Andrew Beckerman

Wrestling Team is the four-year-old absurd comedy project of Mark Bisi and Andrew Beckerman. Predicated on the idea that comedy should be like a well-crafted pop song, in the sense that not a moment is wasted, the duo has produced live sketches, short films and two episodes of their eponymous, independent television show, all marked by fast-paced dialogues and visual gags that constantly keep the viewer on her toes. While influences such as The Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show, Upright Citizens Brigade and Stella are obvious, Beckerman and Bisi also draw upon the silly cleverness of The Marx Brothers, the surreality of Luis Buñuel, the neurotic humor of Woody Allen and the character moments of writers like Joss Whedon and Rob Thomas. In fact, their diverse influences speak quite well to their approach to comedy: the creation of humor through intense incongruity - verbal, physical and referential. It is not uncommon to see a reference to Freud or Foucault followed immediately by one to Buffy or Battlestar Galactica, or to follow a pratfall or vaudevillian gag with a joke about dialectical materialism. The two also enjoy employing strange non sequiturs, but unlike many others who use this strategy, do not simply use randomness to mask lazy writing, but try to weave them all together to create a puzzling but coherent whole, as if there was something just out of the viewer's grasp, tantalizingly close.