By Darren Johnson
Campus News
A pursuit of truth, Robert Dubac’s The Book of Moron explores hypocrisy, misinformation, our values, driven not by substance, but by image, and good ol’ fashioned information in a very funny one-man-show coming March 26th to the GE Theatre at Proctors in Schenectady, N.Y.
(It’s also coming to Connecticut and New Hampshire. Go to robertdubac.com for dates.)
The Book of Moron has been described as “the funniest show you’ll ever think at,” probing audiences with such questions as, “If you get mugged by a woman does she only steal seventy cents on the dollar?”
Dubac, an acclaimed comedian and theater talent, has been working on and touring this work for years. “It’s a hysterical show.” Dubac said of Moron. “It’s not a book, it’s a play, and,” with no relation to the Mormon text, “it’s not about religion, it’s about stupidity.”
“Of course,” he said with a smile, “most atheists would think there’s no difference.”
As to the state of the world in which he originally wrote the play: “I wrote it prior to the crumbling down of culture that happened prior to 2016 and from there on,” Dubac said of his love letter to critical thought, so “it’s very current.”
It’s first performance, in fact, was held a week after the 2016 election.
To find the funny in a given situation is a part of his job as a career comedian. “[The show] is about how we have completely gotten ourselves dumbed down, but I’m able to at least make some humor out of it.
Book of Moron follows a man who enters a coma not by blunt force or other physical head trauma, but by the effects of modern society. “I have brain damage,” his character says in the show. “And not the typical kind. You know that kind you got from watching The Bachelorette.”
In this intellectual limbo, he’s able to use the different characters in his head, such as his voice of reason, inner critic, and inner child, all of which are played by Dubac, to piece together what is true and what is not. Dubac described it as “a combination of storytelling… and a bunch of different characters tell the story…”
To contend with his memory loss, Dubac’s protagonist pursues critical thought and truth, in order to make sense of the world around him. “It’s kind of an empty vessel,” Dubac said of his character’s mind, represented through the barren stage design. “I may not have any information, but I have no misinformation either.”
“To wake up I have to start with the obvious and use critical thought,” Dubac’s coma-laden character says in the show. “Okay. Well, obviously I can read so I wasn’t home-schooled,” he goes on. “But I’m reading a newspaper so I gotta be what? Over sixty? I have a wedding band so I’m married but is it a same sex marriage? Probably. What? Isn’t that what marriage is? The same sex over and over again?”
The subjects covered in the show – sex, religion, politics, media, and race – are topics that people demonstrate particular sensitivities toward. However, through these characters, he takes liberties that he wouldn’t normally, conveying the “things we all want to say, that [he] is able to pull off on stage.”
Dubac will be touring this show, along with his other one-man shows The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron and Stand-Up Jesus, all along the East Coast, including Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Manchester, New Hampshire.
Written prior to Me-Too, The Male Intellect, which he previously performed in the greater Albany area, centers a man who tries to piece together what women want without any chauvinist influences of the men around him. “He actually does figure out what women want,” Dubac detailed, “which was necessary at that day and age and is actually still relevant now.”
In another of Dubac’s touring repertoire, he plays Jesus who, after coming back as a stand-up comic, takes over the family business. Stand-Up Jesus tells of the title role’s effort to clarify some obvious disconnects over the last 2,000 years, “saying ‘You’ve misinterpreted everything. I’m here to set the record straight,’” said Dubac of the show’s premise.
Dubac’s career as a comic has earned him praise from the likes of SNL’s Dana Carvey, who declares, “If funny were a religion, Bob is nothing short of a miracle!”
On his transition to the one-man show medium, Dubac said, “I used to do a lot of stand-up comedy and I found that this was a different avenue.” Performing a one-man show is very different,” he explained of his craft, stating, “It has to have humor and then it also has to have a bigger arc and a bigger story, otherwise it is stand-up comedy.”
Dubac expressed excitement for returning to the area. “To be honest, it’s a great time. It’s one way to shrug off all the insanity that’s going on in the world, and come out and have a few chuckles.”
Tickets are now available on Proctors.org and RobertDubac.com.
–With Felicia Reich
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