Students and local community members were entertained in the Renaissance Coliseum on Monday night by the different style of comedian Matt Bellassai.
At 29 years old, Bellassai performed stand-up comedy around the country and was awarded the first ever People’s Choice Award for Favorite Social Media Star. He was selected to perform at Bradley by impressing ACBU members with his brand of comedy.
“Through NACA [National Association for Campus Activities,] a bunch of different acts show off their talents to see who we like,” said Matt Gibson, comedy coordinator for ACBU. “Since we wanted to do “Live! on Main,” we wanted a bigger name of a comedian.”
The show started with a video clip montage of Bellassai pouring copious amounts of wine into glasses and then chugged all of them. After the video closed, he started out the show screaming, “What’s up?” Then said, “I don’t know where the hell I am! Where the hell is Peoria?”
The show then took twists and turns down the path of Bellassai’s life. All his triumphs and pitfalls were turned into a comedic performance that drew both awkward and hysterical laughter.
The biggest laughs of the night came from two bits that took a swipe at his gym class performance and a mishap with a taquito.
Bellassai recounted an instance where he could not run a mile in 13 minutes and his gym teacher said, “If you would have run faster the first time we wouldn’t have this problem.” Then, he proceeded to play baseball where he let the bat slip out of his hand and hit his gym teacher in the face where he said, “If you had run faster we wouldn’t have this problem.”
The show ended with Bellassai singing a raunchy parody of “Let It Go” from the movie “Frozen” called, “Let Him Go.” The song consisted of sexual acts he did with a fake boy toy, telling himself to let him “get out of his life.”
The show concluded with the crowd giving him a roaring round of applause.
Some students had different views on how they enjoyed the show and Bellassai’s style.
“It was very hit or miss,” Erik Seelander, junior hospitality leadership major, said. “There were some parts of the show that I found funny and interesting and there were other parts of the show that I was not entertained by at all.”
In contrast, people thought the show was a break from the norm to laugh and be carefree.
“I thought it was really funny and I had a good time,” Mackenzie Rhodes, freshman academic exploration program, said. “The whole thing was hilarious.”
According to Gibson, “Live! On Main” will continue for many homecomings to come at Bradley and attract different acts.
“This is something we are definitely looking to do with homecoming and keeping “Live! On Main” and giving it a name like we started to do with the concert like [Recess at RenCo] so people look forward to Recess and so people can look forward to “Live! On Main” as the start of homecoming and that it’s going to be really fun,” Gibson said.
