We try and have fun on Buber. This is a bar after all, and most of the time we do not sit around moaning about the state of the universe. This is a relaxation centre, not a soapbox. However, I am still undecided about visiting performers.
Comedy troups arrive every few months. I no longer allow them in the bar, but they can set up a tent or gazebo in a nearby field. They pop in for a drink or five afterwards, and bring a crowd with them. Sound business sense, and some of them can be funny too. But sometimes their routines are rather full on.
You cannot deny their ingenuity. They pack everything into the hold of a rust bucket spaceship, from candlelight laterns, to umbrellas for the audience when it rains. We offer them electricity, but they never need it. Sound effects run through battery powered speakers and loudhailers. Twenty minutes construction, and they are ready to go.
The vast majority perform sketches, stand up, or even short plays about the Haircut. The tiresome ones involve a politician pitching to the undead like they are potential voters. There is weird stuff with giant fake plants and huge gnashing teeth. We had one person recite a monologue about the first time they saw a sunflower eaten, to the rhythm of three cords repeated on a guitar. Only two people stayed for that one. Another time we had a parnsiphead stumble on stage during a performance. It took a while to persuade the crowd this wasn’t part of the act.
Most play to the crowd. The undead getting smashed round the head is always popular. Or a doofusy Butter Mouse protagonist who comes good in the end. There is a lot of material about florists. After bowing, they pass round a bucket, sink a few bevvies, and off they go.
To stress, I am not opposed to fun on Buber. But with the dead still active on so many planets, they are poking something that is still active. What if you escaped your ransacked home world, only to walk into a farce about your experiences?
It makes me think. The parnsipheads must run out at some point. So let’s switch forward five hundred years into the future, when The Haircut is a distant memory. Are these skits going to be looked at as hilarious curios? Will they play a version at parties for kids? Will they boil down into some kind of nursery rhyme, the last vestige that this even happened?
I’m overthinking. I’ve watched a lot of bad plays out the window. But if you want a definite good time on Buber, pop in for a pint.
