Columbia's Varsity Show, the annual musical comedy being performed this weekend in Lerner Hall, is a Light Blue institution older than Baker Field, Low Library and Alma Mater herself. So how does the show—written, composed, performed and designed by students—manage to keep audiences laughing every year? By helping remind members of the Columbia community never to take themselves too seriously.

This year's show, the 107th, spares no one—faculty, classmates, dining hall employees, President George Rupp and Al Gore—from the flurry of gags and one-liners that roll on for more than two hours. The writers place the inescapable subject of reality TV at the story's center, imagining a Morningside campus besieged by thousands of cameras recording everyone's every move for an anxious MTV audience.

The show will be performed Sat. and Sun., April 28 and 29, at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in Lerner Hall's Roone Arledge Auditorium. Tickets are $10; $5 with Columbia ID.