Fea­tured Image Graph­ic design­er: Jared Pallesen 

Fea­tured Image Pho­to­graph­er: Leoluchino Lin­u­mus 

 

The per­form­ance style for The Best is Yet to Come has a little bit of everything auto­bi­o­graphy, ted talk, magic show and queer inspir­a­tion­al guid­ance.

Adorned in won­der­fully spark­ling nails and gems across his fore­head, Jeremy Rol­ston opened the show with some guid­ance on par­ti­cip­a­tion and encour­aged us, the audi­ence, to be as respons­ive as we wanted. As a reg­u­lar audi­ence mem­ber, I fre­quently notice the audi­ence hold back as if to main­tain some kind of unspoken etiquette. I appre­ci­ated Jeremy’s invit­a­tion to emo­tion­ally engage as this increases enjoy­ment for the per­former and the audi­ence.

Jeremy shares his story of nav­ig­at­ing his emer­gence as an openly gay man to him­self, his fam­ily and soci­ety while inter­spers­ing his story with incred­ible magic per­form­ances.

A men­tal­ist by descrip­tion. Much of Jeremy’s skills in magic are based on well-honed intu­it­ive abil­it­ies, although some clas­sic illu­sion-based tricks are also in the mix.

I love magic shows, and Jemery’s seam­less per­form­ance demon­strates someone who has spent years per­fect­ing his craft right down to the nail-bit­ing finale.

Through­out the show, he talks of his pas­sion for the LGBTI com­munity, its his­tory, pro­gress and the recent events that threaten that pro­gress. I par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ated the inform­a­tion handout provided to all audi­ence mem­bers on queer organ­isa­tions in Aotearoa that are doing pos­it­ive work.

I felt that the point of dif­fer­ence in The Best is Yet to Come is Jeremy’s story of dis­cov­ery as a per­son deeply embed­ded in a non-LGBTI sup­port­ive Chris­ti­an com­munity and the emo­tion­al con­flict that this can present. I believe that this per­spect­ive is less com­mon in today’s nar­rat­ives and one many people could identi­fy with. It would be inter­est­ing to hear more of Jeremy’s per­son­al exper­i­ence in his storytelling.

A heart­felt per­form­ance with magic­al sur­prises.