“I wrote this thing that I was convinced was brilliant,” says the comedian J. Michael Osborne, a producer-host of the shame-based storytelling show We Still Like You. “It was like, [about] Jesus, but it’s in the modern day, Fox News commentators don’t like him very much, isn’t that interesting? I was sitting in the middle of this party and was like, I have to get this down. Then one of the guys that lived there asked me what I was writing on, and I flipped it over, and it was a newspaper clipping of this old guy, I didn’t know anything about him, and he was like, ‘Oh that’s the last [existing] photograph of my dead dad, and that’s the only copy that I have.’ And then I kept it. I was so convinced my story was so good I had to keep it.”
Each show features five or so performers telling embarrassing stories. Each tale is followed by a public moment of forgiveness as the crowd shouts, “We still like you!” Afterward, members of the audience can ask questions or pry for further details during a Q&A. And after every performance, there is more often than not a rowdy party, which the producers consider a chance for everyone to live out a We Still Like You story for a future show. During the four-year anniversary show last February, Snodgrass presented an illustrated slideshow of the most embarrassing moments that have happened over the course of We Still Like You.
Even after five years of stories, the producers are still shocked by the terrible things that happen to people as well as the terrible things people do.
Sat 2/2, 10 PM, Collaboraction Theatre, 1579 N. Milwaukee, westilllikeyou.com, $10.
