The Capitol Steps - You Probably Had to Be There #4 "I Wish Fidel Castro Were Here" and Other Ill-Advised Ideas.

We travel a lot together.  Especially in the presidental election year.  This means nearly three months together, day after day, at airports before the crack of dawn, in rental cars across endless miles of Iowa or Kansas or (if you're lucky) the Pacific Northwest.  But usually Iowa. 

It starts to get to you.  The only time you have to yourself is when you are locked in yet another hotel room in yet another nameless town somewhere in (usually) middle America. 

We have enough people in the Capitol Steps to do four shows at the same time.  We usually mix and match cast members pretty much every show.  Tonight you play with these four people, that roadie and that piano player, tomorrow you play with those four people, this roadie and this piano player.  In theory, all the bits, the choreo, the lyrics, the staging is "standard".  When you are out travelling with the same cast for months on end, the "standard" for your cast shifts.  Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.  Someone says "Why don't we try this?"  It works, we keep it.  The "standard" changes just enough to make your show a slightly different show from all the other casts by the end of the travel season.  This is fine, while you remain an isolated unit.  It only presents problems if there is a cast change.  One woman is swapped out for another for some reason while you are between trips.  One of the guys joins a different cast after coming home from California with "them" and before heading out to Buffalo with "us".  Then it is all, "well my  cast does it this way", and "We  do it that way."  Sometimes fights and cold shoulders and "I hate this f*cking cast"s ensue.  It is irritating (and immature) when this happens, but somewhat inevitable.  You put 7 creative people together for a long time doing the same show, mostly cut off from the standardizing influence of the whole, and eventually they become...well...creative.  The show evolves, almost with a mind of its own.  You start to think of ways to make the show better.  Funnier.  The thing is, the show is already pretty damn funny most of the time.  The reason we tend to get jaded on it is simply a metter of proximity and repetition.  And usually any hilarious idea one has in the thick of a busy travel season is one that will only be funny to the people onstage and backstage.  Here are a few of my favorite ill-conceived "this will be SO FREAKING FUNNY" ideas.

"I Wish Fidel Castro Were Here"

At some point in 2004 there was a video of Fidel Castro at some public event, tripping awkwardly and falling over in full view of all the spectators.  I don't remember what happened, where he was, what he tripped on or what the significance of the fall was.  All I remember is that we latched onto it and thought it was the funniest thing in the world.  We HAD to add it into the show somehow. 

Our backstage tech was JS for this trip.  He is game for pretty much anything.  We decided that JS HAD to be Fidel somehow.  Somehow.  But HOW??  How do you work Fidel Castro into the show?  And not just Castro, but his FREAKING HILARIOUS fall??  AHA!  KC and MT put their brilliant minds together and come up with this:

The Bush and Cheney skit and song went as usual.  At the end of the song, Cheney's heart attack, which usually ends the bit, went as usual.  Suddenly, I hear my husband (who plays GW Bush) say "Oh no!  Dick Cheney had a heart attack!  I wish Fidel Castro were here!"  Then, dressed as Fidel Castro (one can find just about any combination of props and costumes in the bags the Capitol Steps drag around from place to place), cigar in hand, our roadie walks onstage, trips over Dick Cheney and falls face first on the stage. 

I can hear KC and MT laughing almost uncontrollably onstage.  JS is giggling madly as he lays face first onver MT.  We are all in tears backstage. 

The audience sits in a stunned and confused silence as MT and JS drag themselves offstage, making it look like they are being dragged off by an unseen body clean-up crew.

Ii guess it wasn't funny if you actually got enough sleep, weren't drunk on airplane fuel and bad hotel food and didn't eat, drink, sleep and breathe the Capitol Steps.  An error in judgment...that we make time and time again...

"The Fondler"

Arnold has been in the show many times over the last few years.  This particular time was when the Guvanator was accused of sexually harassing women on his staff.  The parody was to "The Wanderer" and it was, perhaps predicably, "The Fondler".  The format of the song (of which I cannot remember one single line) was an interview with Arnold and 2 female reporters.  At the end of the song, one of the reporters makes a derogatory comment about one of Arnold's movies.  It never really got a laugh, so of course, we thought we needed to "fix" it instead of just letting it go.  So we decided that Arnold would punch the reporter in the face after she insulted his movie.  The reporter (me, in this case) would drop like a sack of potatoes and remain there for the rest of the song, whereupon someone would drag me offstage.  Hilarious, right?  So the fateful moment rolls around, KC, in all his AHHHnuld glory throws a very realiztic stage punch at my chin.  I keel over, already in histerics.  The audience is dead silent.  They are shocked.  Appalled.  Perhaps this was another, er...poor choice.  For some reason, the audience didn't find it amusing that a huge, muscular man just walloped a considerably smaller woman in the face.  Huh.

"Don't Taze Me Bro!"

We currently have a song in the show called "State of Arizona" (a parody of "Hotel California") about the recent law passed in Arizona regarding immigration papers.  In the song, an apparent illegal immigrant is stopped by a border guard.  At the end of the song, the "illegal" tosses off his blanket to reveal that he is in fact a Navajo Indian. 

The last stanza of the song goes like this: tossing off his blanket to reveal full American Indian attire the "illegal" sings: "Welcome to my home land I was born here/Yes we've been here/5000 years./I'm Navajo, we own this land you're on here/We've fought illegals, too/since 1492". 

This usually results in the audience cheering and clapping (rough translation "WHOOHOO WHITE PEOPLE SUCK!".  Our audience is 90% old white people).  The end of this song borders on the preachy, which is slightly outside our job description. 

The change that has been proposed here is this:  The Indian sing the last lines in all his glory.  The audience cheers.  The border guard nods sagely.  The border guard produces a tazer, zaps the Indian and drags him off.  Scene.

Because we all think this is hilarious, it is pretty much a given that the audience will be horrified.  We haven't been delirious enough to try it yet.