Jungle Gold - A Review
by Sheila Sabrey-Saperstein
The Peninsula Pulse / April 8, 2005
One of these days someone will write a book about the fascinating Roger Kuhns or maybe he’ll finally get around
to doing one himself. In the meantime, there is a chapter called “Jungle Gold” that Roger performs as a one-man
show ala Spaulding Gray. It is a densely packed piece of images and experiences chronicling Roger’s time in
French Guyana and his performance can certainly be compared to that of Mr. Gray’s.
Gray, who recently died, had been heralded as the greatest American storyteller of his generation. He was a
performer who turned his life into a series of brilliantly insightful monologues. A.F. Waddell, a Gray friend and
future biographer described Gray’s essence: “Add a dash of the metaphysical, a splash of the karmic; drench it in
psychology and sharp social insight/satire; pour in organic, personal, stream of consciousness storytelling and it
results in an intimate sharing of his life experiences with us.” There are videos of Gray’s presentations available
and you can see that Roger’s performance is a favorable comparison.
Roger regularly performs “Jungle Gold” around the county and takes it on the road whenever he can. I saw it not
long ago as part of the Emerson Cultural Series sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Sister Bay.
Roger has extensive experience in technical theatre so his show travels with a 3-fold screen Gauguin inspired
background, lights and sound, which certainly added to the ambiance and helped create the atmospheres for the
highly descriptive stories he told.
This sure sounded like a great adventure but very remote from any of my experience and before I saw it (see
above description); I wondered what was going to make it entertaining. The answer was in Roger’s own
performance style that he has worked on and developed particularly over the last several years. I had seen other
kinds of performances of his at The Bridge and The Third Avenue Playhouse, but he really knocked my socks off
at this Emerson Cultural Series performance of “Jungle Gold”.
One and a half hours of performance is a lot to memorize, especially when it’s only you on stage. For the life of
me I couldn’t catch him looking at his script, which was present but not obviously so, to grab the next line. This
made me think that some of the performance was improvised, but Roger told me in the interest of time, he sticks
closely to the script.
The key for the monologist is to keep the audience interested and wanting to hear more. With few exceptions,
Roger’s animation and energy along with really interesting transitions kept the ball in the air and focused the
attention of the audience. Roger is a pretty laid back kind of guy, and I was delighted that he upped the energy of
his delivery to make me want to listen. He uses a microphone so he is able to speak naturally and still be heard and
understood. Roger’s facial gestures and comic timing really aided in completing a sense of the characters that we
meet and travel with throughout the experience. It was particularly fun when he would rapidly switch from one to
the other. Roger injected a blood curdling Tarzan “call” at one point that certainly got everyone’s attention. And
then there’s the story of being bitten by a snake while sitting on a toilet! Now that should get you to go see Roger
do “Jungle Gold”.
Roger is a true Renaissance man and “Jungle Gold” is just the tip of the iceberg, but a very entertaining tip.