A year after he graduated from Syracuse University, Roger Reed realized he really didn’t want to be a photojournalist.
He thought about what he’d rather do with his life, and one idea kept coming back to him.
I thought, I want to make people laugh, Reed said.
He’s been doing that for more than 30 years now as Roger the Jester. Reed will bring his alter ego to Albany on Tuesday, April 6, as part of the April Vacation Daze program at Steamer No. 10 Theatre. He will perform at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Reed admits he wasn’t sure he could make a career out of making people laugh. But he decided to take a chance, enrolling in mime school in Maine. He made a conscious decision not to go to clown school.
`I’m not very enamored with the American clown,` he said.
Clowns, Reed said, are kind of the `bottom of the ladder` in terms of American comedy. They’ve been pigeonholed as people who wear lots of makeup and big, floppy shoes. They’re loud and brash, and they make fun of their audience.
`I didn’t want to do any of that,` he said.
In high school, he and a friend would pick a prop and silently improvise with it. He had experience using physical movement for comedic value. That’s one of the reasons mime school seemed like a good idea.
When he graduated, he landed a job as a singing waiter at a ski resort. Several fellow mime school graduates were also there, and they formed a traveling mime company. Reed did that for a while, but when the group broke up, he decided to reinvent himself.
He knew he needed a name, and he certainly didn’t want to go by Roger the Clown, even though, `bottom line, I’m a clown,` he said with a laugh. He figured if he called himself a mime, people would expect him to be silent and dress in black. He didn’t have enough tricks in his repertoire to call himself a magician, and his juggling and singing skills weren’t sharp enough to call himself a juggler or a musician.
So, Reed got out the thesaurus. `Jester sort of jumped out at me,` he said, recalling the definition as `one who entertains, one who amazes with tricks.`
Seeing as how it had been, oh, a couple hundred years since anyone had called himself a jester, Reed felt free to write his own job description. He incorporated a little music, a little magic, some juggling and just a general good time into his act. His guiding philosophy was that the audience would laugh at him, not the other way around.
`I don’t tell jokes. I’m not a stand-up comedian,` he said. `The bottom line is, people think I’m funny.`
That’s true whether he’s performing for kids or adults, he said. In fact, parents often tell him that while their kids enjoyed the show, they were the ones who got the biggest kick out of it.
Based in the Berkshires now ` except for the winter months, which he spends in his wife’s native Antigua ` Reed is nearing 60 but still has a busy slate of shows. He said he has performed at schools, festivals, theaters, corporate gigs, nursing homes, weddings and even funerals. He recently spent nine days performing in Haiti, an experience that touched him deeply because he was able to bring smiles to the faces of people who hadn’t had much to be happy about since a devastating earthquake hit in January.
Looking back, he admits to being surprised that he was able to make the transition from photojournalist to jester. He credits his success to the fact he’s not just joking around when he’s performing.
`I’m serious about being funny,` he said.
For information, visit Reed’s Web site at www.ijest.com. Tickets for his show at Steamer No. 10 are $10 and $12 and can be purchased by calling the theater at 438-5503.
Other Vacation Daze programs at Steamer 10 include the Tanglewood Marionettes on Monday, April 5; Silly Billy Magic on Wednesday, April 7; `Rumpelstiltskin` on Thursday, April 8; and The Gizmo Guys on Friday, April 9.“