6| At Your Servery • 16|Titanic Belfast • 36|The ... - Rice University

OMG!
She’s Multitalented.
Rebecca Carrington ’97 doesn’t fit the mold
of a typical classically trained and accomplished
cellist. For starters, she combines
playing the cello with stand-up musical
comedy. During those performances, she
refers to her instrument, an 18th-century
cello, by the name of Joe.
For more than a decade, Carrington,
who is English, has traversed the globe
to perform her unique musical-comedy
act. She has performed at the venerable
Comedy Store in Los Angeles, at numerous
festivals, and on TV and radio programs.
Her performances have taken her
on trans-Atlantic cruises and to India, but
she plays most frequently in Germany and
throughout Europe. Now based in Berlin,
Carrington spends more than half the year
on the road and has performed up to 170
shows in a year.
“Looking back, I’ve always loved making
people laugh. But it’s much different
than it used to be now that I do it for a
living,” Carrington said.
It was during her days as a master’s
student at the Shepherd School of Music
that Carrington discovered her talent for
stand-up comedy. It was also at Rice that
she started performing in campus cabaret,
including an hour-long show she developed
for a P.D.Q. Bach evening at the
Shepherd School of Music. While on a trip
to New York as a student, a friend dared
her to try performing at a comedy club.
Carrington accepted and was
hooked. Soon she was combining
her talents — a thorough
grounding in classical music,
a love of cabaret and a knack
for making others laugh —
into a highly entertaining
stage act.
“If it wasn’t for going to
America, I would have never had
the confidence to go into comedy,”
said Carrington, who won the university’s
MasterCard Talent American
Collegiate Search in 1996.
During her performances,
Carrington rattles jokes off with a manic
energy, interspersed with cello playing
and singing. She oscillates between
voices, even languages, switching from
English to French and German. Her topic
“Looking back, I’ve always loved making people
laugh. But it’s much different than it used to be
now that I do it for a living.”
—Rebecca Carrington
matter is diverse, ranging from the idiosyncrasies
of the world’s different cultures to
song parodies.
“I’ve found that in certain areas of the
U.S. of A., I only need about three English
words per day to express myself,” she begins
in a bit during a show’s performance.
Carrington then proceeds to use a mocking,
ditzy voice to make fun of a woman
in California who prefaced every sentence
with “Oh my God.”
“Oh my God, that is such a beautiful
piece of furniture!” Carrington says, referring
to her cello.
It can get difficult
trying to entertain
people through two
distinctly different
mediums, Carrington
acknowledged.
“What happens is
that you have to come
up with ideas about how
to arrange things for two
different voices. Not only
are you just playing
your cello on stage.
You need to prepare
jokes to crack, as
well.” She relishes
the challenge.
Since 2007, Carrington has
been joined onstage by her husband,
actor and singer Colin Brown.
Her CDs and DVDs feature both her
solo work and the duo’s collaboration as
Carrington-Brown. When it comes to producing
material, Carrington writes with her
husband, whom she met while performing
at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Brown
adds a unique dynamic to Carrington’s
performance, whether he is rapping along
to her cello riffs or adding a monologue
of his own. The duo has won a number of
awards throughout Europe.
Carrington and Brown will head to New
York this year for an entertainment showcase.
“We hope to make contacts and to be
able to tour in the U.S. That is our goal.”
—Andrew Clark
Andrew Clark is a freelance writer and law student based in
Boston, Mass. He can be reached at andrewclark87@gmail.com.
Watch:
››› rebeccacarrington.com/video.php
Rice Magazine • No. 15 • 2013 11