Last night, in the latest edition of the grand tradition, four stalwart friends assembled at Denny’s in Murray, Utah (just a few minutes south of Salt Lake City) for a night of fun.
“I don’t know,” I mouthed around a jawful of green beans and half-masticated chicken, “we did the Hoo-Doggy last time, and it just seems dated, you know?” I adjusted my backside a bit on the not-too-soft, very narrow, short green booth bench next to an outside window under the dim lighting in the greasy-spoon.
“Yeah, I know, but what would we yell instead,” questioned intrepid Desert Star Heckling Society leader Ryan Rawlins as he chewed around a forkful of steak, “Oompa-Loompa or something?” His prodigiously wide frame seemed incongruous on the small bench opposite mine.
“Naw, that lacks panache,” I replied, as our two mortified wives glared at us, then began their own conversation. “Maybe Oh My Heck?”
“What about Good Golly?” Ryan suggested, the gleam in his eye indicating he thought he’d found just the thing.
“Oh, yeah, that sounds great!” I shouted enthusiastically, spraying a mouthful of cottage cheese across the table which drew a raised eyebrow from Ryan’s wife, Lynette. “and maybe we can shout ‘Bad Golly’ when the bad guy comes out!”
And thus began our third foray into the world of our newly-formed Desert Star Heckling Society. We began innocently enough one night, with a simple “Hoo-Doggie!” shouted at inappropriate times. The Desert Star players responded enthusiastically to this prodding, with zany one-liners and zingers coming with each inflammatory statement.
Tonight followed that excellent pattern.
“Good Golly!” we shouted in unison after arriving at the theater and the play, “Jekyll & Hyde”, began.
“Exactly!” shouted the actor onstage in response to this bit of audience participation.
Ryan began to get creative as the puns got worse from onstage. “Yes,” proclaimed the ugly Mr. Hyde, played with flair and ham by Jack Drayton, “you can’t hyde from me!”
“That’s just bad!” shouted Ryan next to me. The audience giggled around us.
“What, you think I write this crap?” responded Hyde with a glare and a grin from the stage. This time, the audience guffawed.
A few minutes later, Ryan interjected another one-liner at an appropriate moment when the audience should have been laughing, but wasn’t. “This,” Scott Holman as Dr. Jekyll retorted from behind the desk on stage, gesturing in Ryan’s direction, “this is what happens when cousins marry.” The audience roared!
The art of good heckling has been refined as a tradition for thousands of years of human history. Unfortunately, it is all too often lowbrow and of ill-humor. Lines like “you suck” or “go home”, while perhaps appropriate at a sporting event, are entirely inappopriate at a a comedy theater. So, in that vein, allow me to share a few tips for good heckling at the Desert Star!
- Be creative. Use original lines, and be sure to try to have good comedic timing. If a few lines fall flat, that’s OK, but if all of your lines fall flat all night, you’re definitely doing something wrong. If you draw laughs from your surrounding patrons, you are doing it right. If you instead draw frowns and angry stares, perhaps you’d better think up some original lines ahead of time and try them out on friends to see if they are funny. Or just hang up your heckling shoes and realize that you’re forever consigned to the role of laughing plebian, rather than witty repartee-master-of-the-heckle, eh?
- Remember, you are a foil for the actors and actresses. Your goal is to get them to respond to you — draw their fire, and get them to use those lovely insults they have prepared in your direction. The audience should be laughing at what the actor or actress says — not what you say.
- Be prepared to be insulted. Your breeding, your clothing, your hairstyle… If you don’t have a thick skin, you’re not going to survive the heckler’s life!
- Do not try to heckle on your first trip, or perhaps even your third. Know the actors before attempting to engage in sparkling repartee with them.
- Heckling is best used to involve an otherwise uninvolved audience. If the people around you aren’t responding to the puns, point them out, laugh as loudly as you can, and try to get them to respond.
- In the vein of “know your actors”, here are some of the principal players at the Desert Star Playhouse as of late 2003 who are fun for hecklers to play with. The playhouse really seems to value an active audience, and readily involves them (willingly or unwillingly) in their antics. I figure heckling is fair play — particularly if you are on the front row 🙂
Jack Drayton is an easy mark. He readily responds to audience heckling, usually to hilarious effect. He has an excellent sense of timing, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of funny, self-deprecating retorts for virtually any audience participation. If you must choose one Desert Star player to pick on, and you have a frail ego, he’s the guy. Unlike some other players, he nearly always responds to provocation, which makes him really fun to barb.
Scott Holman is another easy mark, but only for the thicker-skinned potential hecklers. Scott, like Jack, readily responds to hecklers, but his responses (like the one above), tend to be far more oriented toward personal insults to audience members. Don’t get me wrong, they are still hilariously funny, but delicate egos need not apply.
Kerstin Davis is also a regular DS performer, and an excellent choice for the budding heckler. She will often ignore the heckling if your timing is off, though, so it’s probably best to cut your teeth on Scott or Jack before trying out Kerstin.
If done properly, heckling can be an excellent way to make a night at the Desert Star even better. But fair warning, competition is fierce in this arena, and some nights you may only find room for one or two barbs. Never fear… if you attend enough, you will find a night when the audience is dead, and your heckling talents can really bring the best out in the performers to warm the audience up and get them rolling!