To Shock or Not to Shock, That is the Question

I am back home from an interesting couple of days on the road.

On Thursday night I did a high school show in Maine. Prior to the show a couple of the girls from the show committee and one of the girl’s boyfriends were talking to me about the show.
I found out that I was replacing a guy who had been doing shows for a few years there and I asked why they made a change. The reason was because his show was apparently the same word for word and they just wanted something new.
I asked about a couple of the skits that he did so I could figure out if I should add or cut anything from mine.
One of the skits this guy did was have guys pregnant and “give birth” onstage.
Now this is a high school show and I made the mistake early on in my career of doing this at a late night high school show. When I did it, over to my side I saw two teachers in the wings telling me to stop. I did, of course, and later they told me that in that community it probably wasn’t wise.

The kids loved it and invited me back the next year but the two teachers kept me away.
Now, had the people involved been high school girls instead of boys, I could see a problem with that. I wouldn’t use girls, or even women for that matter, in that situation because its really only funny with guys.

So I tell these three kids that story and why I wouldn’t do it there. One of the girls looks at me and says, “I’ve heard of shows where they have people orgasm on stage. Do you do THAT one?”
All three were now looking at me clearly with a look of hope. How do I know it was a look of hope? Because when I said I couldn’t do that in this show, they then had a look of disappointment on their faces and the girl who asked me then said, “oh, that sucks.”

I thought that was pretty funny. But now I realize that I am going to be compared to the last guy who did more risqué stuff than I was willing to do. So I had to run to the advisor to let her know that my show was only PG-13 at best. Now, I also know and explained that if I had the teachers and parents in a room separately, they would want to see the more R rated show. But when the two crowds are together it doesn’t go over well.

Clearly that is all very stupid, when it comes right down to it. Particularly since what people actually do on stage is follow a suggestion to use ones imagination and the result is that they are acting out the scene I describe, if they want to follow along in the first place anyway.

So the show goes on and I do my thing. And I do it well. I guess the crowd was about 100 in size. Not too shabby for a high school show on a Thursday night.

At the end of it the advisor tells me that she loved the show and even said so in front of the video camera. She also told me, off camera, that I was better than the last guy. The three kids who I met earlier agreed and I’ll be heading back there.

The next evening was particularly interesting. For more details about what happened in this one I’m going to talk about it during the next taping of my show. But to tease it I will let you know that you will find out why I gave out more business cards after one show than EVER before, yet there is a group of people who are going to do whatever they can to make sure I never work there again. (The high school kids would have loved it!) I have had an arrangement with the organization which hired me not to broadcast anything from that appearance over the years I have done that show and I always honor that. So I can only imagine what the stories of that night will sound like a couple of years from now without any tape available.

Well, I guess the guy I replaced at the high school will have an opening he can fill that I might have left for him. He should know though that I did the pregnant dude thing there years ago already so he’ll need some new material.

Done.