As the lights dim and a spotlight appears, the crowd turns their attention to the front of the auditorium. Two students—the emcees, or hosts of the Revere High School (RHS) Variety Show—appear on stage. One speaks in French, while the other replies with sarcastic remarks in English. Sporting matching sweaters and drawing laughs from the crowd, the emcees introduce the event, quickly making the audience aware of the comedic element they are bringing to the show.
Every year, the Variety Show highlights the different talents of middle and high school performers. While previous emcees relied on a theme to inspire the way they introduce each act, senior Ethan Leigh and junior Nicky Ghiorghie brought a fresh approach to hosting the event exclusively through original comedy.
The Variety Show is a Revere Players fundraiser, and emcees are typically volunteering performers from the theater program. Leigh, a five-year member of Revere Players, explained his enthusiasm to take part in the Variety Show.
“I’ve actually had the desire to be an emcee for pretty much anything that was a show of sorts for a long time now. . . . And I’ve always seen the variety show, and I was like, ‘I bet I could do that. That’d be a lot of fun,’ and turns out, it was a lot of fun,” he said.
Between each act, Ghiorghie and Leigh performed entirely original scripts, ranging from skits to song parodies to celebrity impressions, to present the next performer. The emcees wrote all of these comedic “scenes,” and they followed their scripts almost exactly during the show—save for a few improvised moments. Both students expressed that writing each script did not involve a specific, structured process. Instead, their shared sense of humor, performing experience, and comedic instincts sparked ideas and helped them develop each scene.
Hosting the Variety Show is a balancing act. Good emcees must be charming and engaging, while still relating their script to the next act’s introduction. Amy Fagnilli, who directs the Variety Show, described the skills needed to write entertaining scripts and be a successful emcee.
“You have to have a decent understanding of what would be entertaining to your audience, [and] you need to be able to put together a script. It really helped that they both have acting experience because the delivery, the tone of voice, the way you inflect, the way you kind of make a connection with the audience through your speaking, they did an amazing job at that,” Fagnilli said.
Hosting any show, especially from a comedic angle, can be intimidating. In a live performance setting, laughter or encouragement from the crowd is never guaranteed. While this may deter many from the idea of emceeing, Ghiorghie explained how his performing experience prepared him for the challenges present in live comedy.
“I find it very easy to be up on stage. I find it easy to talk to a crowd. Not a lot of people can do that,” he said.
Being an emcee requires quick thinking and preparation for technical difficulties. While the performers have two rehearsals to run through the show, rehearsal time does not account for unexpected issues. When, on the night of the show, one performer’s guitar suddenly stopped working, the acts had to be rearranged, forcing Ghiorghie and Leigh to reorder their scripts and think fast. Fagnilli praised their flexibility and improvisational instinct that kept the show running smoothly.
“The problem was, you know, they’ve written a script that builds upon itself. So the two of them had to sit there and, in about 10 seconds, decide how they could change the script to do the next act’s introduction and then make it flow so they could circle back. So they had to kind of shuffle their ideas a little bit and make a few changes . . . And they made it happen and made it make sense, even though we had to kind of switch things multiple times in order to try to overcome that problem,” Fagnilli said.
Leigh explained that the chaos backstage was challenging, yet unsurprising. He linked his and Ghiorghie’s previous performing experience to their adaptability and quick thinking, and explained his mentality backstage when reworking the script.
“It’s quite a comfort when you’ve really done it for a long time. And you know even if something goes wrong, we’ll figure out a way to get it back. . . . . In this kind of situation where you’ve got two people and you’ve got a lot of acts, some acts can get messed up. A lot of things can go wrong, but in the end, you’ll figure it out,” Leigh said.
Following the Variety Show, both emcees spoke highly of their experience—Leigh reflected on the euphoric feeling of hearing laughter from the audience and celebrating with his co-host, and Ghiorghie stated that he would enthusiastically return to emceeing his senior year.
