Despite the small crowd of about 40, the audience fully enjoyed the comedic performance of Ben Lerman at the UC Auditorium Thursday night.
    
Lerman, a ukulele-playing comedic songwriter, has toured both the New York comedy club scene and several universities. He was not deterred by the somewhat lackluster turnout.
    
“Sometimes it helps to have a good mass of people,” Lerman said. “Any time you have a full room the energy sort of feeds on itself. But the people that came out gave it a lot of warm, positive energy. And I could hear laughter, too.”
    
Lerman’s style is a combination of humorous songs and brief bits of monologues. His topics include all types of vulgarities, ranging from scatology, female genitalia, troubles of puberty for boys, dating someone with a lazy eye and the LGBTQ lifestyle.
    
His songs consisted of both originals as well as parodies. Those parodies included changing Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” into a song about being unshaven, and Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” became a song about a man who “keeps eating” as a coping mechanism.
    
But some of Lerman’s funniest moments occured when he interacted with the audience. The show began with Lerman running down the auditorium’s aisles, pausing at the foot of the stage and then encouraging the audience to maintain the applause until he made it all the way to the microphone.
    
During his “Unwritten”/“Unshaven” parody, Lerman called out to Cameron Allen, a freshman theater major. During Lerman’s finale, he danced his way through the aisle and audience until he was all but straddling Allen and sang a techno ode to chubby chasers.
   
 “I was not expecting it, but yeah, I didn’t really mind,” Allen said with a chuckle after the performance. “(The show) was really good.”
    
During the finale, Lerman also got many of the audience members to stand up and dance.
    
Things were not always laughs and genitalia jokes though. During the latter half of his show, Lerman commentated on how there are so many portrayals of the gay community in mainstream culture now, and how he wished there had been so many when he was growing up.
    
“I wish that when I was growing up there had been that,” Lerman said. “I knew I wasn’t a villain growing up, and I knew that I wasn’t walking into rooms bowing. ... And those were really the representations of gay people at the time. Like cautionary tales to be avoided.”
    
The Central Program Council and the Women’s Coordinating Council sponsored the event, which was a year-long planning process, according to Kristina Rubio, junior in psychology and member of WCC.
    
“It’s been about a year from making a phone call to getting the performer on stage,” Rubio said. “It’s been well worth it. (Lerman) was very out-of-the-box. It was a user-friendly way of joking about the LGBT community, which is super taboo.”
   
 Rubio wasn’t the only student who enjoyed the show. Jessica Hurd, senior in history, was also thoroughly entertained.
    
“I don’t think I stopped laughing the entire time,” Hurd said.
    
Lerman arranged how he wanted the audience to demand an encore at the end of the show. After saying the cue words, “You’ve been wonderful. Thank you and goodnight,” the audience gave a standing ovation.
   
 Those interested can find touring information, videos, song clips, photos, merchandise and Lerman’s blog at www.benlerman.net.