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Video: Marc Summers Opens Up About Bringing Nickelodeon Nostalgia to the Stage
Mar 1, 2024
In this video, watch as the cast and creative team of The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers explains what the nostalgic theatrical event is all about!
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0:00
Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Mark Summers, beloved host of Nickelodeon's game show Double Dare and Food Network star
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is bringing his one-man show, The Life and Slimes of Mark Summers
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here to New World Stages, where it begins performances on February 14th
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and we drop by for a chat. Welcome to the New York stage
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How does it feel? It's unbelievable. In my wildest dreams, I never thought this would happen
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I was selling smoked salmon. I had one foot out the door
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and I get a strange phone call to go to an audition
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and they had auditioned 1,000 people in New York, didn't like anybody, came to Los Angeles
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I was the first person to audition, three callbacks, and the next thing I know, I'm hosting the show
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and who knew that that was going to explode? Kids didn't have their own game show
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and Nickelodeon gave it to them, and for whatever reason, the kids hooked on to me and my personality
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and it's so much fun to talk to a lot of our audience, which are people in their 40s who come
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have stories to tell about turning their house into an obstacle course, and having their mother yell at them
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for taking coffee grounds and pouring them on a white rug or something, and to hear these stories, it's crazy
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We did 525 episodes, but we toured it forever, and everybody's got a good feeling
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I grew up watching Soupy Sales, and for some reason, a couple of generations
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I became the Soupy Sales of a couple of generations, and I'm very proud of that
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I mean, this is a dream come true. I've got to spend the last nine, 10 years
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with a childhood idol who has become a dear friend. I mean, it's, how do you explain that to anyone
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Like, you never think that this will happen, and now to be able to share it at the largest of stages
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to be able to share it with the New York audience, Off-Broadway, at New World Stages
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I mean, it's, there are no words to express how we all feel. It's a dream
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I don't think I could be more excited than I currently am now. Walking into the theater today
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it's literally dripping with nostalgia all over this theater. Anybody who is in their 30s or late 20s like me
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I think you're gonna walk in and just be like, oh my God, my childhood just threw up all over the walls
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So I had that feeling today walking in. I'm so excited. Taking something so genre hybrid
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like a game show, a one-man show, memoir, musical elements, the only person who I could have done that with
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is Alex Brightman. The only person who could have done it this successfully is Alex Brightman
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It takes a certain brain, and weirdly, Mark, Alex, and I all share that same weird brain
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People don't know what to expect on this show, and it's a lot of drama about how I got from point A to point B
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but in the middle of the show, we break out with some of their childhood favorites
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from the Nick days, and we do some messy things where we bring people up by putting their names in a bowl
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and when we call them up, they run up on the stage, and we do some physical challenges, a couple of them
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and then we do a really crazy one that involves pies where people get pretty messy
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so you need to know that when you're coming and putting your name in that bowl, but then from there, we go to maybe the most dramatic
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and heaviest part, talking about my obsessive-compulsive disorder and my intrusive thoughts
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and so it flips on a dime, and I think people are sort of amazed
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that we are able to go from comedy to drama back to comedy
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but the audience participation aspect is great. There's tremendous humor because of Brightman
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There's some lines in there that are brilliant, and so I'm just very lucky to be around people
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who knew what they were doing, believed in me, and got us to this point. This show gives us the opportunity to bring that fun
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that sense of nostalgia, that sense of childhood wonder back to the stage
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but use it as a sort of a framework to tell a more heartfelt and serious story
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about the physical challenges and the obstacle course that Mark has lived that we don't know about
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that happened behind the scenes. The host of the messiest game show on television had OCD
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I mean, what a process it was for him that we learn about to overcome that
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and then once he overcomes that, he's battled cancer. He's had that car wreck
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so he coined that phrase for us, but then he also lived it
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and you'll find that this story is so inspirational that you're surprised amidst having all this fun
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amidst the games, amidst the laughs, there is this sense of catharsis
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There's that sense of connection with a person in this really close stage
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where you get to share in this story with him. It's intimate, it's immersive
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You get to be a part of this story that changed his life, and we hope it changes yours a little bit
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I just want audiences to be entertained, laugh a lot, and sort of scratch their head and go
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wow, I didn't know that, and to be positive. I always feel sorry for people
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who go to their jobs every day and hate it. I always say I've never worked a day in my life
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and you are responsible for your own happiness, and I think that's the message of what we're doing here
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