The Tiff and Mom Show would never be considered great theater–the spaces are dirty, the costumes are cheap, and the jokes are dirty and cheap. But Tiff and Mom endure. For three years Todd Schaner and Robert Bouwman have been playing a booze-infested bimbo from Berwyn and her overweight teenage daughter at bars and shoddy theaters all over town. People seem to love them. Fans hang out after the show. They clamor for Tiff and Mom T-shirts but will happily settle for less–Tiff and Mom matchbooks, for example, complete with a charming photo of the smiling pair.
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Tiff and Mom live in the public eye, while their creators barely seem to exist. When the show gets a bad review Mom–not Schaner–writes a letter to the reviewer, fussing about how hard it is to remain attractive while raising a daughter alone.
Their current episode, “The Charity BBQ,” offers the same old Tiff and Mom fare: jokes about sex, booze, and food. And as always, the 11-member cast hops about onstage like a bunch of kids playing house. “It’s definitely not anything that’s polished,” Bouwman says. “That’s completely intentional.” Yet, he finds following a script is a useful crutch. “For us, it’s a convention that frees everybody. We’ve got men playing women and women playing men and all these weird costumes. So now you can say, OK, it’s all set up. My realm of reality is huge.”
The latest episode of The Tiff and Mom Show (complete with live commercials) is offered at 8:30 this Wednesday at the Factory Theater, 1257 W. Loyola. Tickets are $5; call 278-3274. Schaner and Bouwman plan to take a break from the show next month but promise that Tiff and Mom will be back in the fall.
