Kristen Shultis
October is Gay History Month and the campus is doing many events to help promote and educate the campus community about the LGBT community. One of these events happened Monday night in the form of a concert. This concert featured Canadian comedian Chris Doucette.
Doucette has been featured as one of the Best Comedians of LGBT comedy. He also has written for actress and comedian Jane Lynch for the 2012 FiFi Awards. Another one of his honors was being featured in comedy 360 as “Comic to Watch.”
The concert also featured a capella groups Premium Blend and The Riveters. Premium Blend,the opening act of this concert, got the crowd excited for the rest of the concert by singing, “Monster Mash- up” and a few other songs such as, “Home” and “I’ve Got the Magic in me.” “Monster Mash-up” featured famous Halloween tunes like “Monster Mash,” “Thriller,” “Ghostbusters” and a few other favorites from famous Halloween movies such as Ghostbusters and The Adams Family.
The Riveters followed Premium Blend with “Walking on Broken Glass” and a mash- up of songs including “Battlefield,” “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” and “Heartbreaker.” The group said that it was honored to be performing at something that promoted diversity
The third act was Pete, a slam poet. Many of the performers in the concert went by solely their first names, matching the laid-back atmosphere of the concert.
Pete encouraged the audience to yell for him to get off stage if they didn’t liked him and to clap or snap along if they enjoyed the poem. He started with a poem that wasn’t his own by a famous LGBT poet. The poem started slow and melodic but by the end it sounded as if he was rapping.
He also read a few poems of his own about diversity and other relevant topics. They were short and to the point but contained descriptive metaphors and imagery. The way he read his own works was smooth when it needed to be and almost rigid other times, just like the poem that he had read before hand.
Alyssa was another poet who collaborated on an Andrea Gibson poem with Pete. This poem was about a soldier that was discovered to be gay and ended up being burned alive. Her poems also contained imagery and were gruesome. She ended with another Andrea Gibson poem that used pictures, guilt trips and autumn to describe the emotion of a love that once was but isn’t anymore.
The poets were followed by Tanneh. She got the crowd fired up once again, this time with a beautiful ballet-inspired dance. Tanneh demonstrated skill through twirling and feeling the true emotion of the music that was being played. She ended the dance in a way that made her look like she was almost sad and filled with emotion while walking offstage.
Later she danced to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” also ballet-inspired and very filled with emotion. She jumped and utilized all of the space that she was given to show the emotion that was needed for the song, including cartwheels. There was no twerking involved.
Cedric started with a poem called a Ghazal which comes from Arabic culture, keeping with the diversity theme. It talked of a sister’s boyfriend and how the boy in the poem was falling in love with said boyfriend.
The events coordinator, Anthony, decided to get up and read his own poem. The poem talked about how people may seem happy but on the inside they may not really feel that way. Deanna was next — just her and her guitar — telling a story about her grandfather and making jokes before singing for everyone. She started off by singing her and her grandfather’s favorite song to honor his birthday,which was “Wonderful World.” Before she sang her last song she talked about how she had to change pronouns in some songs to fit her because the girls that she would cover would sing their love songs about boys.
The last performer was Doucette, who cracked jokes about the other performers and asking if they act like that in their everyday lives. He also compared slam poetry to Zumba. Making fun of his own workout habits, he stated that slam poets and comedians don’t make money and his bank was a coinstar machine. He also made fun of one of the student’s Facebook names.
Doucette made jokes about being gay and, in turn, got the LGBT community that was present even more hyped up. When asking where the LGBT community was and when it came to asking where the straight people were, he made fun of the applause that they made. He went through all of the LGBT community, saying that it was cool to be honoring all the letters of the alphabet.
Once again cracking a friendly joke about the LGBT community, he compared being gay to being a Discover card in how they aren’t accepted everywhere. He also talked about live comedy being like a conversation and when people didn’t get his jokes, he told them they were in Biology class.
He treated the audience like they were his best friends not just a bunch of people. Doucette told stories, including one about appendicitis, that he turned into jokes. He made commentary on how he doesn’t have any children and makes fun of the people that do. He also wouldn’t let any of the performers live their performances down.
Doucette invited people to add him on Facebook, Twitter and Vine, where he told everyone that he does stupid stuff. If the audience didn’t laugh at his jokes he would give off this laugh that was more of a high-pitched giggle, almost forcing them to join in the laughter.
When asked after the concert what they thought of the performance, student Kia Blue said, “It was inspiring and heartwarming. He also didn’t make anything awkward.” This was one recurring theme with all of the performers throughout the night.
Kia also said, “He made you feel comfortable about your sexuality.”
Doucette cracked jokes at just about everyone. He didn’t make you feel funny after doing it either.
It was a big turnout for this event from the Pride Alliance. They have had a very good October with more events to come. The club encourages everyone to come to their meetings each week.