The lousy job and idiot co-workers drive you crazy, the floorboards have rusted through on your Pacer, and your lawn is dying.
Smile.
No matter how bad things may seem, says Ann-Elizabeth Shapera, there’s humor there. Humor enough to make you laugh, make you a funny person and improve your life. You just have to nurture it.
“It’s much easier to be funny than not to be funny,” said Shapera, who has made a career out of making people laugh. “And it’s much easier to have a sense of humor than not to have a sense of humor. Actually, you have to work at not having a sense of humor. . . . It’s much easier to watch life happening around you and notice the hilarious things that are going on.”
Shapera knows funny. The 34-year-old Milwaukee resident is, after all, in her 13th year as the jester to Queen Elizabeth. That’s Elizabeth I, who reigns at the Bristol Renaissance Faire every weekend, not the current Elizabeth II, who is in dire need of a jester, judging from that look on her face.
Shapera also is the municipal jester for the City of Milwaukee–worth a chuckle right there–and she teaches street-performing techniques to other fair employees and also runs seminars on humor for businesses and individuals.
Researchers long have held that humor and laughter benefit health. Most recently, a study from Texas A&M University earlier this summer reported that humor may significantly increase a person’s level of hope and happiness.
Shapera has her own ways to increase your level of happiness. She said that with a little effort, you’ll realize that you have plenty to laugh about. All it takes is a fresh look at the situation.
“I have had in my seminars people from age 7 to 90,” she said, “and I firmly believe that anyone can develop a new sense of perspective. And there’re all kinds of ways to do it. There’re ways to just have mantras for yourself, there’re ways to get out and meet new people, to find new situations that can make you reflect on your own situation and go, `You know, I don’t have it so bad, and by helping this other person I can help my life get better.'”
Shapera’s history suggests as much. Her parents–her father is jazz bassist Dan Shapera–moved the family from Chicago to Geneva when she and her brother, Joseph, were kids.
“We were sort of like a little urban enclave in Geneva,” she said. “My parents never really got along with everybody else in town. Everybody else in town was into shopping and status cars and three-inch lawns. And our family was really into going downtown to Chicago every night, either going with my dad to a gig or to a cabaret show.”
Her mother was an alcoholic, she said, and she and Joseph often suffered as a result. But one thing they had was comedy.
“I was raised with Allan Sherman and Stan Freberg and the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy and all the classic comedians. Jack Benny, old-time radio . . . raised with that kind of comedy that grew out of the vaudevillian sensibility. My brother and I became huge entertainers of each other. . . . And in the kind of awkward situation we grew up in, humor is what got us through.”
It started in childhood
Tom Charney, who has been Shapera’s significant other for about six years, agrees that her childhood helped shape the person she is today.
“I think the best way to put is, she’s been there and back,” said Charney, manager of marketing for a Milwaukee aerospace company who also works at the Renaissance Faire. “She’s had a lot of negative energy in her life, and she’s taken the steps to heal herself. And she knows how far down people can go. She can kind of empathize and sympathize with people when they’ve gone to that point. . . . So she knows what people need to make them happy.”
After high school, Shapera enrolled at Northern Illinois University as a theater major. A growing interest in street performing led her to the Bristol Renaissance Faire.
“I started out as a wash-well wench, which is a lot of fun to play because you’re in a well and you’re wet and you’re throwing things at people,” she said. “It’s quite the gig.”
But she soon found her calling in Jane the Phoole, a historically accurate character who was indeed one of Elizabeth’s court jesters. Back at NIU, Shapera switched to a history major, began taking art history courses and became fluent in Italian and French, all to flesh out the Jane character.
Back to old England
So now, every weekend into September, she transports visitors to Elizabethan England. Much of her shtick is banter with visitors or other performers. She said she has only five jokes, which can range from the silly for kids (“Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide”) to something slightly more risque for adults (there’s a story about two women in a carriage who get robbed . . . you’ll have to drive to Bristol to get it from her).
“It’s the best,” she said of the Jane role. “I can say anything to anyone, and the only one who can hit me is the queen. And she’s another actress from Milwaukee, and I know where she lives. So she’s not going to hit me. . . . It’s totally liberating.”
Then there’s the Milwaukee jester job. Last fall, the Common Council declared her the city’s first municipal jester.
A few months before, Britain had held a competition for its national fool.
“Ann-Elizabeth, who a number of us had known for a number of years as a terrific performer, had really wanted to go and compete. It turned out she couldn’t [go], and frankly a lot of us felt bad about it,” said Jim Owczarski, records manager for the Milwaukee Common Council.
So he and Charney contacted Ald. Michael Murphy, long involved in the arts in Milwaukee. Murphy was willing to sponsor the resolution, and Ald. Tony Zielinski became a co-sponsor because Shapera is one of his constituents.
“It did get some strange looks [when it came up for a vote],” Owczarski said, “especially from some of the other aldermen. What are we doing? But once it came out it was approved unanimously.”
There’s no salary tied to the title, which is for life. Or until the Common Council changes its mind. So far she has made a few appearances at Milwaukee events, she said. And Owczarski suggested that she possibly could use it as a steppingstone.
Good for the resume
“I told her I’d provide a certified copy [of the resolution] if she wants to go to England to compete, saying the title is real, it’s not something just made up.”
Then again, were she to win the British competition, Milwaukee would have to make some sort of move to retain her.
“A more elaborate costume, maybe,” Owczarski said.
A jester does not live by yucks alone, of course. And Shapera doesn’t spend her whole life in motley. There’s a day job as a legal secretary for a Milwaukee recycling company.
“The great fortune for me is that for the first time I found a company that’s just full of people who are at least as enthusiastic as I am, if not as comic as I am,” she said. “So they’re not aware of how funny they are, but they’ve very, very funny people.”
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Releasing your inner goofball
Not realizing that they’re funny can limit people, said Ann-Elizabeth Shapera, who always looks on the bright side as Milwaukee’s official jester. Here are her tips for developing a sense of humor.
– Talk into a tape recorder non-stop for 10 minutes, saying good things about yourself. “You have to accept compliments, and no one ever wants to do that,” she said.
– Develop a mantra or catchphrase. “One of my phrases that drives my co-workers nuts is, ‘I’m off like a brown dress.’ “
– Determine your (preferably wacky) idiosyncrasies and play them up.
– Study other people and watch for funny things.
– Find laughter by getting out and about. “You will see the funniest things, and you won’t have to pay a dime for the show. Just spend a day on the ‘L,’ man, you’ll see endless comedy.”
— W.H.
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bhageman@tribune.com
