Aspiring actors and videographers often yearn to be discovered. But three recent UMBC students and alumni aren’t waiting around for a big break. They’ve made their own success by collaborating on a comedy web series called Monday Wednesday Friday (www.facebookwastaken.com).
The skits are performed by former UMBC student Darrell Britt-Gibson (who also appeared as “O-Dogg” in HBO’s The Wire) and Joe King ’09, mechanical engineering, and produced by Tal Levitas ’08, political science and media and communications studies. Each episode is a freestanding story, but there are running themes to the sketches, with Britt-Gibson and King appearing as pilots, sportscasters, CIA agents and even wild animals.
“For the animal shoots, we had to be in make-up for twelve hours,” quips King.
The team for Monday Wednesday Friday is based largely in Los Angeles, the better to be close to the entertainment industry. The series started in January and recently wrapped up its third season of videos, but they are already drawing in other UMBC alumni to the process – including Adam Kurtz ’09, visual arts, who designed the show’s Tumblr website.
The Monday Wednesday Friday trio is also garnering kudos from even better-known UMBC alumni such as Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman ’97, history, who gave the show a shout out in a recent appearance at Auburn University.
Levitas says that the Monday Wednesday Friday team wants “to create sharp, funny comedy that is written, acted and produced well. We don’t want to present slow, long performances and we’re really serious about tackling this in a new modern medium.”
— Monica Berron ’12
Tags: Adam Kurtz, Auburn University, Education, Joe King, Tal Levitas
