In the middle of the semester, when all the dining hall food has gotten old and prelims are looming too close for comfort, it’s nice to reminisce about the better times in life — namely, summer. Maybe you stayed home and played with your dog, maybe you had an Instagram-worthy European excursion, maybe you worked at a soul-sucking unpaid internship. Or, maybe you went to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and put on the performance of a lifetime. No? That must have been Liv Licursi ’25 I was thinking about.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest annual performing arts festival, a veritable Mecca for thespians. This past summer, Licursi and fellow Cornellians, spanning the classes of 2023 to 2027, put on The Family Copoli at the Fringe, an experience that was “all-encompassing, … magical and a whirlwind.”
The Family Copoli was written by current PhD candidate Andy Colpitts alongside Paris-based composer Michael Wookey. Members of the PMA department “did it through a Cornell Council for the Arts grant in 2023 with the Kiplinger Theater” and, two years later, it was begging for development, and Licursi thought it would be perfect for the Fringe. Without revealing too much about the plot, the story is as follows: The Family Copoli is a post-apocalyptic burlesque musical, set 72 years in the future after a solar flare has wiped out the population, leaving only a few million living humans behind. The titular Family Copoli travels the desolate world, performing vaudevillian burlesque to inspire people to repopulate and save the human race. Meanwhile, behind the veil, the troupe’s internal issues and family secrets threaten the entire operation.
But before that exhilarating, rich performance could take the stage, the performers had to actually get to Scotland. Licursi recounted the harrowing journey from Ithaca to Edinburgh, citing “the most insane 80 hours of [her] life. … It all happened so fast, but it was so much fun.” Those 80 hours consisted of lugging the entire set from Ithaca to JFK, then from the London airport to King’s Cross station, then on a 20-minute walk to their housing. Licursi and her crew truly are soldiers for getting through that unscathed. “We were so excited to get there, nothing would have stopped us,” Licursi shared, and, truly, her determination awed me.
The work didn’t stop after their arrival. No, it had only just begun.
“It felt nonstop. We did the show every day for the whole month.” Doing the show so much, though it seemed daunting to me, was exactly what Licursi and her crew were looking forward to. They tweaked the show day by day, making little changes to the script and score, working always toward that unattainable goal of perfection. “The reception to the show was so much better than I thought it would be,” Licursi said, recalling three five-star reviews that Copoli received. Multiple people came to see the show multiple times, and they even had superfans that came to the show every day, messaging @thefamilycopoli on Instagram after to express their avid enjoyment.
While the positive reviews did bolster morale, attendance wasn’t Licursi’s end goal. No, instead, “the whole point was to come away knowing what we want to do with it and bring it to an international audience.” Licursi was committed to doing so regardless of reception. “I said going in, ‘Whether we have 80 or four [people] in the audience, we’re doing this full out.’” For the love of performing, of community, of art for the sake of art, Licursi and her fellow Cornellians put on the performance of a lifetime every night.
That kind of commitment is more than just commendable, it’s aspirational. But to Copoli’s performers, it really wasn’t work. Licursi credited her indefatigable efforts to “the magic of theater” and “doing something that you truly believe in and are passionate about.”
“Theater is medicine for people, the most basic form of human empathy,” Licursi continued. “It all happened because everyone loves what they’re doing, and we all love each other. All of us having the history we do with each other — doing this felt like a really cool bookend to the end of our college experience and the start of our careers.” Truly, I think the luckiest anyone can be in life would be to care about something the way Licursi cares about Copoli and the impact of theater. Pouring so much passion into a project is akin to putting your very soul into it, which pays off every time. The Family Copoli’s success is a testament to that fact.
Licursi left with a sweet message about everyone else who helped make Copoli happen: “I knew it would work from the get go because I knew I had the community for it. I knew everybody would … match my level of commitment and intensity. I love these guys so much, and I think we’ll work together for the rest of our lives.”
If you’d like to read a bit more about how inspiring and fantastic the show was, you can find some glowing reviews here, here and here.
Melissa Moon is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is an Assistant Arts & Culture Editor on the 143rd Editorial Board. She can be reached at mmoon@cornellsun.com.
