Street: What’s your spirit animal?
Laura Petro: Marnie the dog (@marniethedog), because she has a cute but slightly terrifying thing going on. But mostly, she's just a girl out in the world trying to do her best.
Street: What are some of your favorite Bloomer’s characters?
LP: The Mom in the ‘Jew for My Daughter’ sketch. It’s a spoof of ‘Hakuna Matata’ but it’s ‘A Jew for My Daughter.’ I’m Jewish, it hits home. I can relate. Everyone knows the Jappy Jewish mom character.
Street: What’s been your favorite moment from the Bloomer’s GroupMe?
LP: Well we just rebranded it to be the Troupe–Me. (Ed. note: like comedy troupe). Also when the Chairwoman of Bloomers, Nina Kao, responded she was ‘maybe’ attending the Bloomer’s show on Facebook. She was there though.
Street: Tell us about LaughtHERfest!
LP: It’s a one day festival celebrating women in comedy. It will start off with a panel with Vanessa Bayer (Ed. note: freaking hilarious SNL comedian) who was a Penn and Bloomer alum, and Julie Kraut who’s a writer for Odd Mom Out. We have workshops and the big shebang at the end of the day is a performance at 8 PM headlined by Vanessa Bayer, Aparna Nancherla, and Michelle Wolf as well as student performers.
Street: Do you have Vanessa Bayer’s number?
LP: Yes.
Street: OMG. Do you snapchat?
LP: No, I try to play it cool with her. I used to do alumni relations and when we were doing our show in New York she had emailed me being like “I want to try to make it. I don’t know if I’ll get out of work in time” and I wanted to be like, “YOU MEAN SNL. WORK IS SNL." And then she asked if she could get my number in case she was running late and I was like ‘yeah totally totally’ and she texted me that night and I was like, I think I can throw out my phone now. That’s all I ever need, I got the best text I’ll ever get.
Street: What can we expect from The Walk this semester?
LP: Our theme for this semester is exposure. With the theme our student group will be Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault. So we’re playing with the idea of exposure in terms of social issues and things like that but also physically being exposed… there may be some nudity… but tasteful nudes of course.
Street: Where is the weirdest place you’ve held a photoshoot?
LP: We did a photoshoot in the bio greenhouse last semester, which was super interesting but also really terrifying because there were signs everywhere saying “Caution: Live Larva.” And we had all these pristine clothes that we borrowed from boutiques, so I just kept saying “Don’t touch the plants!”
Street: We heard you’re writing a children’s book. What’s it about?
LP: I started writing it for the class ‘Writing for Children’ by Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve, who is the best professor at Penn. It’s about a little boy who takes himself too seriously. He’s like a 40-year-old accountant in a seven-year-old’s body.
Street: So he’s a Penn student?
LP: Exactly. Inspired by everyone who goes to Wharton. One day he goes into his bath, and his bath sucks him under and he ends up in an underwater world where he’s confronted with these crazy mystical things that vomited out of my imagination. The underwater world helps him discover things about himself and about not being such a grownup. It also helps him help his family in a certain way that I won’t reveal for all those excited readers out there!
Street: What advice would you give to your freshman–year self?
LP: Don't let anyone convince you to take Econ. YOU DON'T NEED THAT STRESS AND CONFUSION IN YOUR LIFE.
Street: Who is your doppelganger?
LP: I’m fully convinced that it’s Stanley Tucci. If you Google images of him right now and put his face next to my face, it’s so true. I also just like to think that he would play me in the movie of my life. He’s whimsical and snarky, but very much still grounded in reality like I am.
Street: If you are what you eat, what are you?
LP: A giant smoothie with fruit and spinach and kale and other assorted pantry items, plus a handful of Nestle semi sweet chocolate chips on the side. As I say this I realize I have just deemed myself most basic girl on earth, but I cannot tell a lie.
Street: There are two types of people at Penn…
LP: People who have been to a Bloomers show, and people who are doing nothing right.
