Acclaimed comedian and actor Dave Chappelle made Cohen Auditorium his own Sunday night, improvising for almost two hours while puffing on cigarettes he bummed off a high school student in the audience.
Chappelle, covered in denim, fearlessly walked on stage to headline the annual Spring Comedy Show, launching right into the masturbation jokes and visibly catching a good deal of his audience off-guard. He ragged on the war on terror, especially anthrax: "You can't bring a country to its knees by sending a curable disease through the mail."
Inspired by the flashes in the audience, Chappelle introduced his White Voice, meant as a parody of all White People. As someone took a picture, he said in a dull monotone, "Look! The n-gger's working! CLICK!" The audience responded wildly. In fact, much of Chappelle's humor was racial, but as he said later on, "You know I'm just kidding." For example, he compared the beverages drunk by whites and blacks: whites drink juice, while blacks know only of beverages labeled "drink."
White Chappelle: "Would you like some grape juice?"
Black Chappelle: "Nigga, what the f-k is juice?! Get me some grape drink!"
Chappelle made a point of interacting with the Cohen crowd, at one point likening it to a "living room" and pretending he was Montel Williams leading the crowd in discussion. One group of students continually insulted Tufts' reputation. When the role-playing Chappelle asked what was so bad, he got the reply "Fat girls!" from another corner of the auditorium. After about 45 minutes of well-delivered comedy and well-done audience interaction, Chappelle left the stage.
He then returned for an unplanned, 75-minute encore. Chappelle sat down on his stool and begged the audience for a cigarette. A high school student in the first row obliged, and Chappelle promptly lit up onstage. As thin wisps of smoke rose amongst Cohen's blue velvet curtains, Chappelle's comedy took on a wholly conversational air. He dealt with any topic the audience suggested or asked him to revisit.
At one humorously tense point, Chappelle found himself entwined in a momma-joke battle with an individual in the back of the auditorium. The man, a heavyweight from Roxbury, approached Chappelle, shook his hand, and sat back down, screaming, "Don't talk about my mother, motherf-ker! I'm from Roxbury!"
Chappelle replied, "I'm not talking about your real momma; I'm talking about your joke momma. Your joke momma got a p-ssy on her hip so she can make some money on the side!"
The comedy ebbed and flowed as Chappelle smoked two more cigarettes and eventually paid the student he'd been borrowing them from $20 cash. He talked about slavery ("Could you imagine if they had slavery now? I'd probably buy a few...Nigga! Change the channel! Get me my porn tapes!") and the black future ("If a black man made a time machine, that shit would only go to the future!"). He added to Chris Rock's visions of a black president, stating that we need a "National Anthem Remix."
Just before 11 p.m., Chappelle finally left the stage amidst applause he surely deserved. As the crowd left, Entertainment Board members handed out complimentary shot glasses - an unexpectedly fine touch on a night of fine comedy.
Local comedian Rich Ceisler opened the show. His musings on the "war on terror" got the crowd roaring - he mocked the presence of uniformed guardsmen in airports and the name of America's most recent military operations ("Enduring Freedom. Sounds like a maxi-pad to me.").
