She doesn’t mind my horrible taste in clothing and home decor. She doesn’t chastise me for my careless driving. She doesn’t get hung up on my Calvin Klein underwear model physique, and loves me instead for my equally attractive personality.
She is my wife. She is completely blind.
In addition to other, less important things, my wife’s affliction impairs her ability to appreciate comedy. I do what I can to help, such as pausing Dharma & Greg to explain plot-essential sight gags, and reading choice bumper stickers out loud. But I am only one man. There are limits to how funny I can make things.
That’s why I love Stevie Ray's Comedy Cabaret for presenting Laughter Is Blind at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres last January. Their improv show made my life mildly more convenient. The kind-heartedness of their accommodation to one of the most marginalized – and, in my personal experience, beautiful – subsets of humanity nearly brought me to tears, too, which is also nice.
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Past the baby grand in the entrance. Beyond the fireplace in the lobby. Down the ramp. Hang a right at the duck statues into the amniotic comfort of Stevie Ray’s basement theater on a frostnipping winter day. Take your table. Lunch. Drink. Drink. Hush. The show is starting.
A silver-haired man takes the stage. “There is no visual humor in this show,” explains the one and only Stevie Ray. “There is no actual humor, either,” he adds, to a bumpity-bum flourish by the live pianist. He introduces the ensemble: a pack of four cards who begin dealing out the funnies.
Improvised songs featuring lyrics volunteered by audience members. “A such-and-such walks into a bar” jokes that have never been told before. A panel of experts fielding philosophical quandaries. “How do you justify your existence?” poses one of the crowd. “Oh yah, I know that one,” answers one of the comics in the persona of a Brainerd knucklehead. “I just got a new fishhouse. If I weren’t around, who would use it?”
These are just some of said funnies.
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“I began volunteering with the State Services for the Blind in 2007, creating recordings for their Radio Talking Book program,” Stevie Ray told me in a voice that I could easily spend sixty hours listening to. “From young adult fiction to history anthologies, Radio Talking Book broadcasts around the clock to visually impaired listeners throughout the country.
“I had started doing improv long before my work with Radio Talking Book. (I believe it was during the Mesozoic Era.) The fact that visually impaired people can’t fully appreciate improv comedians – who perform without a set or props, and spend years learning to ‘make the invisible visible’ via gesticulation and pantomime – wasn’t lost on me. That’s why I came up with Laughter Is Blind: a show that turns conventional improv on its head by containing the entire act within the limits of spoken word, with a pianist to gloss over the bits that wind up being not too terribly funny.”
There’s that Minnesotan humility at work again. Lest there be any doubt, Stevie Ray and his fellow improvisateurs (and improvisatrices) are a right funny bunch even when you aren’t looking at them.
“Chanhassen Dinner Theatres prides itself on making live entertainment accessible to people with disabilities,” Stevie Ray continued. “All of the Main Stage performances are available with assistive listening devices and audio description. But our improv troupe? Well, we don’t need to rely on contrivances like ‘technology’ or ‘a budget’ to make our act accessible. All it takes is a little extra creativity.”
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The laws of physics necessitated the creation of this magazine before Stevie Ray's Comedy Cabaret could schedule their April and later performances. Visit ChanhassenDT.com to see all the exciting new funnies Stevie Ray and the gang are cooking up, such as Stand-Up Sundays and This Musical Is a Joke. Purchase tickets to Guys and Dolls (playing on the Main Stage until September 26th) for everyone in your extended family while you’re at it.