Last Friday we opened the Royal Fools improv season. We have a record fourteen students this year, and for six of them, this was their first show. All the Fools did extremely well; I was very happy with the show. We got good feedback from the audience after the show, and the online (Facebook) buzz was also very good.

The audience was a joy to play for – they were very energetic and quick to laugh. I do not have an exact count, but we were over one hundred people for sure. My pastor, Ken, and his wife, Janet, made the forty-five-minute drive to CVCA to see it, and that meant a lot to me.

We were able to do a little actual good as well. We were able to partner with an effort to raise some money for a CVCA family who has financial needs. We set out baskets and people gave whatever they wanted. I have not heard a total yet, but the baskets seemed to be happily full; at a guess, I’d say we were able to raise a couple of hundred dollars. It is not a lot of money, but it lets the family know we are thinking of them.

We also had our first Fools promotion ever. We were given some money in memory of Mark Hartburg. Mark was my former student who died last summer after a long battle with cancer. Mark loved the Fools, so I decided to spend the money given in an effort to draw in audiences for future shows by advertising our group. So, I bought 250 buttons and 100 zipper-pulls with the Fools’ logo on them, and we gave these out to the audience for free. Again, I’m estimating, but it looks as if we gave out about 150 buttons and about 75 zipper-pulls. I hope it creates more visibility for the group.

Some of the fun things that happened in the show included:
– A superhero, Cheeseman, being attacked by his own towels
– Two girls needing a better joke book, so finding a “joker,” who turns out to be the Joker of Batman fame (all done while wearing blindfolds)
– Ugly griffins being used as basketballs and golf balls
– A world championship of underwater basket weaving ending in a tie
– A debate over the merits of flying monkeys
– A car salesman trying to pitch a $20 million car, which was played by one of the Fools
– Robot-generated sculpture explained to the audience
– A guy who went to LegoLand, where he became a pirate but met his end via AP term paper
– A Dating Game show where the choices were Kesha, King Kong, and Gandalf

So, all in all, it was a very fun evening, but it did not end with the end of the show. Mer and I hooked up with the Churchills and Gurnishes, and we all went to Coldstone Creamery for ice cream (a pretty typical occurrence after a Fools show). Nate and Zach are both funny men and kept us laughing for much of the evening, but Zach had us almost crying with stories of things that just seem to happen to him. We were at Coldstone for a little over an hour, and so Mer and I did not get home until after 10:30. Fools, friends, and food make for a great way to spend a Friday.