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BERNSTEIN ENTERTAINS, INFORMS CROWDS AT CHICAGO THEATRE
Peter Bernstein, A.B. ’81, M.B.A. ’85, leads a double life. By
day, he’s a buttoned-up, number-crunching economist at a financial
consulting firm in Chicago’s Loop.
By night, he takes to the stage as alter ego Professor Pettibone
Daniels, a disgruntled academician dispensing economic wit and
wisdom to full houses at a theater on Chicago’s north side.
The economy may not seem like fodder for a comedy show, but Econo-Manic Depression: A Crash Course about the Coming Crash isn’t your average gig. Playing to the late night crowd at Stage
Left Theatre, Bernstein mixes understated humor with economic
theory to simultaneously entertain and inform.
“I’m just trying to make [economics] more interesting and accessible
so people can talk about it,” he says.
The show has had several brief runs at the theater in the past
year, and Bernstein is taking it on the road–to Hyde Park, at
least–to perform at the GSB reunion in June.
In the hour-long production, directed by Doug Ryan, ’87, Bernstein
takes the audience through ten “classes” covering such topics
as the future of Social Security, speculative investing, and global
trade. At a show in February, he drew big laughs from the crowd
during the lesson entitled “the demand for lifeboats,” during
which he analyzed the Titanic from an economic angle, noting that
a market allocation of lifeboats might have prevented panic on
the sinking ship.
“Instead of panicking, the efficient solution would have been
to simply allow the price of a seat on a lifeboat to rise to the
level sufficient to cause demand to equal supply,” he says. And
on the subject of millionaire John Jacob Astor, who gave up his
seat on a lifeboat, Bernstein says, “Who’s to say Astor didn’t
sell his seat, thinking that the Titanic wasn’t really sinking
but merely experiencing a technical correction to a lower place
in the water?”
The role of professor is not foreign to Bernstein, who has lectured
at the University of Chicago and Loyola University and now works
part time as an economics instructor at DePaul University. (“My
class isn’t as funny as this,” he notes.) Econo-Manic Depression was born in early 1998 when Bernstein’s class was temporarily
canceled. During this unexpected time off, Bernstein mixed material
he had written years earlier with fresh observations about the
current economic boom. He ran the material by his wife, who told
him “it might be funny to people from U of C,” and then sent it
to Ryan, a GSB friend he worked with in a campus improv group.
He and Ryan began working together on the piece, and shortly thereafter,
Econo-Manic Depression made its way to the stage.
Bernstein is no stranger to the spotlight. While attending Chicago,
he was an original member of Off-Off Campus, an improvisational
group founded by Second City producer Bernie Sahlins. Bernstein
was very involved in the group, producing large portions of the
company’s material. After graduation he sidelined his interest
in theater while he took up economic consulting. While he has
no plans to leave his position as vice president at RCF Economic
& Financial Consulting Inc. for a career on the stage, he is obviously
pleased to do the show. And it has been well received. In addition
to drawing sizeable crowds at late-night weekend shows, his act
has received favorable reviews from local media including Crain’s Chicago Business and the alternative weekly, Chicago Reader. Bernstein recalls that one less favorable review called his
show “an attack on market theories” and said it would be an affront
to Milton Friedman. In his defense, Bernstein says the show draws
people from all over the political spectrum, and that his intent
is not to insult.
“Friedman is like the Pope of economics,” he says with a smile,
“and I really don’t want to insult the Pope. I’d just like to
amuse him a little bit.”–M.M.B.
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