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Charles Ross brings pop culture to Frederick with three one-man parodies

BY CRYSTAL SCHELLE

Special to The News-Post

Charles Ross is sort of a one-man TV and movie pop-culture version of CliffNotes.

He has a knack for taking movies and TV shows, such as “Avengers,” “Stranger Things” and “Lord of the Rings,” and condensing them into a hilarious one-hour show, complete with signature quotes and props.

He’ll perform three distinct shows this weekend, one on each of the aforementioned titles, at New Spire Arts in downtown Frederick.

Ross started staging one-man shows out of necessity. He needed a job.

“When you come out of university, that place where you don’t have to worry about making a living, that’s exactly what you’re met with when you get out into the real world,” the 48-yearold said during a phone interview from his home in Victoria, British Columbia.

“I was stuck in Canada trying to find anything to do for work and going across the country from one place to another.”

He had some friends who were trying their hand at one-man shows. They were inexpensive to stage and produce and only required one person to cast: themselves. He thought about writing one about his life but figured at 23 he didn’t have enough life experience that could sustain a show. Instead, he looked to what other people his age might be interested in and landed on “Star Wars.” It was 2001, and because the prequels were coming out at that time, he wanted to ride the publicity that was already built in.

His stripped-down version paid homage to the earlier films.

“I think it kind of harks back to the analog way that the original ‘Star Wars’ films worked. They weren’t all dependent on special effects to overshoot the acting — or lack thereof. It was just sort of kind of concentrating on that,” he said.

It became such as success that Ross decided to use the template to write and produce additional one-man shows. In 2004, he staged “Lord of the Rings,” which did even better than “Star Wars.”

In 2018, he wrote “Pride and Prejudice” because of his lack of gender di(See ROSS 8) Charles Ross portrays his pop culture personas.

Courtesy photos