URBANA – Actor and University of Illinois alum Nick Offerman will perform a show this weekend in Champaign-Urbana to raise money for the University’s Japan House.
Offerman, who is widely known for his role as Ron Swanson in the NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation,” has a connection to the Japan House that goes back decades.
During his time at the University of Illinois in the 1990s, he became involved with the Japan House, taking classes in kabuki performance from the organization’s founder, Professor Shozo Sato. Eventually, Offerman and a few other University of Illinois students even took a year off from school, instead touring around the world with Sato in one of his kabuki reimagining’s of a classic Western play.
Now, the Japan House is raising money to build a new annex in order to increase its class sizes and offerings, said Diana Liao, the organization’s education and engagement specialist.
“Nick has always said that he deeply values Professor Sato’s mission of teaching, and he wants so many more students, so many more visitors and community members to experience the same joy, passion, cultural diversity that he did,” Liao said.
This isn’t Offerman’s first return to campus or fundraiser show for the Japan House. He’s come back multiple times over the last decade, performing shows and hosting dinners to help raise money.
On social media, Offerman described this year’s show is described as a “evening of deliberative talking, mirth, and music.” The show, titled “An Evening with Nick Offerman,” is part of a larger tour around the United States and Canada.
“Nick’s coming back, and we’re very excited. I think it’s a new generation of students who will get to meet him, laugh along with him,” Liao said. “It was a very funny show last time, I remember.”
The show will be at 7:00 p.m. in the University of Illinois’ Foellinger Auditorium.