“Stephen Colbert” might have sailed away to that big Jingle Ball in the sky, but Stephen Colbert Prime isn’t spending his hiatus twiddling his thumbs and enjoying drinks with paper umbrellas. Well, he might be, but he also had time to surprise a Michigan-based improv comedy group with a generous donation on behalf of The Stephen Colbert AmeriCone Dream Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation.
Bart Sumner, the founder of Healing Improv, said he “nearly drove off Ada Drive” when he heard that Colbert’s foundation was giving his group $10,000. That’s not bad for a small organization that operates mostly on volunteer service and offers free improv classes. For some perspective, Healing Improv had raised about $4,000 over the course of 18 months before receiving Colbert’s donation. Sumner says that this new income will help to spread the word about his mission even further and cover travel expenses for his increasing number of out-of-town workshops.
But the fact that Colbert is remembering his improv comedy roots isn’t the only part of this story that proves how big-hearted and giving he is.
Healing Improv is a small, non-profit comedy group that focuses specifically on helping people dealing with grief find humor in their lives again. Sumner, an actor and writer, formed his organization in 2012 after losing his 10-year-old son David in a football accident. He said that teaching improv again helped him heal after surviving such a tragedy and he wanted to use his skills and experience for others seeking a similar outlet for their grief. He explained in 2013:
“It’s about getting people on their feet, connecting them with others who have experienced loss, and giving them permission to laugh and joke and connect on a verbal level,” Sumner said. “We share our stories and laugh again. I have seen improv change people’s lives.”
If there is anyone who knows how to laugh through grief as a means of healing, it’s Stephen Colbert. As a ten-year-old, he lost his father and two older brothers in a plane crash. Colbert says that one way he dealt with the ensuing grief was making his mother laugh while she raised her nine surviving children not to let grief make them bitter. By the time he got to college, Colbert says he was in “bad shape,” but found an outlet in performing. About a year and a half ago, his mother passed away and he broke character to pay tribute to the woman who encouraged him to switch his major from philosophy to theater saying, “I don’t know why, but I’m not worried about you.”
In other words, Stephen Colbert knows exactly how to use performance to quell suffocating grief because he’s been doing just that for decades. And by boosting one little group of people who just want to help others in the same boat, Colbert just proved once again that he’s a real hero.
Source: MLive
