BY DARREN COLLINS

 

Last December a group of well-adjusted young jugglers came to my town to perform a show called "A Lazer Vaudeville Christmas." I had seen their regular show the year previous, and was impressed enough to recognize the show's name a year later. I had enough money in my pocket to buy a ticket to their show or a book on Elizabethan art. It turned out the local bookstore was selling tickets to the show; I didn't even make it past the comic book section before I bought one.

 

It was a couple of hours before show time, and I thought maybe I could sneak backstage at the auditorium where Lazer Vaudeville was playing. The doors weren't open for seating yet, so I had time to kill. I got up the gumption and in one big gnarled mess of passionate, unbridled fearlessness knocked on their dressing room door.

"Come in," a voice bellowed.

 

The door opened and there stood a vaguely familiar guy from the show last year. Later I learned his name was Randy Johnson. Behind him sat Carter Brown. Around the comer was a lady who I had never seen before. That was Cindy Marvell. A fourth person walked over and sniffed my kneecaps. That was Roxy, Randy's dog.

 

After stammering through introductions and whatnot, I found out that Cindy and Roxy were new since last year but that Roxy wouldn't be in the show. She falls asleep as soon as she hears the music," Randy pointed out.

 

I was granted permission to watch the group warm up, set up, act up and whatever. I hung around the backstage area for the fol­lowing hours until show time, all the while stifling my urges to pipe up and plead, "Teach me some neat tricks, please, please, please!"

 

When show time arrived, I plunked myself down right up front next to some friends from my high school who reassured me that all the books on Elizabethan art were sold out anyway.

 

I reassured them that by what I saw backstage this show would be "worth more art books than..." The stage lights suddenly went dim.

 

A creature so bizarre it rivaled a good number of cheap sci-fi movie lizards wandered onto stage. I remember fondly the image of Alfonzo, the very glow-in-the-dark dinosaur­ish dragon, who should be set far apart from any other Puff, Pete, or (heaven forbid) Barney. The Lazer Vaudeville troupe, you see, utilizes black lights to make some really funky looking props, juggling equipment, or, in this case, dragons, look dazzlingly bright and high-tech from the ultra-glow tapes and paints they are decorated with. Much to the audience's delight, Alfonzo introduced the show and devoured Beevis and Butthead, all in the opening scene.

 

What to my wondering eyes did appear next but a bunch of brightly colored sticks, hovering about the stage. This segment, called "Geospheres," utilizes black light sticks hopping about from place to place on stage making different shapes and scenarios. The per­formers, dressed in black, can manipulate the different props to fly around the stage without the audience seeing them in the black light.