Satirical news-spoof show Gridiron returns this year with live, online versions
Like many other events in 2020, Gridiron had to sit out for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
And for a while, Suzanne Perez said, 2021 wasn’t looking that good.
“This year we weren’t sure we could do it. We were on a much shorter time frame,” Perez, education reporter for KMUW, said. “The good thing is that we’ve got material left over from last year that’s pretty timeless.”
But Gridiron, an annual musical comedy production where media types satirize the news as a fundraiser for young journalists, lives on in 2021, albeit with a few changes.
It’s being moved from its longtime home at the Orpheum Theatre to Roxy’s Downtown, and the two performances will be both live for an audience and livestreamed for those wanting to play it safe at home. The cast has condensed to eight performers.
The title this year: “Gridiron Off the Grid.”
Rick Bumgardner, artistic director at Roxy’s, is directing Gridiron for the seventh year.
“In a lot of respects, instead of working with actors, it’s like working with the playwright. You get to collaborate and say, ‘Hey, there’s a different way’ or a different approach,” Bumgardner said. “Doing all that creative collaboration as the work is being born is way too much fun for me.”
Most of the performers – Wichita Eagle columnist Bonnie Bing, Jessica DeVader from Southwestern College, Sara Harmon and Robert Thomas from KPTS, Rob Marin from KWCH, media personality Bucky Walters, Ted Woodward from KNSS, and Perez – begin gathering in January to go over possible news targets and to begin writing material.
“It is truly one of the most fun things I do all year long,” said Perez, who moved from the Eagle after 30 years to KMUW last month. “I get to see all these people. It’s not just the singing and dancing that’s fun, it’s the writing process.
“It’s an ab workout just laughing all the time,” she added.
The writing is key to the success, Bumgardner said, since the writer/performers are used to creating material for newspaper, radio, television and online consumption and not for a live audience.
“These people write the material because they’re all journalists, so they all have the voice. They know how they want it to sound. They know how they want those lines to deliver,” he said. However, “When they write it, they write it for how it will be read. They can hear for themselves if it doesn’t work, and they have to go back and change the lines.”
The material left from 2020 includes the kerfuffle over naming Wichita’s new minor-league baseball team the Wind Surge, as well as “frozen yogurt shops in chichi neighborhoods,” Perez said, and “state legislators that maybe drive the wrong way on the highway.”
Poking fun at newsmakers has been a stock in trade for Gridiron, Walters said.
Walters’ first Gridiron was in 1987, where he played newly elected Gov. Mike Hayden.
“I’ve always said that as long as people in Kansas keep electing the people they do, I’ll never have to worry about material,” Walters said. “You don’t have to change it very much, you just have to throw a couple of words in that are a little different than what they actually said – and you’re there.”
Some politicians, he said, have relished the chance to poke fun at themselves.
Longtime U.S. Rep. Dan Glickman showed up on stage one year after a scandal where he had bounced more than 100 checks at the U.S. House bank.
“He called us and said, ‘Can I be in Gridiron this year?’ He wanted to write his own (material),” Walters recalled.
Glickman stepped onto the stage wearing an Uncle Sam hat with money in the brim, bouncing an actual check on an elastic string and singing a song to the tune of “Hey, Big Spender.”
“People think you’re making it worse for them,” Walters said. “But someone like that, if they can laugh at themselves, it really eases people and makes it easier for people.”
Walters has a wish list of whom he’d like to see on stage.
Former city councilman, state Senator and Sedgwick County commissioner “Michael O’Donnell would be such a godsend. We’re laying off him. I think we’ve done enough,” Walters said.
Walters will play former Vice President Mike Pence this year in a song set to the tune of the Chi-Lites’ “Have You Seen Her?”
All of the fun in Gridiron is for a good cause, as the show raises money for scholarships for young journalists attending colleges in Kansas.
Perez said that makes it all worthwhile for her.
“Every time I talk to young journalists, I’m newly inspired. There are all these young kids out there who want to become journalists, and I want to encourage them, and a little bit of money toward college helps with that,” she said. “It’s a great tradition that Wichita has, and I’d miss it if I weren’t a part of it.”
GRIDIRON
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, April 30 and May 1
In person: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas; tickets are $38, available by calling 316-265-4400
Online: Streaming pass available for $22.75, from SPJ.booktix.com
More information at WichitaGridiron.com