The following piece is satire and should not be misconstrued for actual reporting. Any resemblance to a student, staff or faculty member is coincidental.
Students gathered in an auditorium in the Mary Graydon Center Monday night, where distinguished alum Jared Geller (CAS ‘13) demonstrated the most valuable skills to surviving life after graduation.
The one-man show, titled “What The Wonks Don’t Know,” featured song and dance performances and interactive segments inspired by all the lessons that Geller wished he’d been given at AU. Life skills, like skipping meals and handing food through a drive-thru window, are among the many things Geller highlighted in the performance.
“I’m always happy to prepare my fellow Eagles for their futures,” he said. “They need to hear this.”
Geller, a former theater major at AU, originally wrote the show with fellow alum Thomas Kellerman (SPA ‘12). The writing-duo, however, had a falling out shortly after Kellerman was laid off from his job bussing tables in Dupont Circle. Kellerman left the project afterwards, an incident that Geller said was caused by “a difference of creative direction.”
“Nonetheless, the show must go on,” Geller said. “Plus, I dumped all my savings on this and I really need some money. Please come see my show.”
Geller spent 15 minutes of the performance on a detailed demonstration of how to set up your own GoFundMe page, a segment that the audience met with rave reviews. “Link in Bio,” as he refers to the scene, is his most deeply personal and reflective artistic achievement, but also his primary source of income. He followed that segment up with a lengthy PowerPoint presentation entitled “How to Commit Insurance Fraud and Get Away With It.”
“I killed it out there,” Geller said. “A few kids even started crying. This is exactly what theater is all about.”
Karen Burke, a senior SPA student, could hardly contain her tears.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I had no idea life could be so scary. I’m sorry, I have to go call my mom.”
The show’s climactic ending featured a spoken-word rendition of the AU fight song; a powerful moment that brought Geller to his knees. The crowd of wonks looked, in a word, quite stunned.
Though the audience chose not to applaud the artist, Geller knows his show resonated.
“Sure, they didn’t clap,” he said. “But you should’ve seen their faces when I delivered my monologue on student loans -- that’s pure emotion.”
Chris Whitbeck is a senior in the School of Communication and The Eagle’s assistant opinion editor.
