We're previewing Ruby's High School Reunion — a rollicking, interactive high-school-reunion-meets-improv show where you actually get to become one of the classmates and help rewrite the evening on the spot.

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/6b1e898f-b578-403d-b1f1-eee94fe2d2ad/

I’m hanging with Dennis Porter (aka Ruby), who built this out of his murder‑mystery and clowning chops, so expect big personalities, playful innocence, and a lot of audience-led improv — basically the high school reunion you wish you’d gone to (no yearbook burns required). We talk about how every performance is different because volunteers and crowd choices steer the story, why vulnerability and confidence make the improv sing, and how we create a safe, laugh‑first space for everyone. If you want specifics: shows run Sept. 16 & 17 at 7pm, Sept. 18 at 6pm and 8pm, and Sept. 20 at 4pm and 6pm at the Century Club/Strath Allen; tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com (and the 6pm Friday and Sunday shows include an optional dinner add‑on). Come ready to play, maybe become Alexandra Trebek (legally different, obviously), and leave having forgotten the outside world for a couple of joyful hours — we promise the food will be better than your old cafeteria tray memories.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Visit joebeanroasters.com to get fresh roasted specialty coffee either by the bag or with a Perpetual Joy subscription!

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

We're here doing Previews for the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival happening for September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets for as many events as you can possibly go to.

And I'm here with one of the people who's hosting said events.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Dennis Porter with Happy Faces Entertainment, and I'm bringing Ruby's high school reunion to the Century Club for the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival.

Yeah.

And those events are happening on September 16th and 17th at 7pm Two shows on the 18th and 20th, 20th, 6 and 8 on the 18th, 4 and 6 on the 20th.

And again, it's at the Strath Allen, a great venue.

And tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com.

So why don't you tell me a little bit about the show itself?

So what.

What is Ruby's high school reunion?

Then?

We'll dive into different details.

Sure.

So for the time that we're together, everybody is attending the same high school reunion.

So we've all gone to high school together.

At Cleaver High, Ruby is the host or queen of the reunion and leads in remembering great times we had together.

Audience members become specific people that we went to high school with, and we play a little game, have a little fun, do a little entertainment, and just, you know, it's a fun time together supporting each other for being themselves and who they are now and, you know, enjoying life.

So maybe not quite as fraught as a lot of high school reunions are with remembering the darkness and remembering the version of you you were at that time.

Correct.

We've had various people say, better than my own high school reunion.

It's the best high school reunion ever.

So it is the.

I always sometimes say the high school reunion you wish you had.

Yeah.

So.

So this is, you know, got interactive and, you know, you seems like you've built this, you know, repertoire of, you know, this historical thing that, you know, is happening within the world.

How is that process of building up that, you know, building up the.

Building up the.

Essentially the backstory of what this show is.

So when you're coming in, you have, you know, what the backstory is, but the audience is learning on the fly.

Well, just a little history of this show.

Part of one of the many things that Happy Face Entertainment does is Casey Mystery Players, which is our murder mystery shows.

Okay.

And so we write our own shows and there's actually three of us that are in the writing team.

And so many years back, we decided to do a high school reunion show.

So that's where we kind of started the basis of this.

A few years back, coming out of the Pandemic, actually I was doing a variety competition and I needed something longer to do.

And I thought of this and I went, what if I got rid of the murder mystery part of it and just took the characters and the concept of the high school reunion and the interaction, which is what I love.

I'm an improv person, so improvs in everything I do.

I put it together.

I was like, hey, this is a great thing.

So I took all the interactive part and the characters and then added the RWBY to it and added that aspect to it to come up with this new Ruby's High School Reunion.

When we were writing the original show we started, one of the things we liked about the concept is almost everybody's been to high school.

There are, no matter when you went to high school, some stereotypes.

And so we pulled from those stereotypes.

You know, so there's the jock and the cheerleader and the brainiac and you know, all those people that probably know somebody that fits the category.

So you can also easily relate in some cases.

Now, obviously we're, you know, we're going stereotype.

So it's overall or we're just taking one aspect of, oh, you were the smartest person in the class.

And then we play off of that.

Yeah.

So audience members get to become some of those characters and in the process they also every show, help rewrite the show.

Because of that improv aspect, I'm going to give you a little bit.

You get to go with it, have fun and take it where you want to.

Yeah.

And then we get to play off each other.

So every Bernie Lawton schlager that we have, each show is going to be slightly different.

Yeah.

It's going to have a couple of similar things because I'm giving you that information from the get go.

But then the audience member gets to have fun and play and make it their own.

And that's where, that's where you, you just don't know.

That's where the live entertainment, which is what I like.

I'm, I, I learned in those years that we could only be on video, that I am a live entertainer.

Yeah.

Because I feed off the audience.

That energy comes from me.

We're working together to build this and create this as we go along.

And also, I have no idea what's going to happen, Which I know freaks some people out.

They're like, what do you mean?

No, I want a script that I know exactly what's going to happen.

I love the aspect that I don't know what's going to happen.

And with that, over the years, there have been things that have happened that I never could have scripted just because one, I may not have thought about it, the situation just wasn't right, or someone didn't make a suggestion or an ad lib along the way to set it up.

And those are so fun and brilliant and great reminders of that.

When you're willing to let things happen, you never know what can happen.

Even better than you could ever imagine, just because you're willing to give a chance.

Yeah, I think there's something special about when improv works.

Right.

One, it's a skill you build up to be able to be flexible.

You know, that thinking on your feet, that adjusting the callbacks and being able to grab those moments and remember them for a little bit later.

There's.

There's something about certain kinds of performance that are fundamentally earnest that drives, you know, drive some people away from it unless you experience it in the right way.

Because there's a.

There has.

There's a certain genuineness that is very visible and an earnestness that sometimes puts people off.

Like I'll mention, like acapella groups is a great example.

Right.

There's these.

It's the big smiles and everybody's having a great time.

I'm like, that drives some people away.

But the right people in the right time, it hits you in a very specific way because it is earnest, because it is genuine.

Even if the moments might be like, oh, you're working through all this stuff and you're grabbing and you're using the skills.

There's an honesty and an earnestness to it because you're putting yourself out there doing this thing that not everybody fully understands.

True.

I was just talking with someone of the day and I don't remember what the conversation was, but we came to the word vulnerability.

That if you're doing improv, you have to be willing to be vulnerable because you don't know.

And you also have to.

And I think there's a lot of life lessons in there that don't get pointed out, but there's a lot of just being willing to keep going no matter what happens, even if something just dies flat.

Okay, great.

Move on.

Right.

If the audience stares at you and you thought it was the funniest joke, you've ever said in your entire life.

And they just like, huh?

You don't go, oh, well, this show's over.

I'm always just quit.

No, you're like, okay, fine, that one didn't hit.

We move on and we keep going.

Or sometimes I think I've experienced.

I tend to laugh at myself just how I am that even if they don't think it's funny, the fact that I thought it was funny and they didn't makes it kind of funny to them.

So even in the not quite perfect, which we never are, there can be fun and just being able to keep.

It's one of those.

Keep going.

You know, when I think that's the other thing.

Right.

People react to.

People react to confidence.

Right.

Like if you.

If you power through the bomb, you might even acknowledge it for a second.

Like, oh, geez.

I. I didn't know the high school reunion was going to be such a hard audience.

Right.

You're just.

You're doing that little.

That little moment that shows that, hey, this isn't affecting me.

Or you play it up and this is your opportunity to, like, show an insecurity that then might grab the next person, which could make the show completely different than the path it was going on.

Just that one moment or choice of, oh, do I play it off as comedy or do I.

Or do I play this off as something else?

Yes.

Yeah.

And that's part of the live part of it.

You just never know what you're gonna get.

Yeah.

And you can keep going and let it happen.

So this character that you had developed with the group and had done in different forms, what about this character has grabbed you where you want to keep performing this as kind of the ringleader of this kind of show.

What about the character have you grown to love?

Well, a little background again.

So RWBY was an accidental character that was created years ago.

I was working for an improv or, pardon me, a murder mystery company that was based out of Kansas.

Not out of Kansas City, but we had a troop in town.

And so they sent us a script for a holiday show that had a different ratio of men and women.

And so at first, I was going to sit the show out and we're going to find someone else to play the part of Ruby.

The name actually comes from that show.

And it worked out.

It ended up that they're having problems finding someone and whatever.

And a friend of mine who was in the cast said, here's what's going to happen.

We're going to put Dennis in Drag.

And we're going to do this show.

And I thought, I've never tried that.

Let's give it a try.

And I did it.

I was like, this is so fun.

I enjoyed the character.

And so then Ruby just kind of kept building and building with that.

I'm also a clown.

I've been a circus clown for 35 years, so I have lots of different characters.

And one of the things I learned, actually, while teaching at a clown conference in a discussion that many people have thought of characters and makeup as masks that hide a person.

However, there's another way you can look at it, which I think is a little bit more true, is that.

That those characters can actually be a magnifying glass to amplify one part of you.

And that's, I think, what's happened.

And I have a lot of different characters and different things, and.

And Ruby is just one of them that magnifies another part of me.

Yeah.

You talked about confidence, which I think may be kind of true in most drag queens, is.

There's a high confidence level there, for sure.

There's a little bit of that, you know, that's there.

Ruby is a lot more playful and outgoing than I am on a regular basis.

And just.

There's also a.

There's a. Ruby has an innocence to her also, which I think actually kind of probably pulls from more my clown world that I've had.

People actually say that some of that innocence makes it funnier in that, you know, you're saying something that you don't know is maybe a little naughty, but it is.

Yeah.

You know, it's both innocence and optimism, too.

Right.

Because that's, like.

That's part of that whole package is that, I don't know, that opportunity to let go of some of the things that, you know, some of the society things and, you know, systemic things and other things, you know, and choices that people are making that, you know, are hurting others.

And you get a chance to separate from that and just be that.

Be bright and be.

Be optimistic.

Be innocent.

Be earnest.

Right.

Like, it's.

It's hard for a lot of people.

I'll put myself in that camp.

It's hard for me to separate from everything.

But I love when I get to see somebody who's made that choice to do that for the sake of entertaining others or just to be a happier person.

That is actually my purpose and passion in all the entertainment I do.

And I'm a. I'm a true variety entertainer.

So that's.

That's a preschool in the Morning and a drag show at night and a corporate event in the afternoon, I love all of it.

And for no matter how much of time I'm with you, if that's a few seconds in a parade, clowning, if that's two hours doing a game show, party, or murder mystery, or however long I'm with you, you get it.

For that amount of time, forget about the world, good or bad, and just be in this moment and have.

Find some joy, maybe remember some joy.

Maybe have a chance to be silly and remember that kid.

Like that is in everybody, even if we've forgotten it and just have some fun.

Yeah.

And over the years of doing the murder mysteries, you know, with audits, volunteers, we get them, and some, you know, people volunteer and then they do the show.

And in the show, I'm like, well, you're, you know, kind of a dud.

Like, you're barely doing this, but that's okay.

You know, you did it.

And after the show, those are frequently the most people that come up and say, I had the best time.

I don't know why I raised my hand, but I did.

Yeah.

Their box was a.

Is a different box than my box.

Yeah.

And so they stepped outside of theirs and had an experience they wouldn't had if I hadn't given them the opportunity.

Well, I'll say.

It's like, sometimes you don't know the things that are going to hit you emotionally.

You know, for me, I'm somebody that processes later.

I usually it hits me delayed, and then I think about the way that something went, and I'll bring something up that happened recently that really hit me is part of the beautiful challenge of doing something that's creative is for me, I'm running a network in town.

This is my passion project.

I have a day job.

This is the thing I love doing.

I love setting the space for others to create and creating a space that's comfortable.

And it was a host of one of the shows that.

And one of their regular guests, and they're hanging out outside after the show, and it was like 15 minutes and then half an hour, I'm like, come out and say hi.

Just like, hey, what's going on?

Anything going on?

Just like, no, we're just hanging out.

We feel really safe and comfortable here.

And, and that.

That really hit me.

Right.

Because that.

That space that you create for somebody else to either do that small thing of letting go, but that is an inclusive space for those that need it in different ways.

That's, that's.

That's the Result of the work and the choices that you make to be, to be inclusive, to be present for all of these different people, is that those moments can happen.

It's not an accident and it's not fully on purpose, but it's all the choices that lead to that.

And when those moments happen, you kind of have to sit back and reflect on it.

I think a little bit too.

Yes.

In Ruby's High School Reunion, we're finding characters and people on the spot as we go.

In other shows, we get volunteers beforehand and we take them away and give them some instructions.

And when we do that with volunteers before the show, I always tell them, my job here is to make you look good.

So I'm here to support you and make sure nobody fails, which gives all of them, okay, I can breathe.

I'm not a Don Rickles stand up show that's going to try and hurt me and, you know, ding me and try to catch me off guard.

We're here to work together to make this the best possible thing ever.

I find it so specific because that, that instruction I use so much when somebody's coming in nervous, what I tell them is, it's not your job to make the show great today.

It's your job to be the most you you can be.

During the time we're sitting here, it's my job to make you look great.

Like you just be the most you you can be.

Yes.

And then you get those special moments that way too.

Sure.

And.

And there is a little moment in the show that I say that blatantly there's what it is.

Be you at the best you you can be.

Yeah.

And that's a little bit of the heart of the show.

And we give throughout the show with fun ways.

We give you an opportunity to be that.

And in some cases, if you become a character, I give you a chance to be maybe who you want to be.

Like, okay, you're now going to be Alex Trebek.

Not the Alex Trebek, just happens to be similar name,.

Completely original, right?

Yes.

Alexandria, yes.

Legally, Legally, legally different.

Yes, obviously.

Sure.

For those few minutes that you're there with me, you now can become whatever.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm giving you some guidelines to play off of.

But then you get a.

You make me to come up with whole stories that.

Of what you always wanted to be.

And so that's an opportunity also just to let people get out of their current mode of reality and go, if it was just any choice, what if I could make any choice possible.

And it's Going to be okay.

What would I make?

So here's an opportunity to come.

And for me, it's play.

I'm a full time variety entertainer, so I do this for a living.

And I tell people all the time I get paid to play.

When I'm out at a gate at a, you know, doing games and shows and things, that's when people are paying me for my time.

I'm playing at those times.

Yeah, I still have to work.

For me, that's my time at my desk in the office, you know, scheduling and calls and all that stuff.

So I'm very fortunate and so grateful that I get to give other opportunity, other people opportunity to play.

Yeah.

So I do want to talk about, I want to talk about drag for a minute.

So you mentioned that, you know, it kind of came up as part of this process.

Is that something you had thought about doing before?

Is that something, you know, that was, you know, something that you were considering doing or is it just this opportunity and then you found yourself, you know, really, you know, becoming, you know, working in that, you know, side of things?

It was really just an opportunity.

Yeah.

Previous to that, I played a little old lady in fourth grade for Halloween and some other Halloween later in life.

I played a 50s sock hop gal.

Yeah.

But other than that, you know, just some, you know, I'm a theater person, so, you know, kind of however you play and doing improv.

I was with an improv troupe for almost 15 years here in Kansas City.

And so when you're doing that, you know, you're going to play 50, gazillion characters.

Of course, you know, they run the gamut.

But I had never thought of drag specifically.

So this came up.

And at that point in time, it was a holiday show.

So it was going to happen for maybe four to six weeks maybe every year we might bring this show back.

So it was just an opportunity that arose.

And actually it came up and I was like, oh, well, I think that might be kind of fun.

And then they're like, oh, no, we found someone.

We don't need you to do that.

And in that period I was like, oh, I was kind of looking forward to giving it a try and just see what happened.

And then that didn't work out.

And so then they were back to me doing drag.

And I was like, yay, good.

And it was also because it was in a limited run and even in that time period, you know, we probably had three or four shows maybe that we were performing.

So I was also, it was a very safe kind of thing.

It was like, okay, if it doesn't work, you know, January, I'm off to the new year, and we don't have to worry about that, you know, we'll never go back to that again.

But I tried, however it stuck, and it was all something like, hey, let me.

Let me explore some more and see what I can do with this.

Let me add it to my repertoire.

Yeah.

Have you found yourself engaging with the wider drag community as well in Kansas City and beyond?

Some, yes.

And so I've done various shows here in Kansas City, just doing some of.

More of what I would call traditional drag of shows with lip syncing and.

And dancing, even though that's not my forte.

So even in many of those shows, I was bringing in magic, which I've been doing since I was 10.

So, you know.

You know, and it might be mind reading and.

And things or it.

I always love this story.

So there was one day in the morning I did a preschool and I have my little circus show, and it includes a lot of magic.

So that morning I did some magic tricks.

That evening I did a couple of the exact same magic tricks at a drag show.

Same exact tricks, different jokes, because I played to the audience that was in front of me and what was appropriate and what was funny to that audience.

And so it's all about just doing the appropriate performance for the appropriate audience.

Yeah.

So I love that.

I can also intermix them throughout.

I do storytelling frequently in the summers.

I travel around the region doing library programs.

And a lot of that for summer reading is storytelling.

And I do interactive storytelling where the audience gets to fill in information as we create a story and things that I can do the exact same story with kids that I do with adults at the company barbecue.

You get completely different suggestions when the audience is throwing them out.

Yeah.

And, you know, you play with it from there, which is the great thing about it, that it just.

It can work for so many different levels for so many different people.

And, you know, everybody gets a chance to.

To play.

Yeah.

Well, I think this, you know, I kind of want.

I want to finish off talking about corporate gigs because it's such a specific lane of things.

But I did want to finish the drag thing first because it is.

It's something that has gained this unfair notoriety in a lot of circles.

My wife sells at furry conventions all over the country.

Same kind of thing where people are being demonized for trying to be happy, for trying to be their best selves, for enjoying, for playing, for being there.

And just, you Know, doing something that is for the audience that's there today and it's hurting nobody.

It has to be.

You know, it has to be such a.

Such a.

Fascinating.

I'm gonna say fascinating because there's.

No.

I don't.

There's not a great way of saying it.

It's like, it has to be fascinating to see this thing that you're doing to make people happy.

And that is bouncy and fun and light and can be.

Can be poignant in moments.

Being treated as this separate thing from life, separate thing from society, when all it is is just being present with others for a time period and using caricature to make people happy.

And that it's been being treated as such, this separate thing from life and society.

You said it.

Yeah, exactly.

And sometimes things come up that I really go, really?

Yeah.

Are you that sad in life?

Do you have nothing better else to do and.

Or just.

Are you just that uneducated about what's happening or.

I mean, I think that's so much of the thing, right?

Yeah.

One time, you know, a friend who I tap dance with, we kind of got a little drag discussion, and it said something, and at one point I said, it's costumes and makeup.

Yeah, that's what it is.

Anything more than that is being a professional entertainer who's doing the appropriate performance for the appropriate audience.

Yeah, that's what it is.

Is there performances that kids should not be at?

Definitely.

Of course, in lots of genres are the performances adults don't want to be at.

Definitely.

Yes.

It work.

It's a matter of being a professional and.

And performing what is appropriate for the people in front of you.

I love that completely, because that is so.

Like, you could do, again, that same thing.

You could do the same mystery without the murder, and the kids are gonna love it.

And then you bring it to the adults.

Yeah.

You make it a little more grisly.

You make it a little more intense.

But the kids love a mystery.

Everybody loves a mystery.

Everybody loves that chance.

Think about all the kids playing among us, Right?

Like, they're playing that.

They're playing those things all the time.

Like, who's the mystery person?

Who's this?

They love that kind of thing.

Definitely.

I mean, one of the themes for next year's summer reading program in libraries is mysteries.

Yeah.

That is the theme for all the ages, and so we're going to lean into that.

And for the teens and adults, I can bring in a murder mystery.

For the kids, I'm actually doing the mystery at a game show party.

I love it.

And so, because a mystery is a puzzle.

So we're going to work on puzzles and, you know, have that connection a different way to, you know, because in that way, there are different ways to look at the same thing.

So let's make sure we're looking at all the different ways and just put the proper way to the proper audience.

Yeah.

So I wanted enough.

On just an odd note, so you mentioned you're doing corporate gigs, too.

You know, as somebody, I've listened to so many comedians and, you know, radio, and people are talking about just how, you know, the death that happens at corporate shows sometimes where it's just the audience isn't like, what really, this is what we're doing.

And then people are just like, way too much drinking or way too much.

As there's so many ways to die at a corporate show.

As a performer, have you felt the gamut of all those things and then also the raucous successes?

I would say yes.

And there's.

So for me personally, a murder mystery should never be a surprise.

The only people that should ever be at a murder mystery show are people who have chosen to be at a murder mystery show.

Yeah.

Because I have been at the corporate holiday party, and there's the spouse that is going only because they are required to go.

So they don't want to go to the party to begin with.

They might be missing the big football game.

And now they've been forced to sit through a murder mystery.

People, people will.

We've had tables of people that just start conversations.

Yeah.

And you're like, if you don't want to be here, go out, go someplace else and don't be here.

You know, just.

But let everyone who is.

So I.

Even when people say, oh, we want to do a murder mystery, I will say, hey, from my experience here he goes, perhaps maybe we should do a game show party that the audience gets to play TV game shows that we recreate.

Because then we do a variety of different shows.

Even if you're, you know, it.

It mixes up.

There's a variety to it.

If you want to play, you can come on stage to play, or there's some games you get to play.

You know, so it's finding what's right for your group.

Yeah.

And.

And sometimes that's difficult for the organizers because they have what they want to do.

And so.

Which I always love when they're willing to have that discussion and say, okay, is this actually what's right for this group?

I think that's a Great point my 25 years of experience and say, here's what I've learned.

Now, if they're like, no, our group's good and.

And there are some.

And we're doing one here, it's a repeat customer.

So I come to them and there's only 25 of them in this marketing company.

They want to do a murder mystery.

I'm like, yes, your group will have a great time with a murder mystery.

I already know you from past events.

That's a good choice.

Yeah.

Because you're gonna have so many organizers who are the, you know, the enthusiastic fun person.

And like, that doesn't necessarily describe the engineer around the corner that kind of sort of doesn't want to be anywhere other than doing their job and going home.

Right, exactly.

You get it.

You got to keep that, you know, I mean, it's back to doing the appropriate thing for February Audience.

Yeah.

Even if it's, you know, a different adult audience.

What are these people?

Are they here only because they're required to be here and they just want to get out here as soon as possible, Maybe get a bonus check or fun gift?

Or are they someone who's here to have a party and have fun?

Yeah.

Well, I think we're going to close out.

So if you want to go have some fun, you know, go to an interesting show, you know, with people who love to perform and do the kind of show that's going to make you feel something and have a great time.

Get up to Ruby's high school reunion Sept. 16 at 7, the 17th at 7, 18th, 6th and 8th, and the 20th, 4 and 6, all at the Century Club at the Strath Allen hotel.

Tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com Dennis anywhere you want people to follow you.

Otherwise I would make a couple of just details.

The Century Club is directly across the street from the hotel itself.

So make sure you're going to the right place with that.

And also let you know that the 6 o' clock shows on Friday and Sunday actually have a dinner, provided there's additional cost.

But that just adds to that high school reunion feeling.

So for those two shows only, there's actually dinner also with it, which is a kind of a unique experience for much friends shows.

You don't usually have that aspect with a lot of them.

Yeah.

And you might get slightly better food than your high school reunion from one of the better restaurants in town.

That's true also.

Yes.

And if you want to keep up with all the different things you do at Smiles with Ruby follows Ruby specifically and her different things.

Happy Faces Entertainment Biz is the website for all, all of it.

That's all the variety of entertainment, including the murder mysteries.

And Ruby with that at HFE Smiles there on Instagram and Facebook.

So you have a lot of opportunities to find out where we go and we go wherever you need some smiles and laughter.

We're glad to be there.

All right, well, thank you so much for joining this episode of Just can't not make sure you check out all the other shows on the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

Got some new shows launching soon, and a lot of amazing people have been here with us for a long time.

So check that out and we'll see you out on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

The food's gonna be way better than the magnetic trays you get in Branson, Missouri.