O’Brien takes UVA to comedy final four
Recent UVA grad Kathleen O’Brien heads to Aspen hoping to carry the Cavs to victory in the Rooftop Comedy National College Comedy Competition May 30-31. In what almost looks like an ACC tournament, O’Brien, an English education major, squares off against funny people from Duke, UNC, and Xavier.
First-time stand-up comedienne O’Brien was a semi-finals winner April 6 in Arlington, and then had to round up online votes to get into the final four. “I had to do a lot of shameless self-promotion,” she admits, particularly since UVA has never been in the competition before.
Because she was a fifth-year in the Curry School, “I don’t know as many undergrads,” says O’Brien. “I talked to the Cavalier Daily and they never got back to me.” She did get help from UVA’s media relations department and from the Curry School, and says, “Probably as this becomes more of an annual event, more people will know about it.”
The competition begins at 8:45pm EST May 31 and can be seen live on the rooftopcomedy.com website. After the four contenders do their eight-minute routines and four short films are shown, the audience has a 30-minute window to vote online. Her family and friends will be in Aspen to support her; the winner gets $1,500 and the national title of funniest college student.
O’Brien, 23, who plans to be a high school teacher in Northern Virginia, finds that students respond well to humor. In fact, it’ll be pretty hard for her to not be funny.
She refuses to handicap her competition. “I’m worried about all three of them,” she says. “I don’t know what new jokes they’ll pull out.”
