David Cerda and the hilarious

Before there was Hell in a Handbag Productions, there was Sweetcorn Playhouse in Andersonville, the 60 seat home of Sweetback Productions where a young man named David goose outlet canada Cerda once official canada goose outlet frolicked in the far gone 1990s. In the heyday of the Sweetcorn, you could go to camp without ever having to deal with nature.

And because the times were less fraught everyone there had a sense of humor.

For those of us who partook often in the Sweetcorn, who could forget “Plan 9 From Outer Space” or “Gator Bait!” (swamps! alligators!) or Cerda’s unforgettably lyrical score to “Scarrie! The Musical,” a show about the world’s most unfortunate pubescent that played at the Sweetback for a whopping 10 canada goose Canada Goose Parka outlet shop months, pushing the parody defense to within an inch Canada Goose online of canada goose black friday sale its life?

Ever one for expedient seasonality, Cerda followed that up with the Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red Hosed Reindeer,” the canada goose factory sale emotionally resonant canada goose outlet online tale of the cross Canada Goose Outlet dressing reindeer and his dear pal, a not gay enough elf. A single Christmas could not contain “Rudolph,” who https://www.dvu-nds.de was brought back to life even more times than Cerda’s signature interpretations of the late Joan Crawford relevance never being one of his worries.

Crawford, though, never snagged a special non Equity Jeff Award, an honor justly being bestowed on Cerda at a June 5 ceremony as a kind of theater people’s choice buy canada goose jacket cheap award, being as the venerable committee was not seen around the canada goose outlet black friday Sweetcorn Playhouse (alas, now defunct, like much of cheap canada goose the fun once to be had in Andersonville).

But Cerda is not defunct. A little gray around the temples, perchance. But unbowed.

In his honor, let us peer a little more into his tawdry past.

Cerda long has been the master of the delicious satiric premise hence one of my favorites, “Joan Crawford Goes to Hell,” wherein you know who had to account for her sins to the gatekeeper of Hades.

By 1999, Cerda and his sidekick, Steve Hickson, were predicting the end of the Sweetback Productions; I remember Cerda canada goose jacket outlet doing some mock boo hoos for me (I was aghast at the impending breakup of the funniest theater in town) on the street. He was right. First the space went, then there was an acrimonious Sweetback split that is unseemly to recount in a tribute to Cerda and, well, not exactly a tumultuous moment in Chicago theater history anyway.

But Sweetback would hang on for a while longer than canada goose outlet its space. In 2000, still under its auspices, Cerda was at the TinFish Theatre doing “Queen of the Round Up.”

“It makes ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ look like ‘The Little Mermaid,'” I wrote at the time.

At American Theater Company, there was “Touched by Jayne Mansfield,” not Sweetback’s finest hour. But in fall 2001, Sweetback produced a parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” at the Berger Park Mansion that remains to this day one of canada goose outlet uk sale the funniest shows I ever saw in Chicago. cheap canada goose That was thanks to a sidesplitting re creation of the famous moment when canada goose outlet canada the poor kids’ party is disrupted by that flock of canada goose uk outlet psychopathic fowl. Lit by flashlights, actors ran away from fake birds on sticks canada goose outlet toronto factory as the audience watched them through the window. You had to canada goose coats be there, but I swear it was the funniest thing you ever saw. Tippi Hedren even showed up at one performance. She looked bemused.

That was followed by “The Poseidon Adventure,” aka Cerda on the high seas. And “Caged Dames,” aka Cerda behind bars.

Most of those who wrote letters to the Jeff folks know Cerda from his role as maestro of Hell in uk canada goose outlet a Handbag Productions, producer of nouveau Cerda, which happens to be very much like the Cerda of old. The times have changed but not the man.