Game Night with a Ranger Brings Nature to Zoom

Logo from Game Night with a Ranger. Fearless Comedy Productions

Ask any child of the 21st century: a bitter rivalry exists between going outdoors and playing games on your phone. But the last year has forced us all to re-examine many relationships, whether that’s the relationship between sweat pants and work meetings; between ice cream, buffalo wings, and breakfast; or between National Parks and the machines we use to play Among Us.

Consider Game Night with a Ranger, a virtual quiz show from Mississippi Park Connection and Fearless Comedy Productions. Audience members can test their knowledge of the Mississippi River and its flora and fauna alongside celebrity guests, improvisers from Fearless, and real-life Park Rangers, all from the anonymous refuge of their glowing rectangles. The cyborg production combines elements of game shows, nature tours, and improv comedy, with limited direct audience interaction that has become a hallmark of Zoom performances in the last year.

Zoom isn’t the perfect medium for every live event, but it feels like performers are figuring out the ways it works and (perhaps more importantly) doesn’t work for their productions. Case in point: remove any single element from Game Night and it could make for a long hour. The objective of a show like this, much like the live in-person programming that people would enjoy from the parks system in normal times, is to pique interest in nature while raising money for the organizations that preserve and maintain that nature. But we’re not in nature—at least not together—and I’m doubtful I would retain much from an hourlong lecture or documentary on parks while enjoying my buffalo wing ice cream waffles on my couch.

So make it a quiz show! Work in some audience interaction! Audience members can choose how much they want to engage with the show in real time. A couple people are picked from the audience each night to join the guest experts (like Birds of North America host Jason Ward or author John Scalzi) “on stage” and answer questions. Those who choose to lurk can still participate by answering polls that pop up on screen occasionally during the Who Wants to Be a Park Ranger? section of the performance.

Host Derek “Duck” Washington wearing a mouthpiece while rehearsing with Ranger Sharon Stiteler and ASL interpreter Claire Alexander. Fearless Comedy Productions

But once again the problem is scrubs like me who have no idea which birds have or have not nested in the Mississippi River Corridor. I don’t know how many of us you need to fill out a Zoom audience (or what even constitutes a full Zoom audience), but I assume they would like the appeal to extend beyond those who can name a bird’s genus from a distance of 500 yards. And this is where the comedy is key, because if you can’t answer the questions along with the experts, you can at least laugh. So Fearless comedians are trotted out during each section to liven things up a bit, whether that means trying to pronounce toucan through an awkward mouthpiece or raising eyebrows with amorphous drawings meant to represent yellow-rumped warblers.

Like a lot of nature- and parks-related media, it’s folksy, perhaps a bit cheesy in places, but the show is called Game Night with a Ranger—if you can’t get on board with a little folksy, you should probably look elsewhere for your evening’s entertainment. Like most types of genuine enthusiasm, that cheesiness is matched by equal amounts of charm. Most of the people on-screen, from the rangers to the hosts, are bringing a lifetime of enthusiasm for nature to the proceedings and hope to communicate a little of that enthusiasm to the audience. It’s a juggling act, an effort to keep audiences invested through any means necessary while imparting a modicum of nature awareness.

Many of us aren’t getting out to parks as much as we would like, because of the pandemic or just because it’s so damn cold, but as with live performance venues, most of us want our parks to be as full and vibrant as possible when we return. Game Night with a Ranger offers audiences a chance to invest in that future while also advancing their nature vocabulary and giggling at stories of park rangers who were once offered human remains. It’s a novel use of available resources to recreate a few types of entertainment that aren’t available right now in their normal contexts.

Game Night with a Ranger runs Thursday nights through January 28, 2021. Tickets are $10 ($8 for Mississippi Park Connection members). Audience members who purchased tickets for all four performances receive a five-dollar discount and automatically become a member of Mississippi Park Connection for a year. Mississippi Park Connection can be found at their website, on Facebook, and on Instagram. Fearless Comedy Productions can be found at their website, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram.