Star Wars trilogy one-man show comes to Kodiak

Charlie Ross in character. (Photo courtesy of Charlie Ross / One Man Star Wars)

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

An actor is coming to Kodiak to perform a one-man show of the original Star Wars trilogy.

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For roughly 17 years, Charlie Ross has stood on stage without costumes or props and condensed A New Hope, the Empire Strikes Back, and the Return of the Jedi into less than 90 minutes.

“This is sort of the analog version of film or the acoustic version of Star Wars in that it’s just me.”

That means a lot of accents, mimicry, and sound effects.

“So, I could do something like R2-D2 or Chewbecca or Darth Vader. A gun sort of shooting.”

Ross says he wrote the original script when he was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and first tried it out as a full show in Vancouver. Since then, he’s performed in five continents and 500 cities.

As far as why a one-man rendition of an entire movie series has been so popular for such a long time, Ross can only throw out a guess.

“I don’t actually know how that works myself. People are either gonna pay attention or they aren’t. That’s the one thing about either having stage presence or talent. I don’t think I have any particular extreme talent, but maybe I have presence or just the ability to make myself look stupid and I don’t really care, so that’s something that’s interesting to watch.”

It could also be that Star Wars is just that popular as a pop culture phenomenon.

For Ross, as for many people, Star Wars is a childhood staple.

Much like Luke Skywalker, Ross grew up on a farm – although in Northern Canada instead of a remote planet – and says he longed for adventure.

“We didn’t get any TV reception. We didn’t get any radio reception. We just had a couple films on VHS, and one of them was the first Star Wars film, so I watched a whole bunch of it.”

Ross says Alaska will be the 47th state he’s visited with his one man show.

He’ll be in town Nov 29 for a 7 p.m. performance at the Gerald C. Wilson Auditorium. He says after Kodiak, he’ll head to Anchorage and then Talkeetna.

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