The Mandel Auditorium filled up this past weekend, as students throughout campus arrived to watch the premier of student-created web series, Mock U. The show was created, directed, and written by Caroline Kriesen ’20 and directed by Emma Bers ’20, with cinematography by Bers and Colin Hodgson ’20.

Mock U is set at a liberal arts university following the election of President Ronald Rump. The show opens on a history of musical theater class shortly after the election. Everyone is taking the class for a different reason, some because they love musical theater and some to fulfill their creative arts requirement. The professor announces Hammock University will host an arts festival to address ideas of social justice and, for credit, the students can submit a piece. The monologues are humorous as the show parodies college theater scenes and the ways our current political climate impacts universities.

The show stars Zoë Rose ’20, Sam Forman ‘21, Savannah Edmondson ‘20, Kate Kesselman ‘19, Maryam Chishti ‘20 and Alan Omori ’20.

Two of the characters, Shep (Omori) and Chris (Kriesen) decide to organize a musical, and the first edipose of the show centers around developing ideas, auditions and casting. The series is full of liberal arts and theater-kid stereotypes.

To learn more about the in depth process in the creation of Mock U, I got to sit down with both the creator, Caroline Kriesen, and Sam Forman, the actor who portrays Charles Brown.

Kriesen was inspired to create the show back in April, while she was a student in the media and politics Leader Scholar Community (LSC), a program for first-years. It got her interested in the idea of political comedy and the different ways we communicate. “I did a project on political comedy and scandals in the election with Emma [Bers], who is the director,” Kriesen explains. She also began to watch more television: “While I am a big theatre person and I have been doing musical theatre my whole life and acting, I was spending so much time in this one area,” she added. One day, she sat down and thought she wanted to write her own play, but ended up writing in the style of a comedic documentary. She wrote about how we pursue social justice in a theater community at a private college, how we grapple with privilege in a way that is authentic and how we can acknowledge these ideas through comedy. Kriesen thinks comedy is a good way of mocking people. It’s about finding truths and satirizing our daily lives.

She wrote a script consisting of two fictional monologues about a casting decision, not expecting the script to go anywhere. It was not until she showed the script to Bers and Hodgson that she got the feeling others might be interested in her work.

“It was not something that I was going to keep in my Google Docs for the rest of my life. This show was a catalyst for me to think about film in general, and as a result of this project, I ended up pursuing an IIM in film and performing arts,” describes Kriesen.

The show developed over the course of the last year. In May, Krisen began contacting students from improv and comedy groups on campus.

She continued to write the script over the summer and held auditions during the month of September. Production took place between October and December.

Forman recalls how he became involved with Mock U. “After I was cut from TBA auditions, I got a Facebook message from Caroline Kriesen, encouraging me to audition for this web series that she was doing.” He auditioned for the show and was cast as “character B,” a theater aficcionado aspiring for the male lead in the musical.

When actors first got their roles, however, the characters did not have names, only descriptions. “I wanted the actor who received the role to write their own name for their character. Not only did I want to find people who could act, but people who were also writers and comedians. I wanted each person to contribute their own story to the show, even if it’s not theirs,” Kriesen said.

The process of writing, directing and producing a show was stressful at times, but overall gratifying, said Kriesen. “This show is my baby. Much of the stress was fear matched by reassurance because each stage I feel like people are bringing new core ideas and helping my baby grow up,” Kriesen said with a smile.

As an actor, Forman found the making of Mock U artistically meaningful. “Charles Alexander Brown is entirely my creation, so being a part of this was creatively fulfilling, because we are not only being directed. We can be imaginative and add our own ideas to the process,” he said.

As for the future, Mock U has a Go Fund Me page to raise money for the creators to submit the first episode to several film festivals. The cast and crew want to market the show beyond Brandeis, and hopefully beyond a mostly millennial audience.

Both Kriesen and Forman are happy with Mock U’s online platform. “The whole idea of an online interactive media form is interesting since…so much of television currently is streaming,” which has produced a diverse breadth of TV.

Forman adds, “I am very satisfied with where it is right now. I am very proud of it, no matter where it is.”

Mock U is now available on YouTube and Vimeo.