FUNNY GIRLS & BOYS

The comedy cast took a bow after the show at Academic Auditorium.

To many teachers, having 11 class clowns and showoffs in the same room would be a nightmare. To Dacia Charlesworth, it's a show.

Charlesworth is teaching these students how to perform comedy. All the students are variations on an extroverted theme. Her job is to channel all that percolating energy.

"There are some people who know when to be on," Charlesworth says, "and others who are always on."

The class in performing comedy was offered last week through the Horizons Program at Southeast Missouri State University. It culminated in a performance last Friday in Academic Auditorium.

Part of the show was a "Fractured Fairy Tale" ala TV's "The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show," in which the students twisted the familiar story of "The Three Little Pigs." In their version, the pigs are named Dopey (Wesley Weber), Ditsy (Majhon Phillips) and Brainy (Carrie Walker). Brainy, of course, was smart enough to make her house of bricks. But the Big Bad Wolf (Gabe Sauer) is smart enough to dig underneath the house and surprise her while she is memorizing the Periodic Table. Fourteen-year-old narrator Will Haseltine holds it all together.

Charlesworth has them improvising to make the lines and reactions funnier and to control their impulses just to act crazy.

When Gabe Sauer as the Wolf throws a tantrum after a victim gets away, she bemusedly says, "Let's go for more internal anger here, Gabe."

Nick Slinkard, 10, played one of the wolf's victims. Nick, wearing a Pokemon shirt, spoke his lines so rapidly that Charlesworth often implored him to slow down. She made him repeat the scene five times. "Am I ever gonna get to die?" he asked.

"The purpose of rehearsal is to go over things for the performance," Charlesworth answered.

Learning to perform comedy improves students intellectually, she says. "It helps them pay attention to literature. It doesn't have to be a boring thing only in books."

The students had other reasons for taking the class.

Thirteen-year-old Gabe Sauer loves being funny. "I'm the craziest kid in class. I get all my recesses taken away," he said. But he also has stage fright. "I wanted to get my stage fear taken away from me."

Majhon Phillips, 12, also wants to perform better. She sings for public events and finds herself in situations where she must speak in public.

Says 10-year-old Sean Malone: "I want to make more people laugh. And I want to have some more jokes."

Ben Caughlan, 11, attended the class because his 12-year-old sister, Kate, did. "I've learned a lot of dirty jokes," he said. Those jokes were not taught by the teacher.

Andrew Bertrand, 12, just likes being funny. He also has missed some recesses because of it.

Carrie Walker, 10, was not typecast to play Brainy. "I like to goof off and make people laugh," she said. "I make good grades but I don't act like that."

David Endean, 14, says his mother and father are under lots of stress so he likes to come home and make them laugh. How does he do it? "I'm sarcastic," he says.

Charlesworth is the director of the Oral Communication Across the Curriculum program and teaches speech one-fourth time. She was teaching kids to be funny during the day while teaching a college class in oral communication at night. "It's sad that tonight they're not going to jump up and get excited," she said.

"These students are very active and energetic. I don't have to warm them up."