Randolph I’ve had an interesting weekend.
On Friday night, we hosted nearly fifty people in our house, for the year-end function for some of the hospitalists in town. The hardwood floors took some damage.
On Saturday night, I performed at another private year-end function, for actual money.
My role in Friday night’s affair was to be affable and humorous, based on my real self. I think I succeeded.
My role in Saturday night’s affair was to be a German ski instructor, with flashbacks to the 1980s. I was one of four performers in total, and each of us had a character and had to arrange a dance for the attendees to perform.
I coloured my hair with chalk spray. There were three colours to choose from: blue, pink and green, so I chose all three.
I walked around with a clipboard, a measuring tape, and a giant pink pen. The clipboard had black-letter writing on the front page, where I’d written the German word for “clipboard”. It looked menacing.
When introducing myself to attendees, I wrote name tags for them with my giant pen, and a pad of yellow sticky notes. For some reason, these were a huge hit. I naturally didn’t use their real names, preferring to make them up as I went along. Some of the more popular names were Loud, Cute Smile, Tall, Awesome and Fab.
I had to call a square dance. Because I’ve never called a square dance in my life, I searched through (many) YouTube clips, and finally settled on a circle dance (as opposed to a square dance), set to the Rednex version of Cotton Eye Joe. Before the dance, I gave a dramatic reading of the chorus, which a friend had translated into “the original” German, about Baumwollaugen-Johannes*.
My German accent has been used in many performances, including as Hubert Gruber from the stage production of ‘Allo! ‘Allo!, to a rewrite of the stage play Night Call, where I play a socialist librarian. Most recently, I’ve been cast in a voice role as a German scientist for an independent video game. I’d stop using it if people stopped wanting to hear it. If only I could do an American accent as convincingly.
One thing I’ve learned as a live performer (which includes teaching and presenting, for what it’s worth), is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you’re doing, as long as you can fake it or make it at least look like your ineptitude is intentional.
- If you’re curious, this is how Cotton Eye Joe looks in German:
Wär’ Baumwollaugen-Johannes nicht gewesen,
wär’ ich schon lang verheiratet.
Wo bist du hergekommen?
Wo bist du hingegangen?
Wo bist du hergekommen, Baumwollaugen-Johannes?