Awakening Kids’ Wonder : A Low-Tech, One-Man Vaudeville Show Rouses Children From Their TV-Induced Lethargy

Perhaps the most wondrous thing about Gideon Potter’s “The Wonder Faire Trunk Show” is that in an age when the average American child stares endlessly at color TV screens, this one-man vaudeville-for-kids show exists at all.

For if there’s something “The Wonder Faire Trunk Show” is not, it is passive, TV-like entertainment that kids can veg out over. If they don’t react, the show fizzles. And this show, which Potter has been doing in various versions since the mid-1970s, does not fizzle.

It all happens Saturday afternoons through January at the West End Playhouse--an improbable, rinky-dink place on the outskirts of Van Nuys across the street from a bowling alley and next to a mom-and-pop Chinese place called Ming’s Garden. With little more than a few masks, a homemade tree and a curtain to change behind, 41-year-old, ponytailed Potter takes the “veg” out of vegged-out kids. And parents, too, for that matter.

“Philosopher J. Krishnamurti talks about art being one of the highest forms of meditation when one is so involved that they lose themselves,” said Potter, a thoughtful, lantern-jawed actor/craftsman from Oregon. “And that is, for me, what this show is about--to lose ourselves. It’s a great privilege to be able to transform people’s lives that way.”

Put simply, the kids not only come to life during “Wonder Faire,” they sometimes are changed by it.

“I’ve had parents come up to me numbers of times,” Potter added, “and say things like, ‘This has been really amazing--Johnny couldn’t even speak to a waiter ! He’d even hide behind my skirts! Now he’s introducing himself, and he’s out in front--all from having been on stage.’ That’s a really wonderful gift to be able to give someone.”

Don’t get the idea that this is some kind of New Age theater-as-therapy. Any therapeutic value from the “Wonder Faire” comes merely from having a good time, and, for some members of the audience, getting onstage and assuming roles. Yes, Potter has need for help in some of his routines--from mischievous, chattering monkeys to magician’s assistants.

It all begins simply enough. Rubber-faced, goofy, but somehow still respectable, Potter takes the stage clad in Mack cap, Hawaiian floral shirt, blue tie, brown coat, striped suspenders, and begins dusting with a fat feather duster. He dusts the stage, himself, his props, then steps out into the crowd and begins dusting it. By the time he has lifted the arm of a parent and has dusted underneath it, the kids are essentially won over.

Then there is about an hour of games, fables and skits (all from the proverbial “trunk,” a term used to suggest a small, traveling show). Audience members at one point are instructed to turn to a stranger and ask for a dollar (it’s quite an icebreaker). There is a skit called “The Cap Seller and the Monkeys” in which a volunteer parent-actor hawks hats despite the frustrating intervention of a couple of monkeys. Later, Potter shows a kid from the audience a picture of a duck and instructs the volunteer to repeat the name of each duck body part he points to--three times. When the kid gets around to saying “wing wing wing,” Potter feigns picking up a phone and says, “Hewo?” Believe it or not, the crowd goes wild.

There is magic--an unpeeled banana is somehow sliced in half without disturbing the peel. (It draws ooohs and ahhs.) There is the “Picnic in the Park” sequence in which Potter sits down to eat lunch, only to be harassed by a mysterious third hand that seeks to prevent him from getting candy before the nutritious stuff. It’s all peppered with Potter-isms, from the recurrent “excellent, excellent, excellent!” to “Let’s have a big hand for” whomever, “Accentuate the positive!” to “Say the magic words--Christmas vacation!” (or, for the adults in the crowd, “tax return!”)

The show is laced with healthful themes, from Potter’s declaration that “there is no judgment taking place here today” to “stick together and everything will work out, if you just keep smiling.” The show ends with Potter leading a sing-along to a ditty once popularized by Shirley Temple: “Be optimistic, don’t you be grumpy/ When the road gets bumpy, just smile, smile and be happy.”

“The one thing I’ve noticed,” said Joan Turner, Potter’s light and sound technician, “is how the show continues to grasp my attention, even though I’ve seen it many times now. And how it makes me feel like a child again. I enjoy the stories, and I watch them every time--with glee! And these little kids who are usually so hard to keep happy and interested, well, they’re just riveted, watching him. It’s very sweet to see.”

Added actor Katie Schwarz, who toured with Potter in “Cabaret” 14 years ago before a chance reunion in Los Angeles last year (and who found herself “volunteered” as the cap seller a few weeks back): “I think that kids enjoy something like this much more, because they can participate and they’re seeing someone live who’s relating to them, making them feel special too. And I think Gideon is a kid too. That’s why he can do it so well.”

West End Playhouse producer and artistic director Ed Gaynes has seen the show dozens of times, but still watches each new performance: “It always retains a freshness and spontaneity that comes from interacting with a variety of audiences and ages,” said Gaynes. “We even had a full house of mentally retarded adults one time--about 60 retarded adults ranging in age from 18 to 65, and they were laughing and clapping--they had a great time. I didn’t know what to expect, but they took to it beautifully. Frankly, they reacted better than the little kids. I’d like to encourage more showings of Wonder Faire for groups like that.”

Perhaps the most impressive segment of Potter’s performance is “It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House,” a tale of an evil wolf who is cured of his nastiness through encounters with an old man, a fish and a bird. Potter assumes each character by merely standing behind masks of his own creation that are suspended from above. It is a device as old as theater itself, yet perhaps new to kids accustomed to more high-tech special effects. What’s more, there’s even a message here--the wolf changes for the better. He heals .

“I think the theater has incredible tools for transformation and growth and healing,” said Potter, a bit breathless after a performance. “It’s so enervating. And in my opinion, in the world--in our lives--we need to effect more healing. We’re being co-opted from that idea constantly. Look at television; you’re inundated by Ninja Turtles and sexuality and consumerism.”

A full-time actor who came to Los Angeles in 1982 “looking for a larger audience,” Potter guests on TV soaps and has appeared on a number of programs including “Hill Street Blues,” in addition to having a long history of stage work. He is also a painter who is working on a restaurant mural in Palos Verdes, a set builder whose credits include “The Wonder Years,” a mask maker who said his works are in some of the “better boutiques,” and a traveling mime who just did a six-month stint at the “Hello Kitty” theme park in Japan.

He will teach an improvisation class at Santa Monica College this spring and is putting together the All Benefit Theater Company, an acting troupe devoted to raising money for the homeless. With all this, why does he continue to go out of his way to perform “The Wonder Faire Trunk Show”? It’s a bit of a crusade, really.

“I liked the thematic concept of something in the theater that created a greater sense of wonder in the audience,” said Potter. “I think the world is in a very difficult transitional period, and has been for 20 to 30 years, where we are inundated with images and input we really can’t handle.”

This idea is at the core of “The Wonder Faire,” which began as adult cabaret at a place called Arbuckle Flat in Portland, Ore., in 1974. The Flat was, as Potter put it, a “rock ‘n’ roll alternative cafe in a city-sponsored collective crisis intervention center, established in an old Elks building.” Potter and a “bunch of hippies--we were all hippies” put together the original revue as an antidote to being desensitized by the constant bombardment of media imagery. The idea was to show jaded people that they could still feel wonder. It was inspired by a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem.

“Henry David Thoreau wrote a lot, about 120 years ago, of being inundated by images that you just don’t need--much as we are today,” Potter explained. “To manage all the disparate images that come at us from television, radio, billboards, I was very struck by a poem by Ferlinghetti from his book ‘Coney Island of the Mind.’ He has a poem that has about 30 stanzas, and each one of them ends with ‘I am constantly awaiting a rebirth of wonder.’ And it just knocked me out.”

Over the years, “The Wonder Faire” has gone on the road from Vancouver, B.C., to Baja California (when his former wife was his stage partner) and has toured dozens of fairs, festivals and schools in the Pacific Northwest. When the marriage ended in 1986, Potter, who has a son, 13, continued the venture solo. The latest incarnation debuted at the West End in 1989.

And although this particular run is scheduled to end Jan. 25 but may be extended, it is fair to say that as long as Gideon Potter is around, this particular wonder will never cease.

“It’s really hard to see that everything has been reduced, for many young people, to having a Jeep and good credit and all that,” said Potter, concern in his tone. “Life is much richer than that! How do we get back to that richer place? The Wonder Faire, for me, is one step toward getting there.”

“The Wonder Faire Trunk Show” at the West End Playhouse, 7446 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys, is at 3 p.m. Saturdays through January. Tickets: $7. Call (818) 904-0444.

Rense is a regular contributor to Valley Calendar.