Ardie Fuqua
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Ardie Fuqua

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The best kept secret in music

Press


"Comedy Night Attracts Oversized Audience"

by anna mendoza
Comedians Steve Hofstetter and
Ardie Fuqua drew in a much larger
audience than the venue could contain
when they performed at Bryn Mawr
College on the evening of September
2nd.†The performance was originally
intended to take place at the Centennial
Campus Center, but the vast crowd that
showed up overreached the safety quota
in the event of a fire, and the audience
of Bi-Co students was asked to transfer
to Thomas Great Hall.
One possible reason for the show’s
popularity was the fact that it was a
Friday evening—the beginning of the
weekend procrastination period. Or
maybe most people were exceedingly
happy to be reunited with their buddies
after a long summer break, and so
groups of friends were eager
to attend one of the year’s
first campus events together.
Still, the fact remains that the
performers were truly worth
watching.
“You idiot,” I said to my
friend when she asked if they
were Haverguys.”They’re
professionals, for crying out
loud! Fuqua has been seen
on NBC’s Friday Night
Videos and HBO’s Def
Comedy Jam and Apollo
Comedy Hour. Hofstetter has
appeared on NBC’s Ed, Law
and Order and Last Comic Standing,
and was featured on the network’s
tribute to Johnny Carson. Both are New
Yorkers: Fuqua’s career began at the
Uptown Comedy Club in Harlem, and
Hofstetter is a graduate of Columbia
University. (And for those of you who
have wondered what kind of education
makes a comic: they’re both journalism
graduates.)
Their show attempted to address
social issues in addition to getting laughs
out of the audience. Given that they were
performing for a young yet highly
educated group, the material had to be
both entertaining and meaningful.
Race was one of the major topics that
both comedians brought up. To make
fun of race until an audience realizes
how stupid it is to make fun of race is a
difficult thing to pull off. Even now I
am wondering whether they were trying
to make a statement with their clothes.
Those present may have noticed that the
white guy (Hofstetter) wore black and
that the black guy (Fuqua) was dressed
in white.
Fuqua’s best joke on the subject of
race was that all his white friends called
each other “n****r” for kicks, but
strangely enough they referred to him
as “dude.” Hofstetter, who described an
Asian Tri-Co student as “the one guy in
Comedy Night Attracts
Oversized Audience
the audience who couldn’t speak
English” was promptly booed by the
audience, but made a swift recovery by
changing his topic of concern to Bryn
Mawr’s idiosyncrasies.
The crowd burst into applause when
he observed the gothic-style Great Hall
and the portraits that hung on its walls—
which visiting comedians on the whole
tend to be rather fond of mocking—and
commented that he expected our
scholars to be wearing “capes, not
robes.” Afterwards he called out to the
audience: “What’s the weirdest thing
you’ve asked Athena for?”
Unfortunately, nobody ventured to
answer the question.
Another favorite topic was gender
differences and stereotypes, ever so
popular in an all-female environment.
One has to admire the
courage of two young
men who can get up in
front of an audience
that consists of about
a couple hundred girls
(and probably less
than five guys) and
start joking about the
tendencies of women
(much to the
amusement of the five
guys).
Fuqua was adept at
imitating a pissed-off
female’s high pitched
voice, and skillfully demonstrated the
common declaration of “What-ever!”
and the overly melodramatic exit that
follows it. He also invited two members
of the audience—a guy and a girl—to
act out a scenario that involved a
hilariously stinky pickup line. But when
he obtained a purse belonging to a
student in the crowd and threatened to
open it, he too was stopped in the act by
cries of disapproval and had to give it
back. Evidently, Mawrtyrs can be very
clear about the kinds of jokes they like
and the ones that cross the line.
Immediately after, they demanded a sex
joke out of the comedian, who
reluctantly granted it (thinking that it
would not be well received); the roars
of laughter that followed appeared to
leave him pleasantly surprised.
In short, a Bryn Mawr audience seems
to require comedy that is intelligent and
politically correct, although the women
here don’t seem to mind laughing at
themselves every once in a while, or
acknowledging the humorous aspects of
campus culture. Comedians need not be
cautious and inhibit themselves from
showing us their full performance. We’ll
decide when they’ve gone too far—and
it looks like we outlasted the N.Y. celebs - The College News


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

While attending Rutgers University as a Journalism Major, Ardie ventured to New York City¡¦s Uptown Comedy Club in Harlem. There he watched a lot of young guys getting laughs and thought it looked like a lot of fun, he had no idea you could make a living from it. After working just one year in comedy, he became a regular at the Boston Comedy Club, Comedy Cellar and the Comic Strip. He¡¦s performed on NBC¡¦s Friday Night Videos, HBO¡¦s Def Comedy Jam and Apollo Comedy Hour and has been on BET¡¦s Comic View 4 times. This past fall and into the new year, Ardie can be seen on numerous VH-1 shows including 100 Cheesiest Video Tricks, Britney Spears Most Shocking Moments and Awesomely Badder Fashion.