When your job is making everything from elections to war to environmental disasters into a joke, it really does color your worldview.

"I don't look at the Egyptian protests and think, ‘Is this good for the world or bad for the world?' " says Elaina Newport, co-founder of the Capitol Steps, performing today in Olympia. "I think, ‘Is it funny, and what rhymes with it?'

"Nothing rhymes with Mubarak," she adds.

The Steps, who bill themselves as "the only group in America that attempts to be funnier than Congress," find humor in even the darkest subjects, she says. Take the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We did a song and we had to dress up like giant Gulf shrimp," Newport says. "I remember standing backstage dressed as a giant shrimp and thinking, ‘You know, I did go to college.' Nobody looks good in a shrimp outfit."

The song? "Under BP," performed to the tune of "Under the Sea" from Disney's The Little Mermaid.

Read the full interview with Capitol Steps here.

The Capitol Steps

Thursday, March 3, 7:30 p.m., $17.25–$42.50
Washington Center for the Performing Arts
512 Washington St. SE, Olympia
360.753.8586