Chiello frequently engaged with audience members, taking advantage of the small crowd size. She light-heartedly interrogated a couple on their dating life and a fifth-year student on the university’s co-op program.
Following Chiello, Gethard took the stage. He immediately announced the theme of his performance: ever-present fear in this country.
He asked the crowd if anyone had already determined their plan in the case of an apocalypse. After touring the country and asking this question at each of his shows, he determined that each location has a unique survival plan. His dad’s apocalyptic advice was to “follow the rats.”
Gethard followed with his opinions on the lack of courage in starting fights over the internet. He suggested that internet fights are about fear, in which each person is afraid to be wrong and continues to press their opinions.
First-year computer science and journalism major Cathleen Zhang admired Gethard’s confrontational approach to today’s issues.
“In the current society, we are so afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or saying the wrong things that we don’t say anything at all because we have to be ‘correct,’” Zhang said. “I liked how he said that we need to not be afraid of admitting to things.”
Over the course of the show, Gethard let the crowd in on the worst and coolest moments of his life. The scariest moment, he said, was the moment just before he approached a large, violent man who was physically harming a woman in public. What terrified him most was how everyone else around him had become so numb to this culture that they did not take action.
Gethard closed with the idea that social media is a distraction, not action. He posed a call for “real activism” as opposed to social media activism.
Ilana Hirschfeld, a first-year environmental studies and political science double major, had never seen any of Gethard’s work before the show but was very pleased with his performance.
“I liked his honesty,” Hirschfeld said. “He was able to tie in his life and bring a serious component, but then turn it around and make it humorous.”
Stay up to date with upcoming CUP events on their Facebook page. Gethard’s new book “Lose Well” will be released on Oct. 16.
