Just ONE funny story?  How about a dozen.

Posted by Amanda Farrar on December 9, 2009

A wonderful student from Elgin Community College contacted BOM last week to get some information for a project that her group is doing on us.  (Flattering!)  Of course, I said I would provide whatever information she would need.  She then sent me a series of questions for me to consider.  I was going gun-ho until I got to the question that asked me to share an interesting/funny story about the company.  This was the absolute hardest question to answer.  Even as a newbie (three months plus), I could already come up with at least half a dozen.  I turned around and opened up the question to the staff. 

So many stories flowed forth.  (Stories about making stories – think about that for a while.  It’s like thinking about infinity.  Kind of.)  The majority of the stories had one thing in common: they all happened within the last month. 

There was that time during “Haunted House with Women” that a young girl was a little scared, and then was absolutely fine when the women hit the stage.

In a residency, a male student who was reserved for the first few weeks volunteered emphatically to play the role of Linda in the performance of a group story where Linda kills a bear, serves it to her family, and then throws the table over when there’s none left for her.

At the show, the Lion Martin asked the Tiger Luther a question, and young lady in the audience answered instead.

In a classroom, one student was making an argument in front of her class.  She was struggling with a word: “This is uncomfortable to say.  It’s when air comes out of your behind.”  Without batting an eye, our Monkey Mikala said, “Oh, you mean a fart?” No one laughed.  In a classroom of 4th graders.  They take our agreement “no laughing at other people’s ideas” super seriously.

When a student saw his story performed word for word, he had a revelation: “So, it’s like we are the directors, and you do what we say.” Yep!  That’s pretty much it.

Yeah, so that was last month.  Give or take a few days.  Working with kids and performing for them is fascinating and wonderful.  Every single day there are noteworthy stories, both written and carried out in reality.  It is just the nature of the work that we do. 

I didn’t share a story with the student from Elgin about a time when so and so fell off the stage, or forgot his pants, or forgot his lines – we expect that stuff to happen, and it does happen, to us and a million other theater companies.  But what matters most and what makes our work special is the stuff with the kids – that’s the important stuff.