A man in black sits in front of the audience, his guitar across his lap. His voice is deep and his cowboy hat pulled low. He’s talking about a dark time in his life.
“I wrote a song about it,” he says, pulling a scrap of paper from a small metal box on a nearby table. He looks at the paper briefly, then back to the audience. “It’s a song called Whiskey, Puppets and You.”
The audience chuckles, and the Johnny Cash-inspired character, played by local musician and comic Todd Herring, launches into a tune about tragedy, loss, whiskey and, yep, puppets. When he finishes the song, two actors bound onto the stage behind him, and begin simulating puppets at a strip club that’s fallen on hard times. The audience roars with laughter.
Who knew Johnny Cash could inspire such humorous hijinks?
The scene comes from an inventive new improvisational comedy show called Cash Box that’s returning to Grand Rapids’ Dog Story Theater. The first show in the new run kicks off tonight, May 2 at 9 p.m.
The brainchild of Herring and some of his local improv buddies, the hour-long Cash Box came out of another long-form improvisation show called The Armando, named for legendary New York improv comedian Armando Diaz. In that show, the Armando character gets on stage and tells personal stories, which provide inspiration for improv scenes.
Herring, a veteran of the River City Improv comedy troupe and local bands such as Craic Wisely, adapted the Armando format for his own Cash-inspired character. Before each show, audience members are invited to write down song names and drop them in the so-called cash box. Herring comes out, does a monologue, and then dips into the cash box for a song title. He instantly begins playing a Johnny Cash-inspired riff and creates a humorous song that continues the theme of the monologue. When he finishes, actors hop on stage and begin improvising comedic scenes that refer to the song.
Given the audience suggestions and Herring’s musical take on them, the shows can veer wildly into unexpected territory. Shows have, for example, told the tale of an accountant working in a whorehouse, as well as a story about characters whose imaginary friends became real as a result of string theory and quantum physics.
"It’s not an exact science,” Herring says. “We’re literally making it up as we go along.”
While the scenes aren’t always linear, Herring’s monologues and songs offer a through-line for the scenes and give the actors something to riff on while they’re onstage.
Plus, Herring says, Johnny Cash songs are a great fit for improv.
“One of the great things about Cash is that he’s one of the only guys that has two-chord songs. One chord is the verse and the other chord is the chorus. They’re really simple songs about really elemental human themes, so just the nature of them seems to work with improv.”
Cash Box plays tonight at 9 p.m. at Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson Grand Rapids, (616) 894-1252, dogstorytheater.com. Tickets are $5, which includes entrance to Calvin Improv (8 p.m.) and the Cash Box show.
Photo courtesy of Rick Trieur.
