Ferris parents ready to ham it up

Ferris High School parents will be coming out of their shells – and their suits – starting next week as they dance, sing and shimmy their way through this year’s production of the 46th annual Ham on Regal variety show.

This year’s show, titled “Remote Possibilities,” strings together 16 song-and-dance comedy numbers that juxtapose and interpose TV shows of the past with current ones. Old-school vs. new-school mash-ups, to put it another way. In one scene, “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Dr. McDreamy hits on “M*A*S*H” nurse Hot Lips Houlihan. The Cleavers meet the Hulk Hogan family in another.

Moreover, the script sets a humorous tone to the often awkward attempts to breach the cultural gap between parents and their adolescent offspring. Along the way, the show also lampoons celebrities and movie stars (including Donald Trump and Marie Osmold), politicians (George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton), and even rival Lewis and Clark High School. (A note: the script is not for Tiger faint-hearts.)

Saxon parents mock their children’s seemingly obsessive immersion in the Digital Age (“Chicks dig guys with technology,” we’re told in one scene), while they parody their own nostalgia for the bygone days of “dependable machinery,” such as typewriters and carbon paper.

Cast members say the age gap is made starkly apparent in the various audience responses: The younger half of the audience laughs at one half of the punch lines, and the older half at the rest. Rosemary Johnson, a freshman whose mother is a cast member (aka, a Ham), agrees. She finds the bits about cell phones and text messaging entertaining, but acknowledges, “I don’t know the jokes about the old shows.”

This year’s production includes the efforts of more than 250 parent volunteers, about 75 percent of whom also serve on a total of 43 committees. Some have been working on the show since last April. Retention is extremely high, too, as 80 to 90 percent of participants come back year to year. And usually the only reason someone doesn’t return for next year’s production is because their son or daughter has graduated, making them ineligible to be a cast member. “Once people start, they don’t quit,” says 2008 co-chairman Jeff Hardin.

Allen Williamson served as a cast member, script writer, and tech crew member from 1998 to 2003, making him a Hambone, or Ham alumnus. He extols the show for the intense camaraderie and community support and involvement it develops, echoing the sentiments of seemingly every other Ham and Hambone. Outside the show, he says, a couple dozen men may have high- or low-power careers, but all’s leveled when, as in this year’s show, they each dress up in coconut bras (forgivably ill-fitting) and grass skirts to croon and sway on stage together. The kids appreciate the show, too, he says, because it makes “their parents look human.”

Since Ferris’ opening in 1963 the show has been produced every year and raised over $1.1 million in that time. This year, the show has raised over $40,000 from advertising alone and is expected to net at least $60,000 and up to $75,000. Production runs on a bare-bones budget – mostly just to cover insurance costs. All participants are volunteers, and all cast members buy their own costumes for each musical number or scene they’re in, some up to a half dozen.

Proceeds from the show go to Ferris’ Parent-Teacher Group, which then doles out the money to petitioning student organizations and activities. All participants were eager to praise the way the funds are distributed to a wide variety of student music, art, athletic, academic, and government groups, with many adding that the funds “don’t just go to the athletic teams.” Says 2008 co-chairwoman Sue Walther, “The goal is that funding is very diversified.”

Holly Kunze is a third-year Hammie, whose mother, Joyce Brooks, performed in the shows from 1988-‘90 when Kunze was a student at Ferris. This year, she’s making cameos as Dr. Izzy Stevens and as a member of the high-kick dance troupe, although she concedes that her son, a junior, “usually gets embarrassed” when she dons the short skirt.

But while the students may gripe outwardly about their parents cavorting onstage, Williamson says that when it gets down to it, “They love it.” Indeed, Johnson says, “It’ll be fun to watch my mom,” who will play a pirate and a police officer.

Leslie Sturm said her daughter, a sophomore, encouraged her mother to participate in the show by saying, “I want to see you on stage just so I can make fun of you.” But her daughter is out of luck this year: Sturm is a ticket-seller.