Azalea Buch, Staff Writer
In order to welcome both new and previous students commencing into the second semester here at USM, the Student Activities Board presented a Live Comedy night by hosting renowned comedian Hailey Boyle as a part of the “Weeks of Welcome” student activities.
The show took place on January 25th, in Lower Brooks on the Gorham campus at 9 pm. Hailey Boyle is one of high prestige in her field, she has accumulated a number of titles and esteemed appearances such as being allotted the title “101 funniest working comics in the world” on TBS and one of New York’s top 10 funniest comics at The New York Comedy Festival. . She was dignified to entertain American soldiers on active duty in The Bahamas, Greenland, and Central America on numerous occasions. She also represented her comedy at the “Just for Laughs Festival” and the “Glasgow International Comedy Festival”, Her more famed acts were presented when she worked with Kevin Hart in the film “About Last Night “, for Vince Vaughn in “ Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Festival” and was in the TV series “Stand Up in Stilettos”. Boyle can be seen in a multitude of performance videos which have been uploaded to social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
The comedian appeared conspicuous and legitimate attracting a sizeable crowd to overflow the tables of Lower Brooks,at the Gorham campus. Boyle’s performance was teeming with intrigued students, faculty, and community members that flowed into the building. She cracked jokes at herself as well as at students in the crowd. She held nothing back with these college students, she hit all the stops when it comes to the content of her jokes. Boyle’s act primarily consisted of crude, uncensored jokes containing heavy sexual content, as well as controversial racial remarks; which lead to the opinion of her performance tendentious. While speaking to a multitude of students, the judgement of her show widely differed; some thought her jokes were extremely hilarious, which was highly expected when considering the age group she was attempting to appeal to. While other reviews of her show were quite the opposite, consisting of students expressing that her jokes were far too crude, and that she took it too far.with the sexual innuendos, especially the ones about herself. Nhat, a freshman exchange student from Vietnam stated, “ I didn’t really understand half the jokes, but the thing I could tell is that they were definitely dirty jokes”. Despite the language barrier, he still comprehended the unrefined connotation of her joke, On the other side of the spectrum, Charlie Whitehead attended the performance and stated that it was “ Soooo Funny!, I definitely got a lot of laughs in”. If one takes the time to explore Boyle’s performances on other platforms such as YouTube the reviews are also variable. Some of the comments expressed fans applauding her unrefined and crude comedic diversity, while other comments conveyed that her jokes were not funny at all and that resorting to sexual and racial innuendos is not in fact comedic.
Overall, the event as a whole appeared as a success and an enjoyable to kick off the second semester here at The University of Southern Maine!