How to stop worrying and love the election cycle: ‘This Is the Week That Is’ brings comedy to the presidential race

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With voting day a month away, 1812 Productions is rolling out its annual sketch comedy performance torn from the headlines.

“This Is the Week That Is: The Election Special” is a variety show of sketch comedy, improvised comedy and musical parodies revolving around the Nov. 5 presidential election.

But the candidates themselves are missing. Impersonations of the bluster and pontification of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are as absent as a straight answer in a vice presidential debate.

“We don’t have anybody playing Kamala or Trump or Vance,” said Jennifer Childs, co-creator and head writer. “I do play Walz. That’s the only spoiler I’m giving.”

Learning precisely how Childs, a barely 5-foot-tall comedic spark plug, can pull off impersonating a 6-foot-2-inch former football coach from Nebraska will have to wait until the show opens Saturday, Oct. 4 at Plays and Players Theatre for a month-long run.

“Everyone does a Trump impersonation now. Everyone does it. I think we’re a little tired of him,” said director Melanie Cotton. “It’s the people who represent them — other politicians, the people who uplift them, those are the people who are funny. I think that’s more interesting than trying to do, you know, the 50th Trump impersonation.”

Candidate surrogates appear in one sketch called “Swing State,” a spoof of the old TV show “The Dating Game,” in which campaigns attempt to woo Pennsylvania, played by Lexi Thammavong, who laments her love life and an inability to commit to a long-term relationship with a political party.

“I’m complicated,” said the state, who has toggled between red and blue in recent elections.

The bachelors in the game show are candidate representatives: singer John Legend (Newton Buchanan), who appeared at the Democratic National Convention, and former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan (Robyn Unger), who spoke at the Republican National Convention.

Pennsylvania asks contestants how they would celebrate her 237th birthday.

“All of me cares for all of you,” Legend responds by singing a version of his song “All of Me.” “I’ll smooth your roads and fix your bridges, and I’ll stimulate your business.”

Hogan describes a birthday date in the wrestling ring: “I’ll take you through the Five Moves of Doom, brother!”

This is the 19th year that 1812 Productions has produced “This Is the Week,” spoofing every presidential race since Barack Obama’s first election. The pandemic meant the Biden-Trump matchup in 2020 was skipped.

For Childs, who co-founded the company in 1997, “This Is the Week” is her way of marking history. Every presidential election feels critical at the time; Childs said this year is moreso.

“The difference in the creative room this year versus those past election specials is drastically different,” Childs said. “What feels at risk with this election just feels more enormous than it has in years past.”

“As a theater company, we cannot endorse one person or another, and we try to make the show as bipartisan as possible, but there are some threats that feel not quite apples to apples,” she said. “Student loan forgiveness policy versus jailing your political enemies, doesn’t feel like an evenly weighted thing.”

Earlier in this election cycle, Cotton was worried about “This Is the Week.” Around the time of the debate between Biden and Trump — two older white men who had each been president before, one of whom was perceived to be fading badly — Cotton was not finding much to laugh about.

“As a millennial, I feel like a lot of us, who maybe this is our third or fourth time being able to vote, there’s some anxiety about seeing the same thing over and over,” Cotton said. “We felt like we were going backwards, like a Groundhog Day thing.”

Kamala Harris’ entrance into the race brought a political roller coaster and a young energy that the 1812 writers could leverage into comedy.

“It felt better once things started to change,” Cotton said. “We were like, ‘Oh, there’s something here we can have a good time with.’”

Former third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided an election sideshow that the comedy writers found irresistible, particularly reports that he once disposed of a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park and beheaded a whale with a chainsaw and hauled it home strapped to the roof of his family car.

“RFK is such a rich, rich comedic character,” said Childs. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

Election cycles can be anxiety-producing. Both Childs and Cotton know audiences coming into the theater are likely politically worried because they are, too. Anxiety underlies their humor.

“We have done plenty of comedies that are escapist — just come and don’t think about anything and laugh at something stupid for two hours. The laughs in this show are always different,” Childs said. “There is an energy and a power behind them that I think comes from that need for release.”

“Comedy is a full-body sport,” she said. “What we do on stage is not complete unless the audience is there. They complete the music of our show.”