Why You Need More Nonsense In Your Life

On this episode of theMangoTimes Podcast, Fletch is joined in the studio by special guest Corey Strauss—Central Valley legend and founder of The Magic Box Players.

Corey shares his journey from imaginative kid to one of the area’s most creative forces in set design, costuming, and theater arts. Together, he and Fletch dive into his latest project: a mobile theater that brings storytelling, puppetry, and joy to local schools, igniting young imaginations one performance at a time.

But that’s just the beginning. This episode is a celebration of silliness—why nonsense matters, how play connects us, and why your inner child deserves more stage time.

Whether you're an improv junkie, a recovering serious adult, or someone who just needs to remember how to laugh, this episode is your permission slip to lighten up.

🎭 Theater, puppets, and costumes
 🎙 Laughter, memories, and middle-aged mayhem
 🧠 Why being silly might just save your sanity

Tune in—and remember:
 A little nonsense is not just okay. It’s necessary.

LINKS:
NO LINKS

Music used in this episode:
NONE

Chapters

• 3:19 Meet Corey Strauss
• 15:58 The Magic Box Players
• 24:05 The Power of Sillyness

Transcript

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That's

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right. On this episode of the Mango Times podcast, a little nonsense is okay. Welcome to the Mango Times podcast. This is Fletch, and I'm the writer and editor for everything you read and listen to here on the Mango Times. On this podcast, we're going to discuss anything and everything that we experienced together here on this crazy planet. So join me as I talk about different aspects of culture, from great movies to great music to everything we love to binge watch online together. And I'll do my best to entertain you as I share my perspective on life as a husband, dad, and grandfather to a big, loud family. So sit back as I grab a cup of coffee and my favorite dog and quietly make some noise. Welcome back to the Mango Times podcast. This is episode 34, A Little Nonsense Is Okay, where we jump back into the Fletcher Festo to talk about one of my favorite topics, and that's silliness, and that a little nonsense is okay. Hey, because this interview is just a little bit longer than normal, I don't have a lot of banter, I don't have a lot of reviews, I don't have a lot of recommendations, we are going to jump right Right into the episode, I have as my guest the wonderful Corey Strauss. He's a creative guy. He's a theater guy. He is a prop master. He is a costume designer, a set designer. Today's episode is all about the beauty of nonsense, the power of silliness, and why we all sometimes need just a little bit of magic in our lives. He joins me in the studio. Just a side note, in the background is my daughter, Caroline. She'll get introduced at some point during the interview, but she was just sitting in the background laughing and having fun with us. You know what? I'll admit it. There have been many moments in my life when I realized that life has just gotten too serious. And that's usually when someone like Corey shows up and reminds me how to laugh again. And so we sat down in the studio today and we're going to jump right into this interview. It's in three parts. We're going to begin the interview by meeting Corey and learning about his backstory. You get to hear about his passion for theater, how it began. And even more specifically, how nonsense worked its way into set design and his desire to build elaborate sets and costumes. So without further ado, let's head into the studio. All right, so I am back in the studio for one of my favorite topics on the Mango Times podcast. This is A Little Nonsense Is Okay, and I'm excited to be in the studio with a friend of mine, Corey Strauss. Corey, welcome to the Mango Times podcast. Hello, hello, hello. A Little Nonsense Is Okay. We're going to have some fun today, but I want to start with a little bit of an intro and a backstory. Can you give us your superhero origin story? All right, superhero origin story probably is... creatively impulsive, obsessive compulsive creativity is probably been my superpower. Let's see, where did that start? Probably as a kid making what my parents said I used to call unventions because I didn't realize it Inventions was what you were supposed to say. So anything, an invention, an unvention is anything that was like a Max Goldberg contraption or Legos or anything where a marble went down a thing and hit a thing and did a thing and a mousetrap and all that stuff. Dude. Are you kidding me? Obsessed. Still obsessed. I used to make those things all the time. Well, maybe you're an accidental obsessive creative person. Unventioner. Yeah. The MacGyver of pointless machines. Yes. All right. So that's where you got started? I think so. All right. Something there. Very young. What's your earliest memory of being on stage? Oh, gosh. In third grade, I sang the solo in Silent Night. Out of school, I had just moved to, we moved from LA to Mariposa. That's where most theater careers start. A lot of people go, well, it started for me in Mariposa. That's where my grandparents lived. So we moved close to them. And I remember getting the solo to Silent Night as a third grader. Do you realize how funny that sounds? I got the solo to Silent Night. Okay, here's what we want you to do. Sing as low as possible. Just be quiet. Solo, we can't hear you. And it was really, I think, the first time I'd ever gotten attention like that. That's a very, I don't remember how old that is. How old is a seventh grader, a third grader? I think I was eight. I was seven or eight. Is that when you fell in love with theater or was it before then? Oh, gosh. You know what? I'm having memories flood in right now. I was tap dancing at three and a half years old and we performed at four at the Strawberry Sawdust Festival down in L.A. Oh. And I even remember this song, We Are Number One, in a silver lame tuxedo with a purple tie and a silver top hat, singing and dancing tap dance to We Are Number One at four years old in front of a crowd. Wow. There's so much there in that picture. I feel like if we had that picture, that would be the picture for this episode. I will send it to you. I will send it to you. It still lives on my father's fridge on a little magnet. I feel like that's going to be the photo for this episode. Oh, my goodness. So those are some early memories, early creating performances. And then that proceeded to lead to what? Well... My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they were sending me to music and dance at like eight years old. I'm assuming I had a lot of extra energy and I was probably dancing around the house and singing, whatever. And so we used to drive down the hill to Fresno from Mariposa. Right, that's the second big stop in Fresno. In someone's career. Right. Yeah, Mariposa won, then Fresno too. Sorry, Audra McDonald. They're an hour away. I think it's an hour down the hill. Audra McDonald, right? In the Valley, we all live in the shadow of Audra McDonald, in a way. And eventually, we moved down to Fresno, and then I went to Bullard Talent Elementary Magnet School, which was a theater arts elementary school, K-8, where half of your curriculum was music, singing, dancing, performing, all the above. And it was actually required for you to take multiple. In fact, I think before you hit sixth grade, you had to change an instrument every semester. So by that time I hit seventh, eighth grade, I had played six different instruments for almost a full year. So do you remember the first time you got a laugh on stage? You said the first time you saw the audience was in third grade. I remember getting a laugh in a bad way. It must have been seventh grade. We did a performance at one of the open houses and it was in a show choir and my zipper was down. Oh, sure. And I couldn't figure out what was going on and nobody that I was on stage with told me. So I was very shy. I was very shy. Believe it or not, I was a shy, kind of introverted person, except aside from when I was performing that that was trained into me young to be like loud and full out and everything. So I remember getting that negative thing and it kind of damaged me for a little while. I was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore because everybody's like, oh, your zipper was down. And like everybody, half of the kids at school for like three days was tormented me about that. So was there a moment there, like whether that was school or there where you just thought, okay, this is what I want to do? Okay, so eighth grade, I had... a teacher who was a show choir teacher. She was doing something with younger kids in Alice in Wonderland, something or other. And she goes, do you want to build me a set? I'd never built a set before, but I had always built props out of cardboard and all kinds of stuff. I was always building things. Yeah, the Rube Goldberg approach. All of it. I remember the year before, I was in a little drama class in seventh grade with a teacher named Linda Dryden, who was still a family friend, basically got me into puppetry, still to this day. And we were doing some scene, and I came to school with this giant cardboard tractor that not only I could fit in, but I could steamroll over somebody, and they would lay on the ground and be able to go through, and it was large. Sure. Yeah. So she asked me to design a set for... the little kids to do Alice in Wonderland. Right. And I could spend like$200 on large poster boards and blacklight and other things like that. And in my, and like in eighth grade, I was like, oh my gosh, yes. You got a budget. Yeah, I got a budget. Plus a plan. I got a budget. So I was designing, Yeah. That stuck. Then I went to the theater art school, Roosevelt, and I was there about six months. The teacher I had followed there that I had had done stagecraft with had transferred to a different high school that summer. And I didn't know. So about halfway through freshman year, I did transfer to Fresno High to follow that teacher. And I was the only set design student for probably two years. Yeah. Yeah. And just absorbed everything I possibly could. built everything, painted everything, designed stuff in 9th and 10th grade. The shows were great. The teacher was a little scary. The quality was really high because there was a lot of fear in letting this teacher down, which is an interesting tactic that I don't think really exists anymore. Maybe it's not healthy for a kid to live in fear in order to do a good job, but it also created a sense of competition in a way in order to do good on stage, to get the parts you want and other things like that. But it didn't have, okay, what it didn't have is like that. Was it like Nancy Kerrigan kind of competition? I mean, were you? No, nobody was taking anybody out at the knees, no. But maybe as far as using their talent to do that, like, I'm going to sing this so good, you won't be able to walk. Yeah. Maybe. Okay. That's

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a very Tanya

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Harding voice kind of way. Yeah. We love her. We stand for her. Sure. Well, we can't stand after her. No. No. No. Where do you go from that? You're this theater kid. You like set design. You're into it. What's next? I graduated high school a year early. Because you were that smart? I will be, uh, several, several things. And I, I was very dyslexic. Was it California youth authority? Was that was, were they involved at all? No, I don't think so. Okay. No, I, uh, very dyslexic. So a lot of the, uh, the, the learning stuff that was, uh, the learning stuff. Sure. That was having to deal with reading was very difficult for me. Didn't do well, but anything creatively straight A's. And, uh, in some of the programs I would take, uh, uh, uh, A zero period and an after-school period and sometimes a period in between for extra points. By the time I graduated a year early, I had enough credits to have graduated after a sophomore, pretty much. All right, so skipping ahead from schooling, this is what you want to do. Now you're getting into a career. Can you snapshot the career for us? So when I left school a year early, I jumped across town. to go work at Bullard High School as a technical director, a set designer. So at 17, the same age as the seniors who were there, I was designing their shows, a kid from across town. In 2005, I moved to the Bay Area. I was doing mostly props in the Bay Area. I was like a prop master designer in the Bay Area. And then I was also going down to Fresno every other week to work and choreograph and help design for a couple of programs there. So there were some times where I was getting on the freeway. I wasn't sure which direction I was going. Yeah. I did that for, I did that for four years and I did not enjoy doing professional theater. Like I thought I would, like it was the dream, just working my ass off, trying to do professional theater, technical theater. Um, so I came back to the Valley and, But immediately met people that we're still working with today, and that was 2008. And I stayed at Playhouse for 12 years, eventually. Playhouse is the theater in Merced. Playhouse, Merced. Otherwise, it just sounds like a creepy place. Yeah. You know, young guys working, but anyhow. All right. So there's just this overview of how you get to you. That gets us to 2020. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize. As if anything happened in 2020. So then the little pandemic, the little incident happened. Sure. We like to call her C-19. We love bats. We aren't mad at the bats. Whatever. We just learned the word bat guano for real the other day. Oh. Yeah. So then I took a big break. We had a death in the family. Yep. We lost our niece. And that was very quick. That's kind of one of the reasons we scrambled out of Merced to come to Modesto. January 1st of 2020 was to go figure out what life meant while we were losing somebody. Yeah. So that happened. And I, I had always here, we're going to get, we're going to circle back to magic box. Now I had for years and years and years. Have we even gotten the magic box? No, we're, but you, you referenced it a couple of times. We're going to get to magic box. Yeah. This is kind of the story along that line. I knew for years and years and years, I wanted to do something silly. And, uh, Low risk, if that makes sense. I'll explain what that means in a minute. Low risk, meaning like it doesn't eat your soul, eat your life, destroy families and friends by trying to be creative, you know, that it was something important, but it wasn't the end all be all. It didn't ruin your life trying to put it up. So that sometimes theater can.

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Yeah,

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sure. It can eat your life. Yeah. Theater people, technical theater people, aren't always the happiest people in the world. Yeah. Well, it's funny that I brought you on for a little nonsense episode if you're not the happiest person. Well, nonsense has to, it has to be on top. Yeah. If you can't maintain nonsense, you might as well go, I don't want to pick on anybody else's career, but, you know, something really dirty and menial because building a show is so stressful. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I want to pause for just a moment in this interview. One lesson to learn in this first section is what we've talked about before in the Fletcher Festo. Did you hear it? It's the idea of doing what you love and doing it often. Corey's story leads us up to this next section, which is all about a new project he's working on called the Magic Box Players. It's a traveling theater show that he and my daughter Caroline take into the local schools. Corey shares how a lifetime of building and collecting a warehouse of elaborate costumes and props led him to create and design this fantastic new project, which allows their team to expose children to theater right in their own school and how that's introduced these kids to the magic of play and make believe. Let's go back to the studio. All right, so that's what you want to build. And you finally get out of that slump, lump, and you decide, I have this vision. It took a long time. And, you know, we have 25, 30 years of theatrical stock that we've accumulated as a family in several different cities. And it started to turn into several warehouses full of accumulation. Because we're all crazy. We're all creatively compulsive. The family. The family. And we like to spend a lot of money on this. This is our family hobby, whether we do it together or not. So right now, if I said, hey, I need a fireman uniform. Maybe, or I could source or build one for you. Okay, build one. There's many ways, but yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. Have we made it to Magic Box? Oh gosh, Magic Box. So then I met this crazy family. called Fletcher Mendiolas. That really is a crazy mixture. Crazy family and so much creativity and talent. Let's shed a little tear. And realize that... Very, very easily between. Wait a minute. You know these people. At the beginning of the show, I didn't say that there's a third person in the studio. There's always a third person in the studio. There's always a third person in the studio. There's always money in the banana stands. This is our historian in the room right now. So my daughter Caroline is here with us and she's quietly just, she was working on something. Now she's just listening. Okay, so you've met these people, and you're like, hey, I got this idea. Okay, so now we have this insanely talented pianist. I'm sure there's other words that go along with that. He's been on. He's been on. He's been on, I guess. Everybody knows Roy. Roy. Yeah. Roy Mendiola. Mm-hmm. And you have him. Yes. And then we have this other person that has this very Karen Carpenter voice, beautiful voice, and... And secretly a secret ambition to do something. So we realize there's probably something there. And I have enough people from the past that I can pull from. that are in a situation where they have an open schedule and they have the ability to go run around and do school shows and things like that, the idea sparks. And I've always wanted to do vaudeville. I'm very inspired by the Muppets. I'm inspired by Shelley Duvall's Fairytale Theater and Fractured Fairytales from Rocky and Bo Winkle and Carol Burnett. So using all of those resources that I've been obsessed with my entire life, And knowing that we have access to 25 years of our own stock and costumes, I was like, we need to just figure out a financial path that may work for us. We need to create a business of sorts. Sure. How do we do this? You have all the costumes. You have 30 years of... We were on tour with the children's opera from Opera Modesto, and we ran into somebody that I'd worked with for 15 years who is now running the creative arts position at the Office of Education in Merced. And she says, why don't you guys do this? Why don't you guys tour? You guys could blah, blah, blah. You could do this in a second. We wrote a grant, and we covered all the schools in the Merced City area. and came up with curriculum and program that we literally could take anywhere. We travel with a large set, large costumes, large props. We fill a large space at all these schools, whether it's in their auditorium or their cafetorium or their gymnasium. We bring... A very tall, very wide set that is easy to put up in like an hour and a half. And it's very big. And that was the point. If we're going to do this, it needs to be large. It needs to feel like something they've never seen before and might never see again. Because a normal traveling troupe travels very light. Yeah. And we're traveling heavy. So why take the show to schools instead of waiting for kids to come to the theater? Because it is very hard these days in order for schools to afford and And secure the busing to transport their kids around, even if they have the money. We have issues with busing right now, getting the kids to and from anywhere. Also, we can come in to a school on their campus, which is very special, to bring something that would normally be in a theater onto their campus and treat it with that amount of respect that you would show in a normal theater in their actual school. We can cover an entire student body. Instead of if you do like a field trip, maybe you're just doing the third grade or the fourth grade. We can cover the whole student body in two shows most of the time. What do you hope kids take away? Well, what we've learned from the teachers and some of the principals is that they've maybe never, ever seen a live performance before, ever. Hmm. maybe just on YouTube, they've seen things, but you don't experience it as live performance, especially on their campus like this. They've never had anything on their campus. So that's, I want to pause there for a second, because that's a thing that kids are now, I mean, so much of our media is being consumed in the palm of our hand. They're raised with something in their hand, yes. So even the way we were raised, which is, you're going to go see this Right. Oh, they freak out. they freak out from the first time they see the costume, the costume characters come out. Cause everybody is a fairytale creature or something out of Alice in Wonderland or some strange, strange costume that, that has, um, the song reinterpreted these hundred year old music reinterpreted to cover that character. I'll be about them. Yeah. Um, there's a section where Ms. Muffet comes out and then the spider, which is a human comes out in a full spider costume, eight arms and everything, puppet, but, A large human puppet. And then that is followed by dancing fleas, which is followed by a purple people eater puppet. And the layer after layer after layer, you almost can't hear the vocal of what's being sung because the kids are just losing their mind at what they're watching. Yeah. They don't have never seen anything like this before. And the teachers and the principals really do say that they talk about it for weeks after they bring it up. Yeah. So what's something they all experienced together? All right. I want to take one more break here before the last part of the interview, just to ask you, my listener, a few questions. When was the last time you did something totally silly? When was the last time you focused on nonsense? Was it a TikTok video? Was it an Instagram reel? Or are you like me? Did you just waste an evening climbing down a YouTube rabbit hole of super dumb videos? Okay, if you haven't done it, can I encourage you to rediscover your childhood sense of silliness? You know, maybe you just need to go watch some Three Stooges or Monty Python. Maybe some Benny Hill. Or more recently, Martin Short's Jiminy Glick interviews. Do you remember Dave Letterman's stupid pet tricks or his stupid human tricks? If you're hesitant to remember what it means to be silly as an adult, stay tuned for this last part of this interview where we remind and encourage you that a little nonsense is okay. So all this was, this whole history, your history, what brought you here was to transition into this topic of the power of silliness. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit. Why does nonsense matter? Because I'm just not interested in anything serious. I can get serious for free at home. I don't want to go sit... I understand the importance of watching... art that has a lot of meaningful suffering in it and a lot of serious serious topics and content yes do we need that great but um we went through a period of time uh in the past decade where i think the what people were going to see what people were producing was more serious and more serious and and and you had to like kind of suffer through the piece you're watching. So I guess what I'm saying is as far as being nonsense and funny, we were going through a period of time where things were getting too close to home and it was hard to sit through things. It was connecting too hard for people. It doesn't mean that shouldn't exist. But me personally, I like to do things that are like frosted cupcakes, sprinkles, visual eye candy. And to me, that's nonsense. I know that I can get a laugh through a design choice. That's nonsense to me. All right. Yeah. How about, what does silly do for the soul? I'll tell you what. If, and maybe this is a lesson for everybody, if you are trying to do anything nonsensical and you have something in your mind where you feel it could be, but you aren't laughing with and at constantly by the people you surround yourself with... then you aren't at your nonsense potential. You need to be surrounded by people that just make you fucking die laughing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this idea though, that we lose it as an adult, we lose the ability to be silly. I think that's why this is one of my favorite. That's why it's on the Fletcher Festo. So it's why it's on there is I've never stopped being silly. Yeah. Like I can, I'm the worst person at a funeral. Oh, that's amazing. I'm sitting next to you. I'm the best person at a funeral. Okay. Because I can navigate hard space really well, but I'm also going to, we're going to lose it. Yeah. Like I'm going to have to leave the funeral. So we just recently had a memorial service for my mother-in-law and people were saying things on stage and I constantly see the funny. And then my oldest son was next to me and he leaned over and I'm like, I just said, hey, not now. That's all I could say was, not now because I'm about to bust out laughing because I don't even know what you're going to say, but I know you're a funny enough person to make me lose it at grandma's funeral. So I was like, no, not now. Wrong time. Not now. And he kept leaning like that whole, I'm going to say something like, don't do it. No, don't do it. I have no exit strategy here. I'm stuck in the middle of a row. And if I, you know, the shaking that's going to take place. People are going to think I'm sobbing. Anyhow. So I'm, yeah, I don't think I've ever lost it. You know, the ability, I think my kids would tell, tell you that my ability to make up a song on the spot. Yeah. Just something stupid. Yeah. Um, do you remember, I mean, so much of my life was driven by Saturday Night Live. Oh yeah. Like dumb. Yes. Just insane songs. And I always remember this Phil Hartman skit that he did called Lothar of the Mountain. And so, you know, my daughter, Lola, I say it to her every morning. I walk out, I'm like, Lola of the hill, people. Like, it's super stupid. But every time I see her, I do it. And she always is like, this is dumb. And then I'll follow up with a comment like, well, someday at my funeral, you'll remember me doing all these stupid things. And you'll miss it then. So not only do I do silly, but then I do guilt. I think you should have a pre-funeral while you're still alive so you can see these things before. Can we plan that? I have a theater. The bummer is my wife told me I don't get to choose anything about my funeral. So I've already told two children, this happens. These are the songs at my funeral. All right, so that idea that adults lose it, that's why it's important to find it? Well, not everybody's going to have it. That's fine. There's a certain amount. I think when it comes to doing nonsense, there's a couple different kinds. There is inclusive nonsense and there is exclusive nonsense. Exclusive nonsense is the diehard people that you know that no matter what you say, they're going to get your reference, get your joke. And literally that fulfills you by making something up. Do you need people to get it? Yes. You do? And very few. There's very few on that list. But when people get it, doesn't it just fucking light you up? If people get my reference. Yes. And I drop crumbs. Yeah. And I have people in my life. I mean, there are some like my son, Jack. Yeah. He's a crumb dropper. Yeah. And it just drops in and I die because I'm like, I get it. I know the joke you're doing. And sometimes it's not even a word. It's a look. Yeah. Just like, well. So is nonsense essentially humor? Is there another base element to nonsense other than being able to see humor in something? I don't even know that nonsense is something that I need a reaction from. Like, I don't know that I need. It's not even demonstrative for a response. Is nonsense referential in theory? We're going to go there. Sure. Like, does it come from... Okay, like, let's say in order to do nonsense well, you have to know the classical version of something. You have to know a little bit about something before you can make fun of it, before it can become... Yes, I think so. So it doesn't always have to be humor. Yeah. I mean, because some of our best nonsensical people in literature, it's pretty serious literature. Yeah. But it's nonsense. Well, they're taking it seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I always tell people, I think my nonsense, my silliness comes from pivoting. Yeah. So if you look at something, you see it. But if I pivot and look at it from the side, I see something totally different. Okay. And that's what I'll bring up. And it's often with the, well, like that's all it takes is for me to say, well, but you know, and typically the people that know that it's going to go south really quick say, will drop their shoulders and then just wait for it. And I almost have to let it out. I have to let the silly out. I can't leave it in. Who's one of your most obscure referential comedians or gore? Well, I mean, the king was Steve Martin. I was going to say Martin Short and Steve Martin were top of the list. But his stand-up, I mean, I memorized it as a kid. So, I mean, the whole thing of juggling cats. There's something going on in Mexico right now. It just makes me sick. They're juggling cats for money. It's so weird. It's so weird. But as a kid, he's like, oh, they take these little kitties, one, two weeks old, and they juggle them for money. It's terrible. And then he's in it like a whole song. He's like, La Cucaracha. And I'm like, it just makes me laugh. What about that Martin Short character where he's- Jimmy Glick? Jimmy, oh my, listen. Dude, I've never seen anything so terrible and smart in my life. I fall apart every time. Oh, they asked Steve Martin, now that you're- Famous, what have you wasted your money on? He's like, well, I bought myself a fur sink. It's just so funny, but so stupid. But like to me, this is funny. I think it does that whole thing about, you know, my mother called me the other day, wanted to borrow$15 for some food. I said, hey, I work for a living. That's so silly. And then there's like a line crossed when you get to... like psychotic genius humor, like an Andy Kaufman or something like that, where the nonsense is, it's not, it's not nonsense anymore. It's clinical, but it's still like, it's so brilliant. You can't even laugh at it. I think that he is that next level. I mean, there's people that are just funny and I love Mel Brooks. Oh yeah. You have to know the whole, his whole story. Cause if you just focus on things, but like young Frankenstein, come on. There wasn't much better. Because people love to go to Blazing Saddles. Oh, Blazing Saddles. Nope. He had a monster on stage dancing with Gene Wilder. He's clever. Super smart. So if someone's listening to this podcast and they want to bring a little magic into their ordinary life, what would you suggest? Well, do you... Do you feel you have magic to give or do you want to receive magic? So in that case, you can either try to just focus in on something creative you haven't, you've put off or go be part of something or go watch a show or something. But I think, I think nonsense is a participation act. I think you have to go be part of it. Yeah. You can do it on your own. You can do it from your phone and you do whatever, but. You need the interaction. I don't need an audience. Yeah. But I love when people are going off the rails. That's what I love about improv. Like you just start going and it just, I love when people say, is this a bit? You don't need an audience? Not in a sense that I'm performing for an audience, but I love to feed off someone else. Okay. I love when someone brings their A game to humor. Because when they do, that's when I can, then I feel like I'm unleashed. And they're helping me tap into parts that I'm missing. Yeah, you're each other's audience, yeah. All right, are you ready for a quickfire round? I'm ready. Okay. Okay, these are your quickest answers. Who knows what's going to happen? All right, I'm only going to ask you- What do I win? I'm only going to ask you four questions. Okay. You have to give me your fastest answer. Okay. Favorite childhood toy? Oh, gosh. I can't do this. I can't. I don't know. Oh, gosh. Cardboard tube and some clear tape. What's your most ridiculous prop you've ever used? Well, I built a six-foot banana peel. I built a Trojan bunny that was nine feet tall. Worst costume modification? I... I literally butchered someone's... I was doing a quick alteration on someone's dress on opening day, and we got to the scene where she had to go on quick change, and I had sewn her sleeve shut at the arm, at the middle of the arm. And so she did the whole number with basically... One-armed? One-armed, because I sewed the sleeve shut... All right, who's funnier, you or Carolyn?

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Oh,

SPEAKER_01: 36:44

I think we take turns. I think that's a fast cycling game exchange. Yeah. We come from... How many years apart?

SPEAKER_00: 36:57

Like 20.

SPEAKER_01: 36:58

Wow, call me out. Wow, is it 20? It's... It's 22, 22, 22. Okay. So there's definitely two decade, two very separate decades of humor coming in to a conversation where we all, and we joined together over, you know, online references and things like that. Okay. Lastly, this isn't a quick fire. Yeah. Currently right now. Yeah. When you need to laugh, what do you go to that will make you laugh every time? Probably the very first answer would be texting Caroline. No joke. Okay. Okay, here's a story. When we text and send TikToks and jokes so often that when there's something important in our text message that we have to find, we have to scroll through days of nonsense just to find whatever that reference or that comment was. But I have since learned that you can search in your texts, and I learned this from a certain Caroline. Well, do not lose... That type of friendship. Yeah. Because if you have to search through... I feel bad for... I feel bad that if I ever die simultaneously with my wife in a plane crash, and the kids have to find information out and have to go through our texts, because they're going to be like, Mom was always serious. Yeah. And Dad just knows how to send stupid photos. Okay. That's how I think... Our relationship is in the texting world. Well, you can't be too similar. Isn't that boring? It is. Yeah. Yeah, for her. You're very well-rounded. Well, I'd like to thank you for being on this episode of the Mango Times podcast. A little nonsense is okay. I appreciate you and I appreciate what you're doing. How would people find you online if they're interested? Well, all of our... Social media is at Magic Box Players, all one word. That would be YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Gmail. So you can get us through any of those places if you would like to know more about us or book us for your school or you have any kind of creative programming, specialty creative programming you need for either a grade level or a class or whatever. We are interested in doing creative programming. We invent and create programming. And I would like to say that I think one of my favorite things has been meeting your entire crazy family of nonsensical people. And I feel very lucky to know all 75 of you. That's true. There's about that many. All right. That's a wrap. Hey, I want to thank you for listening to this interview between me and Corey. But before you go, I want to remind you of some basic facts. Humor is great for your health. Did you know that laughter lowers your cortisol levels? And cortisol is that stress hormone that we all live with, or maybe I just live with. All right, so we know humor is good for our mental health. It also improves our physical health. It improves heart health. It improves circulation. It improves blood vessel function. It supports cardiovascular health. It also strengthens your immune system. And it's been known to improve cognitive function. Come on, people. Get out there. Get a little silly. All right, friends, if you want to connect with me, head over to themangotimes.com. Go to the Let's Connect button. You can leave me a message. You can tell me what you're thinking. You can send me something silly if you want to. Hey, I would love it if you would go over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review, a five-star review. Why not? I'll ask for it. And one last thing. could you share the show with one friend? Just one friend. Just say, hey, listen to what Fletch is doing over at the Mango Times podcast. Remember, these episodes drop every other Friday morning, so I will see you again in two weeks with our next episode called Give Others the Benefit of the Doubt. All right, but before I go, this is a statistic worth remembering. Children laugh about 300 times a day and adults average about 15. Hey folks, that is a gap worth closing. Now get out there and quietly make some noise. You have been listening to the Mango Times podcast. Everything written and produced on this is by Andy Fletcher. If you're going to use it, steal it, borrow it, or share it on the internet, please just let me know. I don't care. I just want to know where my voice is being used out on the internet. And as a bit of a disclaimer, don't forget, everything I recommend on this podcast, you should use discretion. Choose whether you should watch it, listen to it, eat it, try it, go there. But when you do, don't forget to quietly make some noise. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00: 41:50

Bye-bye!