Q+A: One Man Star Wars Show Charlie Ross Knows The Force

Dressed in a black jumpsuit, Charlie Ross took the stage at the Coolidge Corner Theatre Monday evening to perform his One Man Star Wars Trilogy, a one-hour show that condenses A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi into bite-size jokes. The 36-year-old Ross has no set. He has no costumes or props. Yet Ross still blew through the beloved movies with the skill of a performer and the loving humor of a fan. He was equally comfortable mimicking Darth Vader’s throating rasping, running and jumping around as a Tie-Fighter, copying the cock-sure attitude of Han Solo, and even poking fun at Luke Skywalker’s incessant whining.

The show was a huge hit and drew a mixed crowd, with adults, grandparents, kids and college students packing the art-deco theater to capacity. Before the show, the Quad caught up with the soft-spoken Ross and talked about impersonating Yoda, writing from memory, losing hands, and the future of the show:

The Quad: So how did you come up with the idea for the One Man Star Wars Trilogy?

Charlie Ross: It wasn’t really like a eureka moment thing. I went to university, took theater, got a Bachelors of Fine Arts and it was just a constant slog having to audition. You get work for a couple of months, you have to audition again. There’s never really any security. So you try to find something that’s kind of your own. I thought, maybe having a one man show would be good. But what do you write about? Do you write about yourself? Around the time that I was looking to get out of auditioning all the time I was about 27 at the time…yeah I’d had an interesting-ish life, but what more can you write about that people would come to see.

But I knew Star Wars really well. And I talked with my director, but at the time it was one of my best friends, and we talked about what if I did a show where it was a whole bunch of movies reduced down to 5 minute bits. So I tried doing that with Star Wars, and when I actually put it up on stage what was supposed to be 5 minutes became 25 minutes, 30 minutes. It went so well when I did it for people, like people understood it so well that it seemed like this could work as a full time show. It just kind of grew organically.

How many times have you seen Star Wars? Not even the whole trilogy, just the first movie.

It was probably well over 400 times, no shit. When I was a kid, I just dug it. I’d put it on as background noise. Consequently, I think that’s when the brain damage was done. It just imprinted itself onto my head.

Is that why you chose Star Wars?

Yeah. It’s a good story. It’s pretty simple– almost like a children’s story. Simple characters. It’s like Lord of the Rings, man. It’s a little guy, a person who’s pretty much disenfranchised. Has very little ability to affect change because of his station in life. Well adventure comes to his front door. [Luke Skywalker] loses his family, but he’s suddenly thrust into being the hero of the moment. I think we all would love to think that regardless of how boring our lives might seem, or how we’re stuck being the janitor, well what if someone comes to your front door and says “You may be a janitor, but you know how you’ve always liked baseball cards? Well you come from a long line of baseball card collectors and you’re actually the best!” [laughs] Whatever would actually lift you of of your situation and make you special. We’d love to have somebody solve our problems, maybe… and lose hands.

That part wouldn’t go over so well.

Probably not so well. Though I do find it interesting that Luke loses a hand and Frodo loses a finger.

I guess there’s a trend in losing appendages. So did you encounter any problems of your own trying to get the show off the ground?

No, not really.

It’s been that smooth?

Yeah! [knocks on a wooden theater seat for luck] Even meeting up with Lucasfilm was pretty positive, but that was the only thing I thought might be a problem, would be getting permission… but they are really cool. They just seem to dig working with what they designate as fans. That’s me. I’m kind of a mutation of an eight-year-old kid. It wasn’t enough to play Star Wars on the school ground. I had to do it on stage [laughs].

What’s the reception been like from other Star Wars fans and from non-fans?

Well as of January I’ve been doing this for a decade, if you can believe that. It’s always been, I think, pretty damn positive. If you’re a fan of Star Wars you know this is the real deal. As for the average public, I don’t know. I’ve always wondered if you don’t really know Star Wars, what do you get out of seeing a show like this? But it’s so popular, like Star Wars is everywhere. So if you’re a theatergoer or just an average guy, it probably brings up memories of being younger. Maybe you remember seeing it for the first time in the theaters, or you remember playing on the school ground or how people just get caught up in something.

How did you write the script for this one-hour show?

From memory. Whatever I could remember off the top of my head, believe it or not. I didn’t sit there asking the films, pressing stop, writing something down, press play, stop, writing something down. I thought whatever I can recall, lines from the film, in theory should be what the average person could remember. The thing is I’m trying to play this out on stage– so if they don’t entirely remember, I’m trying to jog their memory.

Still, I think you know a bit more than the average person.

Yeah, and I’ve been doing this for years, that’s the crazy thing. At the beginning I was getting all kinds of things wrong. I had to go back and fact check. And people would tell me I got things wrong.

Really?

Oh yeah, sometimes. It was never done mean-spiritedly. People would just say “Hey, you know, when you fall down as Luke and you get your hand chopped off, you start using your other hand…the one you just had chopped off.” And I didn’t even realize it and I was happy they pointed it out.

Are there parts of the trilogy you have trouble performing?

I’ve always thought my Yoda kind of sucks. Frank Oz does the voice of Yoda, and the voice of Grover and Miss Piggy. Consequently, I can’t do a Yoda, a Grover, or a Miss Piggy to save my life. I can do a good Kermit the Frog, though, so if only there were another little green creature I could use in the show!

So now that you’ve been doing this show for almost a decade, what do you think the future of the show is?

Well, I don’t want to be a 60-year-old man being wheeled out in a gurney to do the show. It’d kill me, man. It’s a really physical show. But I’ve been able to go do this show on four different continents, well over 250 cities about 1300 times. I don’t know many other shows there are where I could have a chance to do as much as I have with this show. I guess when people are sick of coming out I’ll stop doing it, but until then, I’m not looking to get a day job [laughs].

Charlie Ross said he will be back at the Coolidge soon with his latest show, the One Man Lord of the Rings Trilogy. See Ross’ website for more details on his tour dates and appearances, and check the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s site for showtimes and information about their special events.