INT. DANA OLSEN’S HOUSE – LATE AFTERNOON, NOVEMBER
Three friends gather in the living room. Victoria, Paul and Dana met at Northwestern University in the late 1970s. They have been close ever since. As they settle in for a Zoom interview about their new 2025 year-end revue “Quick! Before We’re Cancelled!”, simply getting their mics, screens, and computers synced and free of reverb becomes entertaining in itself. Watching them troubleshoot feels like being a fly on the wall during Saturday Night Live’s best years with touches of Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges.
Paul Barrosse was in fact a writer on SNL, contributing to its early 1980s heyday. Victoria Zielinski’s comedic electricity evokes Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner. She is also an attorney and Shakespearean scholar. Dana Olsen brought laughs to screens big and small decade after decade, from writing for Laverne & Shirley (starting the day after college graduation) to penning The ’Burbs, George of the Jungle, and Nickelodeon’s hit Henry Danger.
Together, Dana, Victoria, and Paul are today’s incarnation of the famed Practical Theatre Company. P.T.C. first sprang to life at Northwestern and was founded by Paul, his roommate Brad Hall, Gary Kroeger, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Their shows became legendary on campus and beyond. Sheldon Patinkin became their mentor. Bernie Sahlins built a theater at Second City just for them (Chicagoans now know it as the “e.t.c.”). The P.T.C. had barely moved into their new digs when SNL producers came calling, saw their show, and whisked Paul, Brad, Gary, and Julia off to New York the next morning.
After SNL, Paul became a successful television producer; he and Victoria married and moved to Los Angeles, where Dana was already settled. Years later, the three began collaborating again. Eventually they all moved back to Chicago, resurrecting P.T.C. and making it every bit as iconic as it was back in the day.
Meanwhile, as we get ready to start the interview, Dana moves into the kitchen to cut down on the reverb. Victoria, still wearing glasses from one of their new sketches, looks gorgeous, framed by the dusk filtering through the living room windows and an aubergine vase filled with flowers on the sideboard. Victoria accuses Dana of snubbing us by isolating in another room, while Dana calmly states that he’s just “trying to keep the cats out of your hair.” With his dry delivery, it is hilarious. Victoria swivels around to Paul, calling him out for blurring his background. Paul protests that he did it to avoid stealing her thunder. I am lucky to be on this Zoom.
Finally, we’re ready to start, but I feel as if we already have. Paul, Vic and Dana’s chemistry, spontaneity, and next-level comic writing is what keeps the Practical Theatre Company legendary. But I am not the only one with a chance to see them in action. Come to Studio5 in Evanston on December 26-28 and January 1-3 and see what Dana, Vic and Paul have been hard at work on since last summer. If anyone can make America funny again, it’s them.
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SEE IT WHILE YOU CAN!
Teme: How did you decide on the title “Quick! Before We’re Cancelled”?
Dana: It was a reaction to the Jimmy Kimmel situation and Colbert’s cancellation. For a minute there, it seemed plausible that comedy could be declared against the law, which harkens back to an early sketch that Paul and I did in 1978 in the Mee-ow Show at Northwestern. We envisioned a dystopian future where comedy was against the law, and they sent in cops to arrest comedians. The cop unit was called “Humorous Weapons and Tactics.” We used to do the sketch …
Paul: … in the clubs. Bill Wronski played the comedian under arrest back then.
HOW TO FIND COMEDY IN A YEAR LIKE THIS
Teme: I would love to hear about this year’s show!
Dana: This is our twelfth show together since 2013 when we started with …
Paul:… the Vic and Paul and Dana Show in Los Angeles following Mr. Olsen’s Neighborhood at the Wilmette Theatre.
Dana: We tried to make sense of everything that happened in 2025. We didn’t want it to feel like dropping a sandbag on everybody’s head. It was difficult to choose what to say because of the rate of craziness that this year gifted us with.
Paul: The whole year has been like one long satirical joke. We made sure we balanced the heavy stuff with fun comedic stuff like a Tarzan movie parody, so it isn’t all hanging on Trump.
Victoria: That said, it was inevitable that as the architect of most of our misery, it would be necessary to skewer him regularly throughout the show …
Paul: … especially since Chicago and Evanston literally were under siege. Victoria and I went to demonstrate at the Broadview Detention Center. It was powerful to get out there and actually see these trucks and …
Victoria: … armed men…
Paul: … with masks.
Victoria: It’s like something out of a terrible horror show. Utterly surreal.
Paul: One of the first things we developed was Dana’s idea for a “Western” song about the ICE raids. It came together quickly, even before we knew that they were coming to our town. When we had the table read, we originally thought of it as the Act I closer, but it was …
Dana: … too powerful. The first time we did it for Béa [Rashid, co-owner of Studio5], she was freaked out by it.
Paul: We’re just singing about the truth, but it’s intense …
Victoria: … in a kind of galloping Western way. There’s a pretense of heroes arriving but doing wrong. We adopt a heroic posture as we’re singing but in the end, it is gardeners and maids who are arrested. It’s very hollow and ridiculous. It’s not funny, but that’s okay.
Dana: It’s been a continuing challenge, more so this year than ever. The trick is to find the ridiculous in it and give ourselves permission to laugh at how ridiculous it is. If you’re not laughing, you’re crying. And also to …
Paul: … find new ways to introduce the subject matter. We have a sketch where Abigail Adams tells her husband John and Thomas Jefferson how they screwed up on the Constitution.
Teme: Oh, good. I think they need to hear it.
Victoria: It begins as John Adams and Jefferson are having a cocktail, congratulating themselves over the Constitution. She sneaks in the room and says, “Excuse me, I have a few comments that I think we might consider.” Jefferson is mad that she’s been allowed to read it.
Dana: That sketch got the biggest reaction [from the audience] at our table read.
Victoria: So, we have that obligatory discussion of the Constitution, but there is also a good dollop of sexual humor. There’s a take on AI and how it’s changing our lives, our music, and our imagination. There’s a “Hall of Presidents” sketch. We’re envisioning the [animatronic] presidents at Disney World. All hell breaks loose because we have a Trump.
Dana: The “presidents” sketch is actually a number we put together a couple of years ago. We never developed it into a script, but it was a concept that we thought was pretty funny. You can imagine the Donald Trump robot disrupting the Hall of President’s presentation at Disney World.
Teme: If he doesn’t demolish it first.
Paul: Exactly. It was shocking how much it still made sense.
Dana: We also have a sneak peek at 95-year-old Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood’s 342nd film.
Paul: And a series of Pope blackouts. With the Chicago connection, we had to have the pontiff. Tom Lehrer passed away this year and left all his songs in the public domain. We’re doing a medley of his greatest hits at the top of the second act.
Teme: Oh, I love him, too. What makes Tom Lehrer special to you?
Victoria: Tom Lehrer’s albums came out during a very vulnerable developmental period in our lives. We were all influenced by his brilliance.
Paul: Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman were some of our first comic influences My mother would watch That Was the Week That Was and take notes. My dad was on the night shift and she wanted to write down the best jokes to tell him when he got home. I saw that it was cool to be funny.
Dana: People in the audience will be singing along. My high school variety show was the first time I dabbled in sketch comedy. I remember a group of three guys did a Lehrer number. We were all little kids when the records came out, but everybody had those records.
Victoria: Another really significant element of the show are the contributions of Larry Schanker, Paul Marinaro and [Emmy Award winner] Steve Rashid. The music is going to be magnificent and world class.
Paul: Paul [Marinaro] is going to join us in a few numbers. We’re hoping he may even play one role.
Victoria: … um … have you broached that with him yet?
Dana: Why do you think he would hesitate? He won’t hesitate.
Victoria: I don’t think he’ll hesitate. Teme, do you think he’ll hesitate?
Teme: Vic, he was great last year in that hilarious sketch you and he did together!
Victoria: But I mean, he’s never done an impersonation of Lincoln before.
Dana: He doesn’t have to do an impersonation, he …
Paul: … looks like Lincoln.
Dana: He’s got a massive presence and a big booming voice, and it’s going to be fine.
Victoria: We have to get him the hat.
Paul: I thought about that. We can get him a top hat.
Dana: I have a top hat.
Paul: He’s got an enormous cranium.
Dana: He could just be holding the hat. Lincoln’s not wearing a hat in the Hall of Presidents.
Paul: He’s just got to be sitting there looking like …
Dana: … the Lincoln Memorial.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Teme: What was your writing process this year and how has it changed over time?
Paul: We started writing over the summer.
Dana: We don’t “improv” as much anymore.
Paul: When we did the Vic and Paul Show originally, we would rehearse to pieces of music that would inspire us. It would be jazz like you might hear in a bar, and we would start improvising …
Victoria: … conversation, and …
Paul: … as the music changed, we would change …
Victoria: … emotions.
Paul: We played with that a lot way back in 2010. For some of these sketches now, Steve and Larry will add scoring within the piece, which will be fun.
These days, we function like a regular writing staff. We have table sessions and throw around topics and ideas. But this year we do have a few things that came out in improvisation. “Abigail” did to some degree.
Victoria: Rather than have a slam bang closing this year, we decided to have a more thoughtful, “Peanuts” homage. We did that two years ago as psychiatric advice about how to reckon with a world that was disappointing. This year, it will be like a bedtime story. We’re trying to be real about the very significant problems democracy faces, and then remembering that community still exists and should be about peace, harmony, love, and …
Dana: … sending everybody out on an upbeat note.
Victoria: We say goodnight to a lot of things that we don’t like before we head off to bed.
Teme: It sounds very therapeutic. It is not easy to sleep these days. A bedtime story is exactly what we need.
Paul: It feels like part of the mission. We have to deal with current events, but we don’t want current events to dominate. People need relief. We need to do stuff that’s just plain fun.
Victoria: We have a very tough needle to thread. On the one hand, we have powerful criticisms, but we also wrote a sketch about a guy who gets mixed up in a healthcare thing with his doctor. The doctor has a laser penis procedure on his record that he never had. The sketch is about AI and the way we’re run by computers. There’s also a sketch where a guy is trying to write a love song and AI is not allowing him to because it’s so mediocre.
The sketches are knit together, as dark as some of them may be, by the beauty of the music. There’s Steve Rashid and Larry Schanker, and then the silliness of Dana and his trumpet coming out to groove with the band while the band stays so cool. It’s all going to help us swim through the darker waters that we are going to address.
WHICH MOMENTS STOLE YOUR HEARTS?
Teme: Which sketch is most meaningful to you?
Paul: The “Abigail” sketch. It encapsulates in about three and a half minutes every way we are screwed.
Victoria: The “Abigail” sketch reflects how ideas that once made sense are absolutely wrong now.
Dana: I don’t know if I have a favorite, but we all really enjoy Paul reappearing as Tarzan. I call sketches like that “Carol Burnett Show” sketches. They’re classic movie parodies, which are always fun to do. Last year we did one based on Johnny Guitar, this weird fifties Western. We were all like, “Does anybody think this is funny except us?” But it was one of our most popular last year. I’m hoping Tarzan does the same.
Victoria: It will look effortless on the night we do it, but not enough can be said about what’s involved for Paul to pull off Tarzan. There are two Pauls that I know from the past forty-eight years. There’s “Happy Paul” and there’s “Thin Paul.” He’s been on a diet for nine horrible weeks just to pull off Tarzan.
Dana: That’s dedication. He’s like the Robert De Niro of sketch comedy.
Victoria: He is not the same person I married and we won’t last if this hangs over us much longer. But he is going to pull it off and be just fine.
Teme: That is real dedication. These days, I can’t imagine giving up emotional eating.
Victoria: That extra piece of toast can be the difference. I have two favorites. I love watching Dana try to be a jazzer when he can’t play the trumpet. It gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Dana: I can play the trumpet.
Victoria: I’ve always loved that notion of a person who believes in their art and yet will never be great, but feels it, lives it. The injustice of how talent is doled out in the community never seemed right to me. “Abigail,” of course, is a favorite. Also, the “Dirty Pope” blackout! I’m not accustomed to playing a character that swears and is vicious and unkind, let alone …
Paul: … swears and is vicious to the Pope.
Victoria: I don’t know if it’s going to go over. We’ll see how that works.
Dana: It’s going to go over great. We may dial it back a little bit.
Victoria: We can’t give it all away, but we have a takeoff on “defund the police” where a woman’s house is being ransacked and she calls the police, but they’re all out on ICE missions. She gets a person on the phone in Mumbai who’s giving her a date next week when they can send someone to the house. From there, it gets crazier and crazier.
THE STRAIGHT-FACE STRUGGLE
Teme: Have you ever had a moment in the show where you have to stop yourself from breaking character because you’re cracking each other up?
Dana: By the time we get this thing on its feet and in front of an audience, we’ve done these sketches so many times, although with a live audience, you never know.
Victoria: I will say Paul’s first Tarzan yell.
Dana: Yeah, that’s going to be the hard one. Last time Paul appeared as Tarzan, he was a contestant on “To Tell the Truth.” We had Gary Kroeger and me in our suits saying, “My name is Tarzan of the Apes.” “My name is Tarzan of the Apes.” Then Paul walked on in the loin cloth and goes [LOUD TARZAN YELL] and spends the rest of the sketch running around the audience, offering people bananas and running around like a chimpanzee. That was the most difficult time I ever had not breaking …
Victoria: … because we all had to maintain our celebrity personas …
Dana: I was not successful
Victoria: “Tarzan Number One, please tell us …”
Dana: That was the hardest I ever laughed on stage.
Paul: That happened around the time of a New Year’s show and there were decorative weighted centerpieces on the table. I picked one up and threw it against the wall. I didn’t realize, of course, that the wall behind the [dance studio] curtain was a mirror. Béa almost had a heart attack.
Victoria: That bit got reduced somewhat after that evening, but it was funny as hell. Everything now is at that point where it’s all there in the text and we just have to bring it to life. We’ve had some real challenges. Dana has had a physical challenge, too.
Dana: I just had my right hip total replacement. By showtime I’ll be fine as long as I don’t have to do any weird dance moves.
Paul: And I’m hoping not to get injured in this show!
Victoria: Yes, the intensity of what it requires! I’ve always thought we should have a camera backstage at the prop table to show what goes on between sketches, because that’s as funny as can be, especially if we’re not at the top peak of physical condition. Once Paul had to undo his pants to …
Paul: … get into my Viking …
Victoria: … boots in the dark. I think you tore a groin muscle.
Paul: No, no. It was in my back.
Victoria: Whatever. You can get injured backstage.
Dana: Gary Kroeger blew out his knee during the “mac and cheese” number five years ago. He was hurt very seriously.
Paul: I was right next to him. I had to help keep him upright.
Dana: He had to go to Athletico for therapy before he could get back on stage with us. The pain shot through him so extremely, he totally blanked on the lyrics in the middle of his song. He came down on his knee wrong, and it was his line to sing, and he just went “haaaaaahyaaaaaaaaaah!”
Victoria: The question is how will the show evolve as we continue to evolve into – what should I say – our final phase of existence? I recommend that we turn the entire show into a radio show so that we can have scripts and radios and old-time effects because it really is tremendously physically challenging.
Related to that, I don’t know if our Prevagen sketch is going to go over. I hate brain supplements. I hate that they’re bullshit and designed to bilk older people who are worried about losing their awareness. So they came up with a $60 bottle of bullshit octopus leg.
Paul: It’s jellyfish. That’s actually my favorite sketch to perform right now.
Victoria: There are multimillion dollar campaigns for these and other brain supplements. I really wanted to knock them. That’s one that makes me laugh when we perform it. Whether others will laugh remains to be seen.
Paul: The nice thing about the Studio5 audience is they will get every reference. They’re very well educated. They’re very sharp.
AND NOW THE LAST QUESTION …
Teme: What would you like to be asked about this year’s show and how would you answer?
Victoria: “What do you want people to leave with in their heart?” I want the audience to be thrilled and delighted that we had the balls to go to some difficult political and social questions, that we were silly enough to elevate the discourse into something that can be enjoyed in a silly and almost brainless way, and that there was a sense of love between us and the sharing of that love with the community. I want the audience to feel delighted, encouraged, and determined.
Paul: My question would be “What is our comic philosophy?” For me it boils down to you punch up. You don’t punch down. Punching down is not funny. That’s cruelty. People who would laugh at that kind of joke, they’re not my crowd.
Dana: The question for me is “What’s changed in the comedy landscape over the past twelve or thirteen years?” It’s everything that we’ve just been talking about. I’m proudest of the fact that we’ve remained consistent in our goals. We pride ourselves on being equal parts silly and smart. We offer a well-balanced evening of comedic commentary, which I think you don’t get other places.
Paul: Yeah, we’ll do a heady sketch and then Dana will come out as the French pole vaulter with a banana in his pants.
Victoria: We’ve resisted the temptation to preach about how bad everything is. There has to be a hook and an awareness that there are other sides, however wrong, to the question. At the same time, there are times to step forward and speak.
Dana: But the key question with everything we do is “What’s the funny idea in the sketch? What’s the funny idea in the song?” As long as you can answer that question, that goes a long way to pulling back from being preachy. We always concentrate on the funny idea.
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QUICK! BEFORE WE’RE CANCELLED!
Studio5, 1934 Dempster Street in Evanston, December 26-December 28, 2025 and January 1-January 3, 2026.
TICKETS HERE.
Plenty of free on-site parking.
Dana, Victoria and Paul have also been kind enough to speak with me in years past:
The Practical Theatre Company Returns (2019)
Time for the Post-Pandemic Revue is Now! (2021)
New Year’s Eve Cancellation Won’t Stop Dana Olsen (2021)
The Post-Pandemic Revue: A Q&A with Dana Olsen (2022)
The Post-Pandemic Revue: A Q&A with Vic & Paul (2022)
Comedy Icons Announce Ground-Breaking New Season (2023)
It’s Weird and It’s Going to Get Weirder (2024)
