The Mask and Wig Club’s spring production, “Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood,” began production at the end of January and will run until Mar. 28.
This year's spring show follows the story of Kit, an aspiring screenwriter pitching his newest script to the big Hollywood stage. The production is written in a hybrid structure — the main storyline is performed in blocks, interspersed with short sketches written by cast members.
Mask and Wig performs two original, entirely student-written and performed productions each year. Spring 2025 marks the club’s 136th annual production.
“It's a really technically challenging show, and it really exploits everyone's talents on the cast and the talents in crew and in band and in business,” College sophomore and assistant cast director Elliot Ross-Dick said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The club features four sections: cast, business, crew, and band. Each section recruits and operates independently in supporting the production of the club’s shows, which are performed at the Mask & Wig Clubhouse in Center City. The building was acquired by the group in 1894.
Mask and Wig will leave Philadelphia to tour the country in mid-March, performing the show in locations across New York, Florida, and Georgia. The tour is a product of student coordination with the assistance of the club’s extensive alumni network.
For most of its history, Mask and Wig was an all-male club, only recently welcoming members of all genders. 2025 marks its third year of gender inclusion.
Gender inclusion “creates a liberating attitude to writing the comedy” in the group’s shows, according to College senior and undergraduate chair Spencer Schwartz.
“It’s more of a sense of punching up rather than punching down, which is, I think, very beneficial to comedy on Penn’s campus" he added.
The process of creating each show begins in the spring of the previous year when members begin writing and brainstorming the central theme of their next show. The current theme develops over the following months into a plotline featuring short SNL-style sketches, the majority of which are fleshed out during the club’s annual writer’s retreat. The retreat takes place at an off-campus location in the fall semester.
“We're writing all day, every day, for a week, and we basically have, by the end of that week, the first draft of the show,” Schwartz said.
At last year’s writer’s retreat, held at the Poconos, the intended throughline of having the show's central theme revolve around “entertainment” developed into the storyline that became “Once Upon a Crime in Hollywood.”
“It became this meta-commentary on Hollywood where all of the sketches as well as the songs and the main plot of the show are woven together pretty seamlessly,” Schwartz said.
He added that he believes the company has "found its own voice this year," which shows through in the comedy.
“We would just get together for like eight hours at a time and see what happened on the page, just trying to make each other laugh,” College junior and co-head writer Lauren Cho said. “That was always the best part, just making each other laugh.”
All writers who contribute to the show are cast members themselves.
“It’s really exciting to literally stand there and give voice to the words you have written,” Cho added.
The show does not have to be static. The script, Cho explained, can evolve across performances based on audience reactions. New lines and ways of delivering lines have changed from show to show in the past.
Each production is accompanied by an original score from Mask and Wig’s band, as well as marketing and production efforts from the club’s business staff and crew. This spring’s show, this year, features an elaborate set including trap doors and swinging panels to create stage transformations.
“It's a level above anything I've seen Mask and Wig do in the recent years,” Ross-Dick said.
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