It’s 2016 and Simba and Nala’s marriage is falling apart. Ariel is getting an intervention. Hercules is making his musical debut in a condom commercial. Wait, what?
Part of Your World, a Disney-themed sketch comedy troupe, reimagines and spoofs what happened to your favorite Disney characters in a new show called “Part of Your World II: Straight to DVD.” The production has a three-show run on Jan. 16, 23 and 30 at ImprovBoston, a nonprofit theater in Cambridge.
“We joke in our event description that we’ll ruin your childhood, but I think it’s a fun way to reimagine classic characters you grew up with,” said Liz Jukovsky, an actress in the show and ImprovBoston’s marketing manager.
What happened after Simba threw Scar off that cliff and the circle of life became complete with the birth of Simba’s son? What about after all those princesses met their true loves and began their happily ever after?
These are the scenarios that Marissa Kennedy, the head writer and producer of the show, wanted to focus on.
Kennedy, who has been writing and performing sketch comedy since attending Suffolk University, is a self-proclaimed “big fan of Disney, dark humor and sketch comedy that gets a little over the top.”
The troupe and the show, which she calls her “brainchild,” came to life when Kennedy was toying with the idea of using a classic childhood favorite to make a themed show. She felt it had strong potential to bring out a large crowd.
Kennedy pitched the idea for the show to ImprovBoston last winter and reached out to the ImprovBoston community for inspiration. She immediately received an outpouring of writers and actors already prepared with Disney-related sketches.
“It’s such a great, universal topic that almost everybody I asked had something that fit the description or were willing to write something new,” she said.
For three and a half months, Kennedy and her team of writers edited sketches, got sketch permissions, cast the actors and rehearsed and blocked the show. Actors in the troupe range between 23 and 32 years old, and most grew up watching Disney classics like “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sleeping Beauty.”
“I grew up as a big Disney fan and then when I became older, I started to notice some of the things that it taught me as a child probably weren’t 100 percent true,” said Kalin Jordan, a Part of Your World cast member.
“Regardless of how big or small a Disney fan you are, everyone is going to get our references and what we’re making fun of,” Jordan said. “I think it’s great when the audience comes in already in on a joke and we just get to build from there.”
The comedy show will include a vast array of different Disney characters and movies, from the classic “Snow White” to “Cinderella,” “Pinocchio” and Disney movies released in the late 1990s. There won’t be anything related to “Frozen” for this run of shows, though Kennedy says her goal is to get a “Frozen” sketch in next time.
Although a Disney-themed sketch comedy troupe isn’t totally unheard of, with a similar group performing at Catalyst Comedy in Seaport and Improv Asylum in Boston, what sets Part of Your World apart from the competition is its sometimes dark and “gross-out” humor and jokes that may make audiences a little uncomfortable. One series of sketches spoofs Donald Trump as Tarzan, based on the idea that politics are the perfect job for a man raised in the jungle by gorillas.
“There’s quite a few sketches along those lines of what happens after the happily ever after,” Jukovsky said. “But there’s also some that play on pop culture mash-ups, like how Disney fits into our modern world or how [characters] might react if they were put in an everyday situation like a job interview, having a family and having to go to counseling — things like that.”
“Part of Your World II: Straight to DVD” opened Saturday at ImprovBoston and runs until Jan. 30. Student discounts are available at the theater with a student ID. Kennedy said it is a great chance to support local comedy and artists, while giving audiences an unparalleled opportunity to get out and laugh.
“Really, if you think about it, anybody at pretty much any age loves Disney,” Kennedy said. “What’s better than seeing a completely bastardized version of your childhood favorites?”
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that ImprovBoston was based in the North End instead of in Cambridge. The version above reflects this correction.
