The 95th annual Waa-Mu Show, a student-written and student-produced musical, opened Friday night in Cahn Auditorium.
This year’s show, “Dillo Day Disaster,” follows the misadventures of fictional Mayfest Productions co-Presidents Emma (Communication senior Kiki Sikora) and Naomi (Communication senior Lily Ramras) as they try to save Dillo Day after headliner Lexi Starling (Communication junior Anna Rigo) goes missing.
Three performances took place last weekend, and the show continues May 7 to May 10.
The comedy pokes fun at the Northwestern community, opening with the bold number “Your Neighborhood College Students,” where rowdy students who “haven’t seen the sun since last September” swarm Evanston for Dillo Day.
Another sequence follows students from darty to darty, stereotyping business clubs, student athlete cliques and the NU Sailing Team. One song introduces a scandalous gossip magazine, Clock It!, that tries to get the scoop on the Dillo Day disaster before The Daily Northwestern.
“The show was super silly and ridiculous,” McCormick and Communication first-year Marion Fusco said. “You just realize all these people are gonna be famous someday.”
In addition to writing and producing the show, students were the primary creative minds behind the show’s choreography, lighting, sound, set and costume design.
Communication juniors Jonah Mensch and Ethan Diaz served as co-chairs of this year’s production, heading a 20-person team that managed all outreach, fundraising and writing for the show.
The production process moves at a faster pace than most NU musicals, fitting all rehearsals in just four weeks.
Mensch and Diaz said that for the past several years, the show has been unregistered as a student organization, but now, it is registered again.
“We’re really just trying to keep the creative control and know that we have the support of the people who are in charge of the University and the programming,” Mensch said.
This is also the first year since 2023 that the Waa-Mu Show is again one full musical, rather than multiple short ones.
The rollicking script weaves together the work of three writing teams, but several involved students said parts of each scene changed as rehearsals went on. Actors have added different quips into the show throughout the rehearsal process, relating the story to the current campus climate and world.
“That’s the beauty of it, is that it’s a living document,” Mensch said. “It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced … The conversation we’re having between stage and audience is really special for our age to be doing … one of us is on stage, one of us is in the audience, but we both exist in the same world.”
One climactic scene of the show was restaged midway through the performance weekend, hours before Saturday’s show.
One song — a ballad between two competing spies, Sam (Communication sophomore Ethan Park) and David (Communication sophomore Eli Hoffer) — references “Heated Rivalry,” which came out after the initial draft was written.
The “Heated Rivalry” reference foreshadows a later scene where Sam and David become lovers and plan to frolic the Lakefill as “Dillo dates.”
Hoffer said that the experience brought Park and him closer together as castmates.
“Something about this being a new work that’s changing every day and everybody has to combine forces to make it work and be very adaptive is really team-building and uplifting,” Hoffer said. “It’s gonna last past this show. There are friendships we made that are not gonna go away.”
Another scene tells the story of reluctant first-year Ivy (Communication junior Diane Li ), who feels alone after many club rejections and wants to transfer to “East Southern University.”
An early heartwarming moment in the show is Emma’s ballad to Ivy, telling her of how she too felt alone until she met her best friend, Naomi. McCormick and Communication first-year Aaron Butikofer, an ensemble cast member, said Ivy’s story was a good example of how the show resonates with the NU audience.
“I guarantee every Northwestern student in that crowd felt the exact same way as Ivy felt at one point or another,” Butikofer said.
At the end of every performance, the Waa-Mu Show cast sings the song “To The Memories,” which was written 75 years ago for the show. For Communication junior Rowan Sharma, the song represents the legacy of the Waa-Mu Show.
“Tonight, I looked out and I saw people in the audience singing along,” Sharma said after Saturday’s performance. “To share a show that’s about Northwestern and is written by Northwestern students, and is part of the 95th year of this tradition, is really impactful and expansive in my soul.”
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