PLYMOUTH, WI (WHBL) - What began as a teacher’s son wanting to do something fun that he saw in Milwaukee back in 2006 has become one of Plymouth High School’s more popular groups that has won a state championship twice.
The Jolly Pranksters have been entertaining people for ten years, with Janet Newton advising the improv comic wannabes. “In 2006 my son was a junior. A year before we had stopped by to watch the high school performance at Comedy Sportz and he was like ‘mom we got to do this.' So next year we joined the high school league.” The typical year will mean trips down to Comedy Sportz in Milwaukee on Saturdays starting in October, with competitions against other schools starting by Feburary.
“That first year we had five players - my son and four other kids. The next year I think we had seven, and he was a senior that year and I thought they would kind of fade away but then all these funny kids kept showing up. They had seen us perform. We had a team of about almost 30 the last couple of years.”
The group keeps busy between competitions in Milwaukee. They perform regularly at district schools and the Plymouth Public Library, and they also do special performances when asked. “They have become sort of a unique pillar of Plymouth High School.”
A competition is where two teams of four people from each school will perform in a variety of games, and a referee will let the audience determine which teams win, similar to what is done by the comedians who perform at Comedy Sportz. The games are all about coming up with something funny and entertaining, with names such as “What are you doing?”, “What you got?”, “Forward, Reverse”, “Blind Line”, “Freeze Tag”, and more. “Nothing is planned ahead," says Newton, "the games have structure but that’s it. They don’t do anything pre-planned. It is improvisation, and you never know what’s going to go.”
Newton says when tournament time comes around, the Jolly Pranksters get serious. “Out of all of our players, they have to vote on who they want to play in the tournament because they want to win. That’s a real challenge. Usually it’s the seniors that get to play because they’ve been around the longest, but then again sometimes we have some dynamite freshmen that come in and the kids go, ‘we want to win, who do we pick?’” That strategy has worked for them as they've won the tournament twice in 2009 and 2014.
As for preparation, Newton says that the kids will meet up and teach themselves to get better for competitions. “When the kids say they practice they do. There’s a lot of rhyming games that they’ll play, and so they will practice rhyming. They practice always saying yes. They practice their mime. They practice just interacting with each other, seeing each other, and they are a team, they know how to work with each other.”
Newton says the support has been strong in the Plymouth area. “They have developed a following, which is really sweet. I don’t charge admission, and this room is packed. We have 150 people in here. It’s just delightful. They just come in here, and I have senior citizens who know it’s a free night, and then I have their friends who come in. People know that we’re here. The local community knows Plymouth High School has a comedy team.”
As for the future, Newton is optimistic. “I’ve been doing it for ten years. I’m 53, I won’t be here forever, but I certainly hope that the kids will continue. They come from all areas of the high school life; everything from the jocks to the math nerds, there’s just a whole variety of student that like they said they wouldn’t maybe normally interacted until they all came together and had this common bond. So I hope it continues. They learn some of the best life skills.”
The Jolly Pranksters will be performing next on April 2 in Plymouth, where a special Comedy Sportz competition between group members will be held. They will be back in action against other schools on April 9 and 16, with the tournament to determine this year’s state champion taking place April 23 and 30. The Jolly Pranksters will also have two free local performances at Plymouth High School April 7 and May 19.