I'll explain about the above photo in a moment but first, here's a message I received from Brendan Totten…
Your link to the recent Evening with Frank Ferrante was very much appreciated. I was one of the many people who was lucky to see him in person thanks to your recommendations. When I saw his show he got several members of the audience involved, with hilarious results, and a couple of times I saw him look straight in my direction and I thought "He's going to pick on me! He's going to pick on me! He's going to pick on me!"
But the show came to an end without me being picked on and I was left with a curious mixture of relief and disappointment!
Which brings me to my question. Have you ever voluntarily or involuntarily become a sudden participant in someone's show? If so, who was it and how did you feel about it?
I have occasionally been tapped and I never like being in that position. I'm never sure if I should just play dumb, which is what they usually want, or say something that might get a laugh.
It's very awkward for me when magicians yank me out of the audience at the Magic Castle. When I'm there in the evening, I always wear my member lapel pin — I've been a member for forty (!) years — and if the magician spots it, he knows not to pick me since the last thing a magician wants in a "volunteer" is someone who knows how the trick is done.
Once in a while though, I get picked and I do a real bad job at appearing clueless and amazed. Needless to say, I have no trouble being that way when I'm not on a stage as part of a magic routine. There have been a few real awkward experiences but the one that comes to mind was with a magician named Ondřej Pšenička, who you may have seen on Penn & Teller Fool Us.
He selected me for a trick in which he asks the "volunteer" to eat a cricket and I refused. Yes, I know they're harmless for most people but I'm not most people. I'm a guy with many, many food allergies and there are foods that you can eat all day that would put me in the emergency room. I don't know if crickets are one of them but I see no reason to ever find out…and especially not in a public place with an audience watching.
Eating the cricket was not essential to the trick he performed. It was just something he liked to have the volunteer do because I guess with most people it yielded a funny, entertaining moment. He looked annoyed at me and eventually sent me back to my seat and got someone else up there to eat the cricket. I don't think he knew how unfunny and unentertaining the end of his act would have been if I'd had the same reaction to that cricket that I once had to a piece of asparagus.
That was the most unpleasant experience I've ever had with a performer calling on me. A not-unpleasant one came in November of 2007 when Carolyn and I were in Columbus, Ohio for the annual Mid-Ohio Con, which was one of the best outta-state conventions I used to attend. One evening, we went (and took along our friend Maggie Thompson) to see the national touring company of Spamalot.
I wrote about that evening here but for those of you too lazy to click, I shall summarize: As I guess is no secret by now to anyone who cares, a member of the audience who sits in a certain seat is dragged up onto the stage as part of the show. I was in that seat and suddenly, there I was up there.
I managed to not look too awkward and I said something that got a laugh — which prompted a lot of people to ask me on the way out if I was a "plant," which I was not. I was given the above Polaroid photo (it's not out of focus; I was) and a little trophy which they give to everyone in my position. You can see it at the start of this item and in case you can't read the inscription, it says "THE ARTHUR AWARD — Best Peasant — Monty Python's SPAMALOT."
In the hundreds of thousands of times I've seen Frank Ferrante play Groucho, he has never selected me to be part of his act and for that, I am most grateful. In October of 2010, I took a young lady I liked very much to see Frank in his other identity — that of Caesar, the preening host of Teatro ZinZanni. This was in their San Francisco location which has since closed. A new location is being built for them in that city and they are expected to reopen, as most of America is, sometime in the year 2022.
Teatro ZinZanni is kind of like what Cirque du Soleil would be if it was in a smaller tent, featured lots of English and more comedy, was slanted a bit more towards adults and involved a gourmet dinner show with courses served between the various acts. It is quite a wonderful experience…or at least it was that evening with Frank as the Master of Ceremonies and his lovely friend Dreya Weber flying over our heads in a beautiful aerial act.
And there were other acts, also quite enjoyable, and a great live band and Frank got us the best seats and comped the whole thing…and the only thing I asked him before was that he not select as us "volunteers." Caesar does a lot of that during the show, getting people up on the center stage to dance or play games or play roles in scenes with him. Frank, who is a man of honor, did not do this.
After the performance, he gave us a tour of the place and mentioned that the musicians had asked him to get the cute lady at Table 1 up on stage and encourage her to dance. But Frank, who is a man of honor, had followed my request and not done this, whereupon the cute lady punched me in the shoulder and said, "Why did you do that? I would have loved it if he'd brought me up there!"
I asked her, "Wouldn't you have been afraid of looking foolish?" And she replied, "Would I be going out with you if I was afraid of looking foolish?" Or at least, that's what I thought I heard her say.
