Two penguins are standing on an iceberg.
Unknown Author (?)
One penguin says to the other penguin:
“It looks like you are wearing a tuxedo.“
And the other replies:
“What makes you think I’m not?“
A joke. Featured in the likes of A Prairie Home Companion radio show and Twin Peaks. A joke without an origin. But a joke that becomes the origin for a small theater company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A theater company that produces the world premiere of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.
In 2012, a group of friends, most of them weighed down by looming student debt, nothing in their pockets but dreams and a Theatre degree, comes together to form a theatre company. They borrow a name, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, from a fact taught in their theatre history class. How contemporaries of Shakespeare, like Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, came together after college to write original works. History would go on to call them University Wits. So, The University Wits Theatrical Company is created to produce original works, diving headfirst into the world of theater – careless, confident, and carefree.
The University Wits is what makes me a writer, a playwright, and a director. Without the things I learn from founding and running a theater company, I would not be where I am today. I start as an actor in the company’s debut production, then become a member of the non-profit board. I serve as treasurer, vice-president, and eventually president before moving to Alaska in 2018. In those six years, I write and direct five original plays. Each one of them teaches me something new. And each one, in one way or another, tells the penguin joke.
It starts as an accident. The first two plays the Wits produces happens to feature the joke. The third production doubles down and tells the joke as well. And when it comes time for me to write the fourth production, the joke becomes an institution. A penguin even becomes the logo and mascot of the company.
The first full-length play I ever write is the first full-length play I ever direct. Shadows at the Sanford is a time-travelling drama without a time machine, without science, and without a race against the clock to save the world. It is a race against time to save yourself and the ones you love from being lost to the past.
The play is born from my love for time travel stories. From a very young age, one of my favorite movies is Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Perhaps an odd choice for a kid in elementary school, but its tangible and attainable time travel dazzles my young mind and the haunting love story awakens my romantic nature. It is a movie I return to frequently while writing Shadows at the Sanford.
And finding a way to write the penguin joke into the play seems unusually easy. I use it as an artifact of the future that our time travelers, Alan and Eliza, bring back with them to humorously confound their 1880s counterparts, John and Katherine.
JOHN: Just one more time.
From Shadows at the Sanford
KATHERINE: Are you sure?
JOHN: I must decipher this.
KATHERINE: All right. Here it is. One penguin says to another penguin “It looks like you are wearing a tuxedo.” And the other replies, “What makes you think I’m not?”
JOHN: (after a pensive pause) Confound it, I am still lost.
KATHERINE: As am I.
JOHN: So, is the penguin actually wearing a tuxedo?
KATHERINE: Maybe we should have Alan tell this joke of his again.
JOHN: Maybe we are not meant to understand it yet.
KATHERINE: Or ever?
Laughter always meets this scene for the audience members who know of the joke’s frequent appearance. I keep the joke in the play during rewrites and revisions, and when I publish it along with its companion novella, Shadows, in 2023, the joke remains. The joke remains when I sit down to start working on my second play.
If my love for Somewhere in Time can be traced back even further, then the search would lead straight to 1978. Almost ten years before my first breath on this world, my favorite movie of all time flew into movie theaters. Superman: The Movie is now seen as a film classic and as the first superhero movie, though deemed somewhat antiquated by today’s standards. The looming presence of superhero movie fatigue will probably outlive its subject’s death, but for a little boy growing up in the 80s and 90s, I couldn’t get enough of Superman.
Somewhere in Time and Superman: The Movie share many things. They both feature time travel without the use of a machine. Both of their directors would go on to direct mirrored projects – Superman’s director, Richard Donner, directing a time travel movie (Timeline, 2003) and Somewhere in Time’s director, Jeannot Szwarc, directing a superhero movie (Supergirl, 1984). But most importantly, they share their star lead, Christopher Reeve. Growing up, Christopher Reeve is my Superman, and my love for Superman probably facilitates my love for Somewhere in Time. So, it seems only fitting that my next play is about Superman.
In a Single Bound! is a comedy that pokes fun at Superman’s history throughout comics, television, and movies. Written in 2014, it springboards right off of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013). The play tells the story of Kent Crimson, a meek and mild sales associate, who stumbles upon Superman’s cape. The cape finally gives Kent the power to stand up to his evil boss, confess his love for his workplace crush, and leap over the 9-to-5 drudgery of the Tall, Incorporated Building in a single bound! Hilarity ensues when Superman returns to get his cape back.
At the time, I think that the only way to be funny is to be raunchy, insecure of my own sense of humor. So, I write the play for an adult audience, something I come to regret later when I see its more wide-spread potential. Something that further revisions are currently attempting to remedy.
Off-color humor or not, I make sure to write the joke into the play. This time, the comedic sense of the play leans into the now well-established inside joke. When Kent first comes face-to-face with Superman, in a last-ditch effort to keep the cape, he poses a riddle to the Man of Steel.
KENT: Okay! This is the riddle of the two penguins. Two penguins are sitting on an iceberg. One penguin says to the other penguin, “It looks as though you’re wearing a tuxedo.” And the other penguin replies, “So what if I am?”
From In A Single Bound!
SUPERMAN: Are you joking?
KENT: So what if I am?
SUPERMAN: I don’t get it.
KENT: I guess you’re not Superman.
The “riddle” continues to confound Superman throughout the play:
SUPERMAN: (Readies his flight.) Up, up and… wait! (Turning back to KENT.) Are they south pole or equatorial penguins? No, wait, don’t tell me. I’ll get it. (Turning back to the window.) Stupid penguins. Up, up, and away!
From In A Single Bound! (revised)
The original production even uses the joke to poke fun at previous University Wits shows:
NARRATOR: Will the Riddle of the Two Penguins ever be revealed?
From the 2014 production
SUPERMAN: Is it about college kid problems?*
KENT: No.
SUPERMAN: A time traveling wife?**
KENT: Nah-ah.
SUPERMAN: How amazing JFK was in that last play?***
KENT: Close!
SUPERMAN: Really?
KENT: No.
*University Wits’ inaugural play was about college students struggling to figure out their futures.
**The aforementioned Shadows at the Sanford.
***The actor who played Superman, Charles Fortenbacher, had recently portrayed JFK in the Wits’ previous production.
Subsequent revisions to the script remove the specificity of the references, but the penguin joke remains. And even in the drastic shift from comedy to horror, it continues on into my next play.
Time travel, Superman, and horror. If you were to ask me my three biggest interests, these are the answers you’d receive. Naturally then, my next play is a horror play.
The Sixth Guest is a psychological thriller/horror set in 1968 about a dinner with friends that goes horribly wrong when an evil, murderous entity begins possessing each guest, one at a time. The play is flawed and there are many things I would do different if I wrote it today, but within it lies the nucleus of the type of theatre I would go on to favor in my writing. It is a single location set – all taking place in the dining room of the house. It is a full-length continuous one act play – no intermission. And it is a small cast – only five characters. It is also my first departure from the joke.
As the University Wits grew as a company, our focus on original works shifts. Time is always an issue – racing to prepare the next production. And money is also certainly an issue. The previous production must fund the next production and when the productions are written by a group of unknown playwrights, selling out the shows is an uphill battle. So, by its nature, the joke must be left behind for licensed plays written long before the two penguins took up residency at the Wits.
Yet still, we find ways of inviting the penguins to dinner. I don’t write the joke into The Sixth Guest, never finding a natural place for it, but our costume designer, MJ Westmaas, slips a necktie with subtle penguin designs into the show. This subtly continues on into the next play.
By this point, I’ve spoke enough about Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera that I doubt I need to recount its plot. Suffice it to say, just like The Sixth Guest, I never find a natural place to insert the penguin joke into the script. In this case, once again, the costume designer saves the day.
Ashley F Viersen, the production’s costume designer, is tasked with finding masks for the masquerade scene. Some are purchased, some are donated, and one paves the way for the penguins. When masks are allotted during early dress rehearsals, JJ Lindke notices that Michael Pollock’s mask happens to give him a very familiar shape. They come to me to pitch an improvised line.
Michael: What’s to say I’m not?
In many ways, my adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera tells stories I gravitate toward. It is a horror story. It is told through flashbacks – Gaston Leroux traveling back in time through his memory. But while the Phantom sometimes seems possessed of supernatural powers, he is no Superman. The true culmination of my writing rests in the fifth and final play I write for the University Wits. A play about the world’s mysterious, gift-giving superman: Santa Claus.
A Visit from Santa Claus (originally titled The Night Before Christmas) takes the audience and its characters on a magical, time-traveling journey with Santa Claus into Christmases past, uncovering the horrors and healing powers of time. Time travel, Superman, and horror. But more than just combining my favorite genres, it combines my favorite playwrighting elements.
It is a single location set – all taking place in a living room. It is a full-length continuous one act play – no intermission. And it is originally written with a small cast – only seven characters. After revisions (and a title change), more characters are added, but with the option to still keep the cast under 10 characters. And once again, the joke never appears in the script, but we still find a way to invite the penguin. This time, in the form of a penguin ornament on the tree.
A Visit from Santa Claus opens on December 15, 2017, completing my unintentional five-play cycle about time, horror, and superheroes. And only a few months later, my wife and I decide to make a large change in our lives and move 4,000 miles to Valdez, Alaska.
The move is facilitated by a job offer, but is spurred by a desire to find ourselves. In my case, it creates a space and time for me to focus on my writing. I use this time to work, revise, and eventually publish Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera with Next Stage Press. I also use this time to expand and rewrite A Visit from Santa Claus.
In 2020, many theaters across the world suffer from the effects of the Covid pandemic. Dog Story Theater in Grand Rapids is one of these theaters. Despite fundraising attempts, including a virtual staged reading of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, Dog Story closes its doors on June 27, 2020.
Dog Story is the unofficial home of The University Wits. Each and every one of its productions is staged there. And without Dog Story, without productions to fund the next production, the University Wits slowly but surely comes to an end.
But its legacy and influence continues on. A little shy of seven years after its debut at Dog Story, A Visit from Santa Claus is about to mount the stage again. This time, it will be on the small stage of the Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab. On Thursday, June 13th, 2024, a fully-cast staged reading and discussion will be held at the Valdez Civic Center.
And on June 20, 2024, Dog Story Theater is reopening its doors after securing a new location in Grand Rapids. And though The University Wits might not come back to life with it, maybe there’s still hope. Who knows? Maybe the penguin joke will find a new home. Maybe a new group of friends, most of them weighed down by looming student debt, nothing in their pockets but dreams and a Theatre degree, will find themselves once again on an iceberg.
And maybe the penguin next to them will look up and say:
“It looks like you’re wearing a tuxedo.”
And the other penguin, the new penguin, will cheekily reply:
“What makes you think I’m not?”
- Original production stills from Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, The Sixth Guest, and In a Single Bound! by Chris Kotcher.
- Original production stills from Shadows at the Sanford by Scott Baisden.
- Shadows at the Sanford and In a Single Bound! posters designed by Charles Fortenbacher.
- The University Wits Theatrical Company logo designed by Charles Fortenbacher.
- The Sixth Guest and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera posters designed by Scott Baisden.
- The Night Before Christmas poster designed by Janelle Yahne.