Church Play preview 2

Praise the Lord Luke coming out with a Dean Razorback is sending me. Dimebag most certainly died for this.

the whole thing is going to be a nightmare to watch. there were several moments where I had to stop looking at my phone because I couldn't behold how bad it was, like that gangnam style nearly shut down my brain. looking forward to it

Finally, my unwanted Mennonite background can come in handy! 🙌🏻 The Low German line, as others have said, is definitely a nod to just how many Mennonites in Canada speak Low German. I grew up in a very Mennonite small town, and my Mennonite grandparents speak it fluently… while I dont think many people around here *only* speak Low German, if you get them in a room with other Mennonite friends, they definitely prefer to use it. That’s why I almost wonder if C3PO’s “it’s like a second language to me” line is meant as a joke too, seeing as hardly any Mennonites speak it as their only language anymore? Also, Batman’s line about the parking meter really hit home too - truly, the self deprecating humour is soooo prevalent in Mennonite communities, and that’s exactly the kind of joke my grandparents would make. Unfortunately, racist, sexist, and homophobic humour and views are pretty prevalent in a lot of Mennonite communities as well, so… y’know, there’s that side of things too. Really wasn’t surprised to see how they approached POC characters in the Tombstone musical, that feels about par for the course for a Mennonite church production 😬

I haven't had time to view all the comments yet, so someone may have already commented this, but re: "live by the sword, die by the sword" as a running theme - it's just another shoehorned biblical reference. comes from a verse in Matthew.

I've never been more proud to be an atheist.

I didn’t see the pastor’s cheek bones on the coffin seller, but who knows what they can do with makeup.

Did they do Tombstone because of the horse dance in Gangnam Style? That seems like it would be way more thought than they put into anyting else

Quick thought: it's not even OK when you're the correct ethnicity.

A miscellaneous Western play made in 2012 would certainly have been inspired by the Emmy-award-winning Deadwood (2004-2006) and its fan-favorite character, Mr. Wu, the opium-dealing Chinese laundryman who barely spoke English.

Twist ending, the audience members are actually all dead and in hell watching performance after performance, unable to leave or sleep and there are no refreshments.

Is the low German joke a Protestant reformation joke? I think Martin Luther spoke it?

Pious white people and being incredibly problematic. You could not literally name a better duo. Also, that whole Asian joke bit was stolen from a Russell Peters' routine.

shout out to those 3 teenage girl backup dancers. you pointed them out in the princess bride play but they reappear in the batman play as strangely dressed homeless people, in the tombstone play wearing brightly coloured dresses and feather headbands (you didn't show many clips of them in that one, but i think it's the same girls??). And in the star wars play they got matching party city stormtrooper costumes

Cringe culture was dead. but praise the lord it has been resurrected! this is a long winded jokey way to say that every clip of the plays makes me full body cringe they're just so earnestly bad 10/10 can't wait to see the full video

It’s telling that in both previews we get the clip of “Walking on sunshine ….. WEYOAIUGHHHHHH!” Immediately reminded of the old (censored) Monty Python bit “And now the sound of John Denver being strangled…”

I also love that you gave the big spider a church hat. Great job, Jenny!

I swear to god, that brunette woman, who's a regular in these plays, looks just like Angie Harmon. Is it just me?

how are they doing these legally?? is it parody law? some kind of church loophole??

I’m Canadian from BC but not Evangelical and I will just say that I don’t understand that low German joke. Maybe it’s a Manitoba thing. They’re weird over there…

I think this will be a lot of people's first Jenny Nicholson video. If you grew up in a youth group how could you not share it with the people you still know from that time in your life?? Hope that Apple Pie Tree is (close to) ready!!

another masterful cut at the end

So I would've been a kid when most of these came out and I can say that growing up in an evangelical church (tho in Australia) a lot of these jokes hit things that were inexplicably central to my childhood white christian church pop culture - everyone knew the princess bride, even kids who'd never seen the movie could quote whole scenes, our youth group went thru a whole old spice phase in like 2011, the slightly-outdated pop songs that would slowly filter down from mainstream culture once the grown ups were sure that they were appropriate for good christian kids, the awkward chaste geekiness, the affinity for Irish/Scottish culture that was wholesome enough unless you probed too deeply with the wrong people and uncovered some slight white supremacist undertones 🙃 there's a lot of north american specific humour in this that I'm not familiar with but overall a wild ride down memory lane

Oh the poor frustrated life of Butch Chastity! For that matter, Westley looks like he's half enjoying himself on the torture machine lol!

Just because you asked: I do not think the pastor looks like the undertaker.

I LOST IT at the Phantom of the Opera in flipping Princess Bride! Theory: someone really wanted to do a Phantom parody that year, so they put the song in as a consolation to appease whoever it was (Buttercup's actress maybe?)

Okay, I was not expecting Shania.

Gosh but they sure had to take a lot of liberties with the plot and cast of Tombstone to make it fit their theme. If only there were some famous movie about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they could have used. But I guess they wouldn't want to compromise their dedication to cutting edge references like Ace Ventura and Weird Al's Fat video and Spaceship Superstar (a song I also only know from a jukebox musical that was much better and far, FAR weirder). Preview number two was even better than preview number one, the full video should be great, thanks for the update!

This church put more effort into their droid than Disney did for the Galactic Starcruiser

as a canadian i have no clue what that joke means. maybe its an evangelical thing?

Shots fired this installment 😂 looking forward to the rest

Playing a dangerous game here by pointing out how unfunny ‘doggo’ and ‘Bengalese Cabbagepatch’ jokes are! I feel like no matter where I am on the Internet there’s always a dedicated cadre of people who never let go of that kind of humour

this might be the weirdest topic i've loved a video essay about

As a child of avid community theatre parents, these fill me with the shame of recognition (but also a little bit of nostalgia).

Wow, kinda calling out Sarah Z there on the Benedict Cumberbatch name jokes.

I am so excited for this video, this had me laughing.

I want to watch all your previews but I also want to wait for the full video so this time and the time before I'll wait. Thank you for the company

These keep getting better and better...except for that Tombstone one 😬

As someone who's been involved in community/amateur theatre for years, I am absolutely obsessed with how the usual (incredibly horny) backstage dynamics and drama work when it's a church putting it on.

Yay! Someone else who hates that "Happy" song! The racism and bad old memes were nearly physically painful.

The way you juxtapose those two clips and pretend you're doing it so people can compare faces is the perfect example of what I love about your videos.

Edit: I wrote this before looking at the other comments, so sorry about the influx of basically the same explanation, Jenny! I figured out the "Altona" and "low German" joke! Altona is a city in Manitoba (the province of Canada) that was settled by Mennonites that speak "Plautdietsch" (Low German) which is very specific a dialect of German spoken by Russian diaspora Mennonites. So it makes sense but it's a REALLY location-specific joke.

I don’t believe that “Chinese guy” to be the pastor. The pastors face is a bit wider, and more triangular.

It’s a small thing but I love the fact that they didn’t even take the effort to run “crazy bandit” through a online translator and instead probably translated the individual words but they can take the effort to learn all these songs, build these sets, make the costumes, etc. It would take a simple google search to see that adjectives don’t come first in Spanish but oh well, what can you expect from a group that has THAT uncomfortable Chinese character

I'm walking on sunshine ... ... ... WOAAAAH!!!!!!

So it looks like Altona is a Mennonite church in Manitoba, and I believe Low German is also a traditional or religious language for the Mennonites? I don’t want to give false information since I’m not super familiar, but I think they made a reference to Mennonites elsewhere in one of the plays too. Maybe someone else knows more. Edit: A quick Google search tells me that Altona is also a town in Germany, so the name of the church might have a common root with the name of the Altoona, Pennsylvania that someone else mentioned above.

Wow, those productions are giving me some serious flashbacks to corny (secular) dinner theater shows I used to go to with my folks back in the day. Religion-wise it's like something straight out of The Righteous Gemstones, except without the slightest hint of irony. Looking forward to seeing the full version!

I hope they did a version of Frozen with Anna getting resurrected like Jesus after Elsa and all of the other characters sing Hallelujah together with the audience and the youth pastor who should obviously play Olaf.

The asian undertaker definitely isn’t the pastor. Their voices sound alike but there are no wrinkles on the masked man’s face.

the racist dollar store thing is a russell peters standup joke that came out far before 2013

So, I'm only 12 minutes in and I want to take a wild stab at explaining the humor. In the Batman play they made a Mennonite joke. Then in the Star Wars one about the Altoona galaxy(?) and the Droid speaks low German. I think there is an Amish or Mennonite community near Altoona, PA and Pennsylvania Dutch is a form of low German. I could be wrong, but that's what jumped out to me. If that is the case, does this church have some beef with the Mennonites?