Josh Kornbluth is FUNNY! Part stand-up comedian, part hilarious storyteller, part character actor, he's been compared to Woody Allen and Lily Tomlin. That description should give you an idea of the event taking place in Fisher 135 at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 27: it's a one man show starring one of the funniest Einstein-wannabes-who-never-made-it you could ever wish to meet. Don't let the title of the show The Mathematics of Change mislead you. It may sound like a lecture, but it's not. The MTU Student Entertainment Board brings this one-man-riot to campus as an end-of-the-season gift to campus and community, and the show is FREE OF CHARGE!
Josh Kornbluth's story is autobiographical, sometimes painful, sometimes poignant, always entertaining. When he was nine years old, his father told him he would be the greatest mathematician that ever lived, and young Josh believed him. In school he was a nerd who knew no bounds, getting the better of a tyrannical math teacher and even the class bully with his genius math skills. On graduating from high school, the math wiz entered Princeton as "Lord of Numbers," but it wasn't long before things just didn't add up (pardon the pun), and his pride took a fateful fall. He "hit the wall" with calculus and ended up with a degree in political science instead of math. However, his massive miscalculations DO add up to a very entertaining ninety minute monologue that'll have you laughing to the nth degree.
With a deadly eye for the human and architectural quirks of an Ivy League campus, Kornbluth takes the audience through his first tumultuous semester at Princeton, starting off by painting a satirical picture of orientation rites. He is subjected to large doses of humiliation when he finds that part of orientation involves learning to swim, and he is terrified of water. Later he finds a part-time job in a biology laboratory, but discovers he lacks the stomach to inject mice with a carcinogen, and in his ineptitude ends up sticking himself. He's obviously lived to tell the tale, of course.
Whether he's impersonating a surly teaching assistant or describing experimental physicists ("guys with advanced degrees who turn knobs"), Kornbluth is a terrific mimic. His cast of larger-than-life characters-his burly Communist father, Princeton's WASP-y president, a female Russian swim instructor afloat with fluttering backstroke, and a catfish with a mean underbite, among others-are brilliantly portrayed. He explodes onto the stage at the beginning of the show and maintains energy and intensity throughout. His only prop is a chalkboard (he'll surely appreciate the generous supply on the Fisher stage) along with a generous supply of chalk. He tells extraordinary anecdotes of campus high jinks, does dazzling math tricks, such as "casting out 9s," an amusing check for addition problems, and, in his unique brand of performance art, moves effortlessly between what the New York Times calls "rollicking entertainment and pained self examination." Kornbluth's award-winning monologues have been published and have enjoyed critically acclaimed Off-Broadway and Actors Theatre of Louisville runs. He's now writing a script for one optioned by Universal Pictures and another by Miramax.
This event is funded and presented by the Michigan Tech Student Entertainment Board and coordinated through the University Cultural Enrichment Department (487-2844).