“I think of how I can force myself into the dialogue,” said Eagle Scott Jimmy Grzelak during is one man show “How to be a Terrorist”. He was speaking about the recent vote to allow young gays to participate in the Boy Scouts but stopped short of allowing gay men and women to serve as scout masters.
How to be a Terrorist has Grzelak on stage in a Boy Scout uniform telling tales of his days as a scout giving “little known facts” about its history and then instructing the audience “it’s true, look it up”. He reminisces when he learned to build a fire (using wood, newspaper and dryer lint that he dumped all over the stage in a crumpled mess) and how he was a “sensible boy” at the age of 12. “Sensible” was his nickname and he comments that “being a sensible 12-year-old turns out to be really annoying”. As it turns out Sensible having a fringe show can have a tendency to be a bit annoying as well. For almost an hour Grzelak bounces around stage, arms flailing and legs bouncing, doing his best impersonation of Ed Grimley (look is up) conveying stories in as much of an unorganized and chaotic mess as the one he has on stage.
It isn’t all bad. When Grzelak stops prancing around, doing voices and singing, and just simply speaks to the audience real moments come out and the pain that a scout in the closet has for his organization starts to shine. How to be a Terrorist (which has nothing to do with being a terrorist) isn’t really a stage show, but more of a step inside Grzelak’s Monty Python enriched mind of how-to field exercises and real raw moments of an awkward boy who still doesn’t know where he belongs. He is more talent than he allows the material to show as he throws everything at you just to see what sticks, but given the current events this show might be worth gathering around the campfire for.
