Red Green's 'Wit and Wisdom Tour' Comes to Providence

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND (May 2010) - The president of Possum Lodge is traveling in 2010!

Red Green will bring his one-man show – The Wit and Wisdom Tour – to Providence, Rhode Island, this summer.

The Wit and Wisdom Tour covers Red's adventures in everyday life, the great outdoors, and – most certainly – the latest and greatest use for the handyman's secret weapon: duct tape.

The live performance is at 8 PM on Saturday, July 24, at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence.  

This show is Red Green's only New England performance, so if you're a local fan, get your tickets early!

Red Green has more surprises planned for east coast fans, too. More details will be "unrolled" as summer approaches.

Tickets to The Wit and Wisdom Tour in Providence are available through WSBE Rhode Island PBS by calling (401) 222-3636 or online at ripbs.org, or by calling 401-421-ARTS.



About The Red Green Show
Red Green (Steve Smith), is a Canadian handyman who generally tries to find shortcuts to most of his projects, trusting the vast majority of his work to duct tape (which he calls "the handyman's secret weapon" and the "universal adapter"). He is the president of the Possum Lodge, a fictional men's club in the small northwestern Ontario town of Possum Lake, near the also-fictional town of Port Asbestos. He and his fellow lodge members have their own cable TV show, in which they give lessons and demonstrations in repair work and outdoor activities (such as fishing and camping), and advice for men on relating to women.

The cable TV show (the show withing the show, actually) is taped in part on a hand-held camera by Red's nephew, Harold. The show's structure evolved over time and included several regular segments that appeared in almost every show. These segments were interspersed with each episode's three main plot segments, and they included such staples as the "Possum Lodge Word Game," "Handyman Corner," and "Adventures with Bill" (a slapstick home movie-style sketch with a voice-over by Red).

The series, which began in 1990 and ended in April 2006 with its 300th episode in its 16th season, currently runs on PBS stations across the United States, including WSBE Rhode Island PBS.


About Steve Smith
Steve Smith, who plays the title character Red Green, was born in Toronto, Canada and raised in the suburbs to the west. Steve had a variety of occupations while attending high school and college; he worked as a steam fitter, a car jockey, a postman, a lab technician, and an elementary school teacher.

Although the entertainment business had always been a weekend hobby, Steve went full time in 1981 when he began touring Canada and the U.S. in a rock band called Jason. In 1974, he and his wife left the band to form the comedy duo of "Smith & Smith," opening for such entertainers as Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, Al Martino, Helen Reddy, Martin Mull, and more. In 1978, "Smith & Smith" began a successful run on Canadian television with their own series which ran for nine years. It was during this period that Steve's most popular alter ego "Red Green" was created. Steve wrote and produced all 195 episodes. "Smith & Smith" won several awards including the Iris Award at NATPE '85 in San Francisco.

Expanding from "Smith & Smith," Steve wrote and produced 26 episodes of "Me & Max,” followed by 60 episodes of "The Comedy Mill," winning a Gemini Award for the latter. In his spare time he was head writer of a 13-episode series called "Laughing Matters" for the Global Television Network and wrote a pilot called "Out of Our Minds" starring David Steinberg for Tribune Entertainment. As a slight departure, Steve wrote for 3 episodes of "Top Cops" for CBS International.

In "The Red Green Show," Steve stars in, produces, and co-writes the show with ex-Frantic Rick Green. Steve is currently on a busy schedule of promotional appearances and production duties, as well as answering letters from "The Red Green Fan Club."

Crossing the Line Tonight

With Barack Obama in the Presidential race, mixed-race issues, diversity, and the politics of language have come into focus. They are essential things to consider with respect to freedom of speech.

Teja Arboleda's documentary, Crossing The Line: Multiracial Comedians is a timely one-hour documentary on race and humor, and who gets to say what. It airs tonight at 9PM - and it's the film's television premiere! It will be available to other PBS stations nationwide in November.

In Teja's words:

"The day I arrived in LA in November of 2006 to begin shooting this documentary, television’s Seinfeld star Michael Richards lost his cool to hecklers and retaliated with the ‘N’ word. Subsequently, Rosie O’Donnell, Don Imus, Senator McCain and others continue to cross the line without real consequence.

In today’s world of race-relations, immigration and entertainment, the ultimate question is: where is the line, and who can cross it?

Exploring these questions exposes the very nature of where pain and laughter come from in a racially divided world. Caught in the cross– fire are millions of bi-racial and multiracial Americans, and competing against the mainstream on all counts, humorists and comedians provide meaningful insight into what really divides us.

Crossing lines of racial, ethnic, and cultural acceptability by their very existence, multiracial comedians reveal that meanings of race vary across ethnic combination, gender, place, and time."

The film features the experiences, perspectives, and performances of American comedians of more than one racial ancestry–Sunda Croonquist (Swedish/African), Kate Rigg (Indonesian/ Australian/ Canadian/ Nuyorasian), James Connolly (Mexican/ Irish), Mark Yaffee (Navajo/ Mexican/ Scots-Irish), among others, and is based on Dr. Darby Li Po Price’s dissertation “Mixed Laughter: Mediating Multiracial Identities in American Ethnic Comedy.”


About Arboleda: Filipino-Chinese, African-American, Native-American, German-Danish, Teja has created programs for PBS, ABC, Discovery and Inc. 500 corporations.

He was AD/Editor for FRONTLINE, Say Brother (received an EMMY Award), and La Plaza at WGBH-TV (PBS), and produced for Chronicle on ABC (New England). He created, directed and starred in Ethnic Man!, and the six part educational series Diversity Elementary, both of which aired on PBS.

He has performed over 500 comedy shows on race and ethnic issues throughout 48 states, and is the author of In The Shadow of Race. Arboleda is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Communications at The New England Institute of Art.