Last night was a great night for me. I didn't actually do anything drastically different from what I usually do, but stuff happened and they, in combination, made the general night awesome.
First of all, I'm in a play. Wait, before that: I'm in one of the two drama clubs in my uni, and this club is called Rostra. There will be a play in a couple of months and I'm in it (as a non-American old man, no less...), and there was a rehearsal last night. What the play is about, you'll have to go see it for yourself :P But basically, if you're a fan of Shakespeare, or a sci-fi fan, or both, then this play might be your stuff.
Anyway, so there was rehearsal that was supposed to start at 7.30 last night. There was also a free performance by the uni's comedy club, which started at 9.00. So it all worked out: rehearse for an hour and a half or so, and then head straight to where the comedy performance was being held (it was only a 5-minute walk away from where I was rehearsing). I was psyched, right? Of course I was! A free opportunity to laugh my thoughts away? I'll take it! (And... there's another reason. But I'm keeping it to myself, for now~)
So, while waiting for 7 PM to come ('cause I spend around 25ish minutes to walk from my room to where the rehearsal was) I was reading some stuff on the Internet. There's a 7-hour time difference between my home country of Indonesia and the UK, and the time on my laptop was set to the Indonesian time zone (known as WIB, which is actually one of three different time zones in Indonesia, but I digress). And even though I usually have a pretty good grasp of the difference (I mean, I just need look at the time displayed on my laptop and add 5 or subtract seven!), for some reason I lost track last night. I can blame a certain website called Quora for this. In any case, I jumped out of my chair when I realized it was 7:19 already. I hurriedly put my laptop on hibernate, readied myself and zoomed out of my room, luckily remembering to lock the door before I left my dorm.
As I was on my way to the rehearsal while listening to music on my iPod, a text message came to my phone around 7.40ish. It was from the director, Josie, and she said she was stuck on an elevator, so she'll be late for a little bit. "YES!" I thought to myself! The rehearsal can't start without the director, and when I arrived at the place, apparently several other people were also late. I'm not the only one, so phew! #:-s
Before the rehearsal started, we warmed our bodies up and played games. But before that, there was a small but entertaining argument between the director and the lead actor... about the word 'knob'. See, earlier in the day Josie had texted everyone about where and when the rehearsal was going to be. Then a bit later the lead actor, Nick, asked on Rostra's Facebook page when the rehearsal was going to be. So Josie called him a knobhead, which I totally think is a good word. Anyway, back to the argument: Nick says the word 'knob' doesn't have a 'k' in it, but Josie says it does. Personally, I've never seen the word 'nob', but I'm not even from an English-speaking country, so what do I know, right? Nick claims that since he was from the South of England, he knows English better than Josie, who was from North Wales. Y'know, since England = English? I pointed out that we were currently in North Wales, and things turned hilarious. The whole thing was just for fun, though!
So after that, warm ups, games, and then the rehearsal. We were just practicing for a montage in the play but it was quite funny. Well, the whole play is supposed to be comedic, so that's a good thing. We worked out what was going to happen exactly in the montage and practiced it for a bit. In the middle, I kinda got sad, since we started late (thanks to people who were late as well as the whole 'knob' thing) it ended later than I expected as well. I thought I was going to only make the second half of the comedy club's performance. Luckily the rehearsal lasted shorter than I thought, and it ended at around 9:10.
I quickly grabbed my bag and stuff and ran for where the comedy club was performing. I arrived there in less than 2 minutes. Of course, they had already started. Out of breath, I took a seat and calmed myself down as I enjoyed the performance. They were absolutely hilarious, as always! The first half went off nicely and funnily, and then came the 5-10 minute break. By this time, my throat was already quite sore, what with my imitation of an old man voice earlier on and loudly laughing. So after I talked to some friends of mine, I whooshed out of the hall and went straight to the ATM nearest the place I could buy a bottle of mineral water. Well, I originally intended to go to the local supermarket (known as Morrisons), which was a 3-minute run downhill, but as I arrived I remembered that Morrisons closed at 9. Knobheads! Fortunately for me, there were a lot of stores around (I didn't want to go to a nearby bar just to buy water. They're expensive!), so I went to the ATM at the outside Morrisons, withdrew some money and ran back up. I went into a store I frequent and bought a small bottle of warm mineral water. Thankful, I paid and again ran up, back to where the funnies were at!
Bottle in hand, I sat down while controlling my breath. Turns out, I didn't need to run, since the second half started 5 minutes after I got back! Oh well. So I waited by reading a book while savoring that sweet, sweet water washing down the soreness down my throat. Then it started. And I didn't expect anything different to happen. I mean, the performers were just gonna perform, the audience laughs, everybody goes home, right? Wrong!
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| The logo of Bangor's Comedy Club |
See, the performance was basically a series of random sketches. The performers already determined which of the performing members (since not all members of the comedy club were in the performance) are going to play which sketch, but they (mostly the host) always ask for suggestions from the audience; for example, one sketch involved a good cop-bad cop duo interrogating a criminal, and it required a crime, a victim, and how the criminal managed to get away. (As an interesting note, the host chose my suggestion for the crime, which was: toilet-papering someone's house!)
Now, back to the second half. This is where things got interesting. There was a sketch about an anchorman, and there were three other people in the sketch: a co-anchor, a weatherman and a sports reporter. The performer playing the anchorman was sent to a different room while the host took suggestions from the audience for three different quirks for the other three, and after that the anchorman had to guess what the three quirks were based on how they reported things. The three quirks were: the co-anchor's hands had different personalities, the weatherman was melting, and the sports reporter couldn't say the word "ball".
And so the sketch started. At first, it was just like all the other sketches: hilarious. Then it got even more hilarious. The co-anchor's right hand turned out to be evil, and his left hand was good (a good angel-bad angel dynamic), and the right hand tried to kill the anchorman, before it was stopped by the left hand. Then the right hand told the co-anchor to kill the anchorman since he hates him, but the left hand told him he loves the anchorman. Random funny stuff happened as the anchorman got confused. And then, the co-anchor's right hand and left hand got into a fight, everyone laughed, the anchorman made stupid faces, and the right hand tried to strangle the co-anchor. There was more hand-to-hand combat (teehee, see what I did there?) before the left hand strangled the co-anchor and he fell into the process of dying.
At this point, I realized that the left hand was supposed to be the good hand. Finding this weird, I open my mouth and uttered the only words in my mind at the time:
"Wrong hand."
I may have said that a little louder than I planned, since the room immediately fell into silence and the performer playing the co-anchor (a fella by the name of Dan, if I remember correctly) awkwardly stared at me. From the corner of my eye, I saw some other people turned back to see me, too. And then... everyone laughed. Uproariously. No, really, the entire room (even the president of the comedy club!) burst out into a loud roar of laughter as the audience (and Dan) realized what I meant. I just sat there grinning, still locking eyes with the stunned performer as he tried to find a way out while his supposed-to-be-good left hand was still wrangled around his neck. Then he shouted "Mercy kill!" to me and everybody laughed again, he died, and we applauded his brilliant save.
The rest of the performance went off brilliantly, ending on a really entertaining note. We applauded, everyone cheered, and the room was cleared out. Since I was sitting at the back (I was late, remember?) I was one of the first to exit the room. Then I stood around for a bit while getting my iPod and my jacket ready as other people exited the hall as well. Then Dan came out, saw me, and jokingly insulted me, to which I replied "pwned!" But then I commended him for his nice last-moment save and he thanked me, and so I went home. Happy and cheery, not only because the montage for my play was set, but also because I managed to get a room of about 50 people laugh loudly together (at the expense of Dan. Sorry, Dan!). And hey, it was a comedy performance. We were all there for the lulz anyway, so no harm done, right? :D
