{"id":1357,"date":"2010-09-04T08:30:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T16:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heathervale.com\/blog\/?p=1357"},"modified":"2023-04-17T16:12:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T00:12:17","slug":"famous-people-players-were-fighting-gravity-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heathervale.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/04\/famous-people-players-were-fighting-gravity-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous People Players Were Fighting Gravity First"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https:\/\/heathervale.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/04\/famous-people-players-were-fighting-gravity-first\/&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=1&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;font=\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:25px\"><\/iframe><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fheathervale.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F09%2F04%2Ffamous-people-players-were-fighting-gravity-first%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><p>As <em><a href=\"http:\/\/nbc.com\/agt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">America&#8217;s Got Talent<\/a><\/em> moves into the finals, there&#8217;s a group of young, funky, awe-inspiring performers called <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbc.com\/americas-got-talent\/video\/week-14-fighting-gravity\/1246800\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fighting Gravity<\/a><\/strong> that could go all the way.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re Barry&#8217;s favorite act, and one of my faves too. They&#8217;re former college students &#8212; 13 brothers from the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Virginia Tech &#8212; and they&#8217;ve mastered the art of blacklight theater.<\/p>\n<p>They do a great job, and they could certainly pull off an entire Vegas show that has the potential to run for years.<\/p>\n<p>As Barry says, &#8220;Move over, Blue Man Group!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m still surprised every time I hear AGT judge <strong>Howie Mandel<\/strong> say how unique they are. As a fellow Toronto native, I expect that Howie would have heard of the Toronto-based <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/fpp.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Famous People Players<\/a><\/strong>, who have been &#8220;fighting gravity&#8221; using blacklight for almost 40 years.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They&#8217;re a world-renowned act of learning-disabled adults who run a blacklight dinner theater, and have caught the attention of celebrities like <strong>Tom Cruise<\/strong>, <strong>Paul Newman<\/strong>, <strong>William Shatner<\/strong>, <strong>Alex Trebek<\/strong>, and the <strong>Rolling Stones<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wrote about founder <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lwlworldwide.com\/blog\/hidden-heroes-hero-4-diane-dupuy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Diane Dupuy<\/a><\/strong> as one of our LWL Hidden Heroes just over a year ago, and I&#8217;ve interviewed her several times before that.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a clip of the <strong>Famous People Players<\/strong> at work:<\/p>\n<span class=\"vvqbox vvqyoutube\" style=\"width:425px;height:335px;\"><span id=\"vvq-1357-youtube-1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7FWrxqM_OH8\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/7FWrxqM_OH8\/0.jpg\" alt=\"YouTube Preview Image\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span>\n<p>Granted, the <strong>Famous People Players<\/strong> mostly use puppets, whereas <strong>Fighting Gravity<\/strong> turns several of their troupe members into the live puppets. That&#8217;s really cool.<\/p>\n<p>But I just couldn&#8217;t help bringing some of the originators of the art into the spotlight, as the act that they may have inspired to some degree goes on to an undoubtedly fantastic career.<\/p>\n<p>The message <strong>Diane Dupuy<\/strong> wants to give the world is that we should always strive for new heights of excellence, and achieve even the most impossible of our dreams.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Fighting Gravity<\/strong> has a similar motive; the group wants to &#8220;inspire others by showing that through hard  work, determination, and some good lighting, anybody can accomplish  their dreams.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So go, guys, and get that dream!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Heather Vale Goss\" src=\"http:\/\/heathervale.com\/images\/sigHVG_2.1_blue.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"35\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As America&#8217;s Got Talent moves into the finals, there&#8217;s a group of young, funky, awe-inspiring performers called Fighting Gravity that could go all the way. They&#8217;re Barry&#8217;s favorite act, and one of my faves too. They&#8217;re former college students &#8212; 13 brothers from the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Virginia Tech &#8212; and they&#8217;ve mastered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[665,1002,375,376,667,576,663,666,662,664],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-entertainment","tag-alex-trebek","tag-americas-got-talent","tag-diane-dupuy","tag-famous-people-players","tag-fighting-gravity","tag-howie-mandel","tag-paul-newman","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-tom-cruise","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Famous People Players Were Fighting Gravity First - Heather Vale Unwrapped<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/heathervale.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/04\/famous-people-players-were-fighting-gravity-first\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Famous People Players Were Fighting Gravity First - Heather Vale Unwrapped\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As America&#8217;s Got Talent moves into the finals, there&#8217;s a group of young, funky, awe-inspiring performers called Fighting Gravity that could go all the way. 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