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<p>« Gallagher Country - Part 1 By: Eliot Glazer | Main| Catie Lazarus: Never Not Smiling » Monday Mar 10 2008  Out of Africa My Mind @ The UCBT - 3.6.8By: Keith Huang</p>
<p>Monday, March 10, 2008 at 12:12PM</p>
<p>Few things are quite so painful as unrequited love, and Nick Zimmerman knows it all too well in his one-man memoir show, Out of Africa My Mind.</p>
<p>It's the weekend at the University of Chicago, and Zimmerman is pacing about his freshman dorm room, hoping that someone--anyone--will come to his theme party based on the 1985 blockbuster movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Out of Africa. The audience quickly learns that Zimmerman, like all party hosts, threw the soiree largely to be near his One True Crush, Will Green, a guy whom Zimmerman had shared a touching moment with weeks earlier.</p>
<p>From there, we find that Zimmerman's love interest in Will escalates from crush to nearly life-altering obsession. Zimmerman assures me, "The show's about me and making fun of me--not making fun of Will." He adds, "We're actually friends now."</p>
<p>That anyone would throw a dorm party where guests are expected to recite lines karaoke-style from Out of Africa is pretty lame; that anyone would throw a dorm party and not serve alcohol is unthinkable. But it's this cluelessness that makes Zimmerman's show fun to watch.</p>
<p>Zimmerman is a generous performer who avoids the cheap laugh. As a result, the laughs find their way to him, mostly because his premises are so simple. Here is a man who creates his own trainwreck of an evening, and here he is years later guiding us through the debris.</p>
<p>Like most black-box shows, the transitions involve colored light. During which, Zimmerman creates a humorous tableau, shaded in crimson, reciting Streep's breathy voice with lines from the movie like: "I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills." Maybe it's just his pronunciation of "Ngong Hills" that's funny. Or maybe it's his subsequent explanation of how he mimics Streep's Danish accent: "You really have to go for the umlaut."</p>
<p>Seated beneath an Out of Africa poster, Zimmerman avoids breaking the fourth wall by addressing the only guest at the party, a disposable engineering student named "Ralph" who comprises several University of Chicago classmates, including "a guy who lived in a single room with nothing but buckets of metal parts." The scenes are all garnished appropriately--he bundles himself in a red, puffy jacket to brave the notorious South Side wind, he hoists a Ziploc bag filled with whole-wheat Fig Newtons and he is palpably excited as he preps himself at the computer before opening an email from Will.</p>
<p>As a barometer of any good show, the writing includes a few turns that render real sympathy from the audience: "At the end of spring quarter I dropped out of school, moved home with my parents, and waited for Will to come... or for me to die."</p>
<p>We first spotted Zimmerman as an improv neophyte in the Project Improviser web series, in which he finished in the final three. Since then, he has peformed at the UCB and also The Magnet, where he improvises with "Commando." Directed by John Flynn, Out of Africa My Mind can be seen Thursday, March 27, at the UCB with The Lance & Ray Show.</p>
<p>The Apiary | 3 Comments in Show Recap Reader Comments (3)</p>
<p>This show rocks!!! March 10, 2008 | Jon Well done! March 11, 2008 | Eliot Nick is wonderful! March 11, 2008 | Jill Post a New Comment</p>
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