Rascal Roll Call- Joel Knopf
"The answer always is, THE AUDIENCE."
Rascal: Joel Knopf
First Rascal Tour
Role: Actor & Musician
Lives: Amherst, Massachusetts
Special Talent: Way-finding with a compass and telling the time via shadows cast on sticks.
Go-To Biking Snack: Granola bar, apple
Favorite Song to Sing while cycling: "The Road Less Travelled"
Cyclist Rating: 3/5 (now, but wait until the end of the tour)
Why did you choose to join Agile Rascal for their Florida tour?
I want to write and arrange music for shows. This tour seems to represent a full-throated embrace of community. Traveling, living together, performing together... I dig the intensity.
What makes you excited about performing and biking in Florida?
The Everglades are a fascinating ecosystem, one that's been both wrecked and restored (or is in process of restoration). I'm excited to go to a new place, one I'm not from, and see how I connect or don't connect with people.
What is intriguing about Florida to you?
There are so many strip malls! I don't get it. The weather seems so nice that I once disbelieved people actually went to school there. There's a weird mystique about it...there's felonious Florida podcast, for instance, about all the crimes that have happened down there.
Please tell us a funny performance story.
There was a time I was about to go on stage and had to give a character a box of tissues. But the tissues were nowhere to be found. I don't know what I'd done with them. So just as I was about to go on, and tell the character there were no tissues, the stage manager tossed them to me and I literally caught them as I was going on stage.
And what's a funny story from the road?
As a bicycling newb, I pumped up my tire so much it exploded. I didn't know how to do anything.... (don't worry, Agile Rascal will change all that).
Why do you choose to perform live? Whether it be theatre, music etc...
The answer always is, THE AUDIENCE. I get to be there with them, connecting and responding to them, in a way that I can't always in daily life and definitely not from a recording.
Tell us about your favorite outdoor theatre experience.
Going to see outdoor summer stock when I was a kid and getting helium balloons that never floated down and then occasionally inhaling the helium so I got a really high voice.
How have you benefitted from seeing live theatre?
It's made me feel really, really good. It's made me feel stuff. It's given me something
to talk about with family on the way home. It's made me laugh. It's given me chills. It's been an experience that I always remember. Seeing live musical theater was the first time I saw a pit orchestra. I not only saw instruments like banjos, flutes, and cellos up close, but also real, live working musicians.
What is a personal goal you have for this theatre project?
To write and arrange awesome music for it. To form really great relationships with everyone in the group and productively work through conflict when it exists.
