Halves of the Staff back from the high seas

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 28th, 2008


The Male Half of the Staff encounters Whoopi Goldberg on deck four of the Serenade of the Seas.

Whoopi Goldberg is the godmother of the Serenade of the Seas. It’s an old tradition– designating someone as the godmother and godfather of a ship at its launch. Royal Caribbean often chooses celebs. The passengers dig it and the press eats it up.

We flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, last Friday, then boarded the behemoth on Saturday morning. Over the next week, we hit St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados before heading back to P.R. Our week aboard the 90,000-ton hotel was absolutely fascinating. The Radiance-class ship holds 2,501 passengers, according to the RCCL site and this particular week it was decked out in holiday decorations.


Our humble abode while sailing– it’s the hole in the middle! We we on the port side, on deck two.

For The Male Half, it was a working holiday– doing a Welcome Aboard Show first night at sea, and then appearing on both shows on Christmas night five days later. The rest of the time was spent eating, drinking, hiking, drinking, eating and basking in the warm Caribbean sun. It was only the second time TMHOTS has done a cruise, the first being exactly a year ago on the Adventure of the Seas.

Performing on a cruise ship presents unique challenges– keeping it clean being only one of them. All three of the week’s shows required scrupulously inoffensive material. (A 20- to 25-minute show on the first evening and a 10-minute set repeated twice on Christmas.) All three audiences had children among them, but not so many as to be their dominant feature.

Doing a cruise or two this past 365 days has given us a renewed respect for those who ply the comedy trade on the high seas. (We have always known that performing on an oceanliner was tricky. We regarded those who mastered it was a mixture of awe and mystery. And we recall all too clearly the disdain that many of our colleagues had for “boat acts.” There are many fine comedians who derive a good portion of their income from this sector. Many of them keep it quiet, perhaps for fear of peer pressure– or should that be pier pressure? Too bad. It’s an interesting and often lucrative way to do standup for a variety of audiences in what are often state-of-the-art venues. Those venues just happen to be on a ship and they just happen to cater to crowds that often contain seniors, children, non-English-speaking people and folks who might have never gone to see a comedian, had the opportunity not been offered to them just steps away from their cabins.)

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