Students gathered on Friday night, Feb. 2, to attend Schneider Board of Governors’ Night Live, welcoming back students with their first event of the 2024 Spring semester. SBOG Night Live featured two highly acclaimed stand-up comedians: Sureni Weerasekera & LeClerc Andre, with a brief intermission by Wellesley College’s very own Dead Serious.
Sureni Weerasekera, a bright Sri Lankan-born performer from California, who moved to New York after dropping out of college to pursue their comedic goals, began the show. In their set, Weerasekera was very open about their queerness, sexuality and their rough relationship with their mother. Weerasekera’s ability to include these types of topics in their comedy made them all the more relatable, especially in a diverse community like Wellesley College.
“It was cool to see someone up there who I could look up to. That could be me up there. It was nice to see someone with a similar background and parental trauma that I could relate to,” said an audience member.
One student asked how each of the comedians got into stand up, and Weerasekera responded that they were actually in-between exploring majors at UC Berkeley when they developed a knack for stand-up comedy. They encouraged the audience to continue exploring their interests until something “stuck with them.”
The second comedian to take the stage was LeClerc Andre, another New York-based stand-up. Andre’s set went in a different direction than Weerasekera’s: ranging from living in New York to being a father. Andre has more than a decade’s worth of experience, which was evident from his ability to make the entire crowd laugh, as well as seamlessly incorporating crowd work into his set. During the end of his set, he pulled Sureni from backstage so that together, they could find three Wellesley students their perfect match. However, Wellesley students proved too tricky of a match for Andre, with the unfortunate result of no matchmaking.
Interestingly, this was not the most memorable moment of the night; that came when Andre and Weerasekera gave the crowd an opportunity to ask them questions.
“What is some life advice you could give us?” one student asked.
Weerasekera provided the crowd with someone they could relate to and Andre gave everyone the perfect end to the night leaving the audience with some of his wisdom, “Be your most authentic self as soon as possible, so that no one can say you changed and always know you for the crazy person you are.”
