It’s been quiet at Peterborough’s The Theatre on King (TTOK) this summer. With artistic director Ryan Kerr taking time off in July to travel in Europe, TTOK became the home base to Linda Kash’s summer drama camp for kids.
But with September on the horizon, and a busy upcoming theatrical season in preparation, Ryan is reopening TTOK in August for a series of weekly video screenings to entertain TTOK’s loyal audience and to entice new people to visit the space.
“August needs to have something in it,” says Ryan. “There isn’t enough time to do a full show. Half of the actors in town are at 4th Line [performing in The Bad Luck Bank Robbers], and the other half are on holidays. Plus I was away for two weeks and Linda had her drama camp. So there isn’t enough time to put on a show this month, but something has to be happening.”
Instead of putting on a show, Ryan is presenting a series of screenings of the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 over three consecutive weeks. Starting as a cable network show in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1988, Mystery Science Theater 3000 — MST3K to fans — was developed by Joel Hodgson, who presented some of the most hilariously bad B-movies that he could dig up from the vaults.
MST3K is the story of a sarcastic Earth dweller, initially played by series creator Joel Hodgson and later by head writer Mike Nelson, exiled by evil scientists to a ramshackle spaceship called the Satellite of Love, where he’s forced to watch an endless stream of terrible movies. Each week he and his robot pals — Gypsy, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo — gave hilarious commentary as they dissected and made fun of these cinematic stinkers.
Eventually picked up by The Comedy Channel, MST3K aired for 10 seasons and showed 197 films before it ended in 1999. [Editor’s note: series creator Hodgson launched a Kickstarter campaign to revive the series in 2015. It raised $5.7 million — the largest film and video crowdfunding campaign to date — allowing Hodgson to produce 14 new episodes, which will be broadcast on Netflix in Canada in 2016 and 2017].
Ryan hopes to introduce this unique entertainment phenomena to people who didn’t get to experience it during the height of its popularity.
“Back in the mid to the late eighties when the show was getting started, it was a low-budget cable show,” explains Ryan. “This is before the internet, so you couldn’t just click on a button and have it there. It depended on word of mouth. A friend of mine who had a friend who had a brother who would occasionally go down to the United States would video tape Mystery Science Theater and then bring it up to us. We’d end up getting copies of copies of copies that were so grainy that you could barely watch them. The sound was awful, but you watched it anyways because there was nobody else doing anything like it.”
“Almost nobody I know has seen it,” continues Ryan. “A lot of people when it was at its height of popularity in the early ’90s would have been children. A lot of the people I know who do stuff in this space would have been 10 years old. A lot of people I know who are my age still haven’t seen it, because at the time you couldn’t find it unless you had an in.”
Ryan began the series on Monday, August 8th with Franz Peter Wirth’s doomed 1960 version of Hamlet.
“It’s a black and white 1960s German made-for-TV copy of Hamlet dubbed into English,” says Ryan. “The voice of Claudius is played by Ricardo Montelbaum. It’s terrible, but you can’t stop watching. I chose Hamlet because it was theatre and everybody in theatre knows Hamlet. It’s a good place to start.”
MST3K: Mitchell – Why We Love It
On Monday, August 15th, Ryan will be presenting one of the top fan favorite episodes of MST3K featuring the forgettable 1975 cop film Mitchell starring Joe Don Baker.
“Mitchell is a cop, but he’s the worst cop ever,” Ryan laughs. “He’s like the laziest cop. He can’t run. He’s just awful. But this is one of the best episodes. When Joel and the robots are on their game, it’s ridiculously over-the-top funny. These three commentaries are fantastic. They are very clever and sharp.”
Ryan will be capping the series of screenings off with the 1960 cult classic Horrors of Spider Island on Monday, August 22nd.
“Horror of Spider Island is about a burlesque troupe that crash lands on an island,” Ryan explains. “Apparently it’s Spider Island, but there’s only one spider. But there is also a werewolf dude. There’s no horror, and no spiders until about 98% of the way through.”
If MST3K isn’t up your alley, Ryan and company will be presenting an entirely different type of classic cult television on Wednesday, August 24th when he’ll be bringing Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting to TTOK.
Beginning in 1983, The Joy of Painting featured artist Bob Ross creating a detailed landscape on a canvas before the viewer’s eyes within a half an hour. Giving full instructions to how to create their own masterpieces at home, Ross coined phrases like “happy little clouds” and “there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.” Suffering from lymphoma, Ross’ failing heath forced him to end the show in 1994 after filing 403 episodes, and he passed away a year later in 1995. However, Ross has continued to be a popular cultural figure still today.
“I grew up watching Bob Ross a lot, and so did a lot of us,” says Ryan. “As I’ve grown older I just assumed that people knew who Bob Ross was, but a lot of people have never seen him.”
Bob Ross: 1 Hour Special – The Grandeur of Summer
“So what I want to do with Bob Ross is that we’re going to have one of his shows playing live, but we’re going to have three guest painters who going to be painting along with Bob as we watch the show,” Ryan continues. “I’ve gotten a professional artist to take part, someone who has a bit of experience painting, and someone who has no experience painting at all. It’s going to be a fun night. We might even auction the paintings off at the end.”
For people who want to go to something a little more performance based — and perhaps even get into the show themselves — TTOK will also be holding two nights of Lip Synch Battles on Thursday, August 11th and Thursday, August 18th.
“If you’ve got a piece of music that you like, then come in and show us your moves,” says Ryan. “Men can be doing women songs; women can be doing men’s songs. If you’ve got choreography then great! If you’ve got costumes, even better! We’re going to have two guest judges who will give commentary all the way through. The first one on August 11th is for soloists, and the second evening in August 18th is for groups or duets. You and your buddy can come out and bust out Hall and Oates or Endless Love. It doesn’t matter.”
So while there are no theatrical shows at TTOK in August, the theatre is keeping its doors open with a very full schedule of entertaining events.
“It’s about letting your hair down,” concludes Ryan. “It’s about having fun before we get back in the middle of production season.”
All events start at 8 p.m. and are pay what you can at the door. For more information, follow TTOK on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheTheatreOnKingTTOK.
