Who, at some point in his or her life, hasn’t wanted to be Bob Barker, with his beauties prancing around the stage and that skinny microphone? Or Marc Summers, whose cool, aloof presence on the “Double Dare” set foreshadowed his announcement of obsessive compulsive disorder?
Anderson Lawfer has made that dream a reality. He’s the host of the monthly variety show, “The Game Show Show … and Stuff!” which combines, as Chicago magazine wrote and the show’s website proudly announces, “the best (and worst) of ‘The Price Is Right,’ ‘Jackass” and ‘Soul Train.’” Started in 2006 by Strawdog Theatre Company members, including Lawfer and announcer James “Jaz” Anthony Zoccoli, it’s lived at the Strawdog (3829 N Broadway St.) and the now-closed Lakeshore Theatre before making it to the Chopin Theatre (1543 W. Division St).
Even though no show is the same twice, there’s a general formula: Every audience member fills out a card at the beginning of the show, and Zoccoli draws names from a bingo tumbler he’s named “that thing.” Contestants play a game — either trivia, guessing, or dexterity — and then the winners of each round participate in the Ultimate Mega Super Ultra Final Round (which isn’t really a secret: it’s a danceoff). There’s also some kind of musical or performance element to the show, such as go-go troupe the Revelettes.
The games are not your grandmother’s games, however. They recently played a trivia round they called “Annie Get Your Green Card,” in which they asked contestants questions from the U.S. citizenship test (the participants didn’t do very well). And they’re working on “Ball Baskets,” where each player buckles a Folgers can to his pelvis region and then tries to aim small, spongy basketballs at the other player’s can.
But first, says Lawfer, “we dip the balls in lead.”
Onstage, Lawfer doesn’t get to quip his witty one-liners through a skinny microphone like Bob Barker, but he’s got the two hot girls.
Local actors Anne Sheridan-Smith and Nikki Klix — who also happens to be Lawfer’s girlfriend — are the showgirls, singing along with the five-piece band to classics like Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison” or strolling the stage to show off the prizes, most often tickets to local theater shows.
And every show, someone from the audience wins a cool $20. (This is the “Jackass” part.) “It was born out of being so broke and desperate,” said Zoccoli, that he, Lawfer and their friends would challenge each other to see who cold come up with the most ridiculous or disgusting challenge for $20. Would you … stick your head in a vat of mayonnaise or chug a quart of eggnogg?
Then they brought it to their audience. “It’s an interesting study of humanity,” Lawfer says. People storm the stage before he even has the words “$20 challenge” out of his mouth. And once they agree to participate, “it’s peer pressure times one million.”
“They get caught up in the ‘party atmosphere,’ ” Lawfer says (complete with air quotes). In other words, drinking is encouraged.
“The more you drink,” Zoccoli adds, “the funnier we are.”
Even with the party atmosphere, April’s “Game Show Show” was relatively tame. The audience laughed when Lawfer announced the Ultimate Mega Super Ultra Final Round. And they yelled out answers to the trivia questions about April’s monthly holidays—yes, in fact, April is National African American Women’s Fitness Month and Straw Hat Month. But, says Lawfer, “they are usually a lot louder” and “beside themselves trying to get onstage.”
The show was in an unusual space for them: the Chopin’s black-box basement theater. They’re used to bigger, more open spaces, such as the Chopin’s main stage, which seats 200 people. They’ve even performed for a crowd of about 1,200 people in the Auditorium Theatre, at Looptopia 2008.
“Crowd down and action up,” Lawfer says. “I think the weird space” in the black-box — there were columns blocking one part of the audience from seeing another part, for example, and the stage ran down the middle of the seating — “wasn’t as conducive to the flow of the show. The audience needs to be able to see each other better, to cheer for each other and see the band.”
They’ll be back to their regular spot starting in June, on the Chopin’s main stage as a guest of the House Theatre.
Even though the show’s been around for about five years (with a brief hiatus), Lawfer and Zoccoli are still developing their voices onstage. They’ve created personas “blown up to cartoony proportions,” Zoccoli says, but it’s not so far off from who they really are.
Lawfer agrees: “We all wanted to be rock stars and comedians and game-show hosts before we became actors.”
