Name: Claire Schmidt
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Philadelphia
Major: English and History
What is Bloomers?
Bloomers is Penn’s all-female sketch and musical comedy troupe. We’re a group of around 50 women who produce two original shows per year, and we function like a real production company. We have a business staff, tech crew, costumes, writing, and cast.
What is your involvement in Bloomers?
I’m a writer for Bloomers. There are ten of us, and we get to work closely with the cast to write original sketches, song parodies, and one-act plays. It’s pushed me out of my comfort zone, because it’s much easier to question your idea of what you think is funny when you’re surrounded by so many girls who have different ideas of what makes them laugh. Plus, this year we organized a festival for women in comedy called LaughtHERfest on September 19th at Penn. It’s a way for young female comedians to talk about their experiences, but also for us just to get together and fangirl about each other. Plus Vanessa Bayer from Saturday Night Live (and many more) came!
What is the funniest thing that has happened to you during your time in Bloomers?
In the week leading up to each of our shows, we hand out flyers and sell tickets on Locust Walk. It’s a generally dehumanizing experience, because Penn students are shockingly good at speed walking past and pretending they don’t have limbs to take a flyer. I was flyering pretty hard—I’m sure some yelling and coercion made it in there somewhere—and I saw a guy from my freshman hall. Taking the opportunity to show how many friends I had, and to sell a ticket, I yelled at him and told him to come to the show, and to come over that instant and buy a ticket. I was seriously so confident that he would dash over and buy tickets for him and ten of his friends. In any event, he completely ignored me, pretended he hadn’t heard me, and literally ran past to avoid me. His feet were almost little blurs of gray Keds, he was so desperate to escape my flyer. My flyering self-confidence took a hit, I won’t lie. But I persevered, mostly because I had signed up for a two-hour shift.