Jesters 4th of July Recap

The Jesters Royale had their big Fourth of July show on Saturday – and that may have been the most enjoyable performance I ever participated in. The audience, although not our largest, was the best and most energetic we’ve had in a LONG time. Plus, I got to play some top-notch improv scenes with the Most Extremely Talented Blake, Brady, Jake, Jourdan, and Shawn.

Highlights from the night include:

1 - A gravedigger communing with the corpse of his grandmother… and a shovel.
2 - A tragic amnesia case (“What’s a chair?”).
3 - Hannibal Lecter getting his comeuppance from a drunken old man.
4 - George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, transformed into Saruman destroying an Ent, transformed into a Night Elf warrior tickling the World Tree to death. Don’t worry, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense if you were there, either, but trust me, it was fun.
5 - Blake’s fantastic transformation into a Na’Vi from Avatar.
6 - A four-man game of Revolver… plus one.
7 - And more fat jokes than you can shake a plus-sized stick at.

Oh, and Jourdan held my hand for, like, a minute, prompting my dad to ask me if I’ve officially come out of the closet. Thanks for that, Jourdan.

I wanna give a special shout-out to some of the other members of the team for their help with the show: Heidi, who rocked the microphone as our Mistress of Ceremonies; Darian, for a killer job at the sound booth; Manelle, for her help with box office; Nate, Keri, and Brady, for their music contributions; and Bryan, who restored our tired old props to their former glory. Y’all are rockstars, pure and simple.

I’ll admit to having a few misgivings about continuing with the improv team recently. As with just about any dramatic discipline, there’s a LOT that goes on backstage that most people watching the shows don’t know about. Sometimes I wonder if the opportunity to perform really is worth all the rest of the baggage.

Nights like Saturday remind me why I do this – and it’s not all for the applause. See, I’m pretty much a grown-up now. I have rent, a job, responsibilities with church and the community, and I wouldn’t ever want to get rid of all that. However, I LIKED being a little kid, and a lot of the things I enjoyed as a little kid still bring me a lot of happiness. I like eating cold cereal in the middle of the day, I like reading superhero comics, and I like walking around barefoot.

Improv almost allows me to BE a little kid again. I don’t mean that I get to act all immature and talk about poop… well, okay, I DO get to do that, but that’s not the point. There’s a lot of freedom that comes from improvisation – a type of imaginative freedom that I don’t feel as often in its purity now that I’m no longer a child. Improv sometimes lets me capture the magical freedom of being a child – and that makes all the drama totally worth it.

So here’s one last shout out to the entire team of Jesters – all the students, the veterans, the ones that have gone away and the ones that are joining us again – Thank You.