Last year, dancer and choreographer Jakob Karr premiered his show, a coming out story told through music and dance called “Ain’t Done Bad,” at the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival and wowed critics and audiences alike.
“I had no idea what to expect and was really caught off guard and blown away,” Karr says. “I just wanted to make a clear, concise story through the art of dance. I had hoped people would like it, but I didn’t know anyone was going to love it and I didn’t know we were going to get such positive reviews. I was going in blind and left thrilled.”
Karr, who is originally from Orlando, has been dancing since he was 12 years old but most of America got their first look at Karr’s talent when he appeared on the sixth season of the popular dance competition show “So You Think You Can Dance,” finishing the season in second place.
“The show came out when I was 14 and it became my immediate goal,” Karr recalls. “As soon as I was able to audition, I did. I auditioned on my 19th birthday; I flew to New Orleans for it. That was the first time that I actually felt like I was going to make it as a dancer. … I had a wonderful time on the show and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I have nothing terrible to say about the show at all. It changed my life.”
Karr has danced around the world, travelling to Europe, Australia, Japan and India, and has showcased his talents with Cirque De Soleil, on the Broadway stage and at the Academy Awards. But “Ain’t Done Bad” was the first time the Orlando native has appeared at Fringe.
“I am ashamed to say, that as a kid growing up in Orlando, I had never heard of Orlando Fringe; I never went, I never knew anything about it,” Karr admits. “I didn’t know anything about it until I moved to New York and became a part of the theater community. It is something that is talked about a lot up here because it is a huge festival and it is so important to American theater, and a family friend texted me and said ‘None of you are working because COVID killed the theater industry, so maybe you should look into this,’ and she sent me the application link. I checked it out and question number one was ‘What is the name of your show?’ and I was like, what show?”
Karr sat down and, within an hour, wrote “Ain’t Done Bad.”
“I had never done anything like that in my life,” he says. “I have never had a burst of creativity like that before, so I kind of took it to heart that if it poured out of me this quickly then I should try and do something with it.”
“Ain’t Done Bad” takes inspiration from the country song “Fancy” and — set to the music of openly gay country singer Orville Peck — tells the story of a gay man coming out, leaving his family and home in a small town and heading out to see what the big city has to offer him. There he experiences gay culture, meets friends, has sex, goes on dates and falls in love.
“I feel like hearing the song ‘Fancy’ was one of my first ‘Oh God, I’m gay’ moments,” Karr says. “When I first heard the song I was like four or something and it kind of stuck with me my whole life. Within the course of a three-and-a-half-minute song you get this entire epic saga of a tale.”
“Fancy,” written and recorded in 1969 by Bobbie Gentry and covered in 1991 by Reba McEntire, tells the story of a girl whose mother gets her into prostitution to overcome poverty. Karr had been listening to Peck’s music, including his version of “Fancy,” over the year before sitting down to write “Ain’t Done Bad.”
“I was listening to it and thinking what if this was seen through the lens of a young man in the south who is just trying to make it and find love rather than a young woman who her mother is making her a prostitute,” Karr says. “I didn’t want to take it super direct. It was very inspired by the air of what that song meant to me, as well as Orville’s music.”
Karr talked with friends about what it was like for them coming out and spoke with his mother about what she felt when she realized her son is gay and folded that into some of his own experiences to create the story behind “Ain’t Done Bad.”
“It is certainly not autobiographical; it’s not a retelling of what I went through,” Karr says. “But it is bits and pieces of my memories and some of the memories of the first people I dated who got kicked out of their homes as kids. It’s about the best friends who were there no matter what and who knew their job was to pull us out of our dark hole. I wanted to pull things that I relate to.”
After making a huge splash at Orlando Fringe, Karr is bringing “Ain’t Done Bad” back to Central Florida with a run at the Renaissance Theater in Orlando April 21-May 1.
“It will be the same show we performed at Fringe from start to finish,” Karr says. “We discussed extending it and making it a little bit longer, but I feel like it is complete and adding anything to it you would have to water something down to build something else up and I really didn’t want to do that.”
One thing that will be different this go around, it won’t be the completely same cast.
“The original show’s cast were all very close friends of mine so I’m sad they all won’t be back with me this time around, because people have moved on to other things, but I’m excited because we will have some fresh energy,” Karr says. “Plus they’re all friends of mine too. A show that is this intimate, I want it to be people that I know and trust and have spent time with, that know me and know my fiancé and know my dog.”
“Ain’t Done Bad” plays at the Renaissance Theater in Orlando April 21-May 1. Tickets are $30 and are available at RenTheatre.com/Aint-Done-Bad.
