Quizarama-rama
Every
Monday I don ladies flower print tights, a sparkly waistcoat, a Fez
and a Charlie Chaplin moustache and go into pubs across Sheffield.
This isn’t because of some fetish or mad shaman ritual (although in
many ways it is), but to host a pub quiz.
The
Quiz in question is Quizarama-rama; a ramshackle evening of nonsense
questions, parlour games, crafty club endeavours and charity shop
boutique effects. It’s a sort of Crystal maze on crystal meth, Blue
Peter for excluded kids, or Robot wars without the robots. In essence
it’s a quiz for folk that don’t like quizzes. An attempt to
stretch out what can be done with the humble pub quiz. Turning it
into a spectacle that makes people take off their spectacles and rub
their eyes in disbelief.
This
was my hope. It’s also a great excuse to wear tights. When I think
about it, the number of people over the years that have unconsciously
or consciously seen more than my full veg shop through those lycra
stretchys would make Ron Jeremy blush.
Not
that it is a blue show. If anything it’s a part of my childhood
being re-enacted to a group of strangers. The sort of pretend show
you would perform in-front of your teddies but here I perform
in-front of adults and my teddies and puppets take up prominent
supporting roles.
Some people think it take
balls to do this sort of thing but as they can see from the
silhouette of my tights this isn’t the case. It’s more that I
take a sort of impish delight in knowing that Keith, the pub regular
of 20 years is completely baffled at the sight of grown man holding
up a stuffed lion and pretending it can talk.
This
fires me up. Although what I mainly enjoy is just seeing adults
playing. Forgetting they have serious jobs that involve emails,
photocopying, coffee runs and instead have them complete equally
absurd tasks like rolling lemons or sucking on Polos or making a
Cupid costumes from newspaper and sellotape and singing a made up
countries’ national anthems.
It’s
a pleasure to see adults doing something silly because we don’t
often get chance to. Being silly is empowering. It turns its nose up
and sticks its tongue out to embarrassment; that most pernicious form
of state control. Where you allow another’s opinions of yourself to
creep in and take providence over your own. Sabotaging your own sense
of fun and self worth. It’s a vile and ugly thing: embarrassment.
So,
if dressing like an idiot and putting on voices helps others to
embrace their inner idiots then all the better.
For
me I don’t want to put on a quiz where someone can show off how smart they are and then make some people feel stupid.I want one where everyone feels stupid and then embraces it. To show
that success can be very random and that you can win a quiz like in
life by just having fun, letting go and rolling a few lemons.
Quizarama-rama
takes place on Mondays at the Cremorne 9pm
@quizaramarama
@stanskinny
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