Steve Wassell is not afraid of looking silly.

At this year’s faculty show on Saturday, Feb. 3, Wassell will slip into a “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt, fuzzy wig and retro moon boots and transform – as well as a 40-ish math professor can – into cult film character Napoleon Dynamite.

Steve WassellFor Wassell, who also is directing the production, it’s an opportunity to release his inner geek. “I’m trying to learn his moves, which are inherently silly moves,” Wassell said last week. “I think he was kind of trying to be a dork in the movie, so I’m trying to learn his moves and be just as dorky as he is.”

An every-four-years tradition at Sweet Briar College, the faculty show is a much-anticipated, tongue-in-cheek variety show for the Sweet Briar community. The spectacle stars faculty, staff and administration, often portraying students involved in outlandish situations.

“We push the envelope pretty hard,” Wassell said.

Over the years, Wassell and crew have set the laugh-meter pretty high. “You faculty have quite a reputation to live up to because the ’03 show was tremendous!” Jamie Jensen ’05 wrote recently in a post to Wassell’s Facebook wall. “I had a raging headache the rest of the night due to three hours of virtually nonstop screaming and hysterical laughing.”

The origins of the faculty show date back to at least the presidency of Dr. Meta Glass (1925-1946). In “The Story of Sweet Briar College,” Martha Stohlman writes of one faculty member’s recollections of President Glass:

“She could exult in public or private over a joke on herself, or could star in a superbly ridiculous act in a faculty show, without detracting one whit from her dignity as the First Lady.”

Nancy Baldwin ’57 of the alumnae office remembers the 1954 faculty show. She was a freshman at the time. “It was an event!” she said. “It was so much fun. Everybody went. It was a revelation to us to see faculty as themselves, but silly and fun. It was marvelous. They, of course, made fun of students, but in a way we could all appreciate.”

With the exception of a couple of shows in the 1980s, Baldwin said she has seen every one since then.

“A lot of alums come back to see it a second or a third time,” Wassell said, adding that the four-year cycle guarantees each student will have an opportunity see it at least once.

Katie Kirkwood, daughter of professors Bessie and Jim Kirkwood, has been going to faculty shows as long as she can remember. “I graduated [from Sweet Briar] in ’04 and this will be my sixth faculty show,” she said. “It’s always hilarious, and it was definitely one of the highlights of my college experience.”

The curtain call of the 2003 faculty show. In addition, DVDs of several past performances can be borrowed from Cochran Library. “[It’s] neat, because you can go back and see the older faculty – of which I’m becoming one – four, eight, twelve, sixteen years ago, when they were younger looking and in the faculty show back then,” Wassell said.

Although the shows are similar in format from year to year, the faculty show also is a product of its time, lampooning both students and popular culture. For example, this time “Rock Star INSB,” a spoof of TV’s “Rock Star INXS” and “Rock Star Supernova,” is on the program.

For the segment, Wassell – a four-time veteran of the faculty show – will play one of three would-be rockers vying to become a member of what he calls “a fake eclectic trio who has lost one of its original three members.”

He also will appear in some of the other skits, including the dance number, which will be choreographed by SBC’s Mark Magruder. “I’ve never been in the dancing skit before,” Wassell said, adding that he’d be dancing – just like alter ego Napoleon – to the 1970s hit “Canned Heat.”

In addition, the show will feature several video segments, including one by Professor Brent Shea, which Wassell described as “way out there” and “very funny.”

With just a couple of days until the show, Wassell says there’s still a lot of work to do. In the past, the week before the show has been a harried race to the finish line. “It gets down to the wire,” he said, recalling the week before the 2003 show, which he co-directed. “It’s really amazing the way it comes together at the very end.”

This year, due to Tuesday’s performance of “Private Lives,” Babcock Auditorium wasn’t available until Wednesday, giving the cast and crew just two days to prepare for Friday’s dress rehearsal. Wassell isn’t too worried, though.

“Last time … during rehearsals the first part of the week, people weren’t showing up very much and we finally got people to show up Wednesday and Thursday, and then Friday at the dress rehearsal it still was just not at all together,” he said. “

“But then just magically on Saturday, everything clicked. I guess [with] the adrenaline and actually being in costume and knowing it’s time to be on, people just came together.

As sure as “the show must go on,” Wassell will be busy until Saturday night, running rehearsals, working with student volunteers, and perfecting his dance moves.

“[Napoleon Dynamite] does a good job dancing, but his moves are very unique,” he said. “So I’m trying to learn some of them, which I hope not to incorporate into my own dancing in the future, because I’ll look like a nerd.”

– By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer