Comedian Eugene Mirman hosted a comedy special on Comedy Central tonight in which he used an Etherwave theremin as a prop. In the sketch above, the theremin plays the role of an alien... who happens to be his roommate, and who happens to come from a planet with 8 genders. Through the course of the conversation, the theremin flirts with and eventually asks comedien Kristen Schaal on a date. It's the typical story, right?
Theremins aren't new to comedy... but it's fun to see one being used in such a high visibility act on mainstream TV. Back in the day, a performer billing himself as "Musaire" used a theremin in his vaudeville act. Check out this video of his performance from 1937 (the comedy starts about at about 1:20 into the clip). More recently, UK Comedian Bill Bailey has incorporated a theremin into may of his acts. Here's an example performance from YouTube.
I didn't see the whole Mirman show tonight, but the clip above is relatively clean and appropriate for most audiences.
