By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent,Updated May 5, 2022
A lot of people are happy to collect their diploma, leave their high school, and never look back. Not Boston comic Orlando Baxter. His new special, “Live from South High,” was recorded in March at Worcester’s South High Community School, where he spent three years as a student andtwo more as a teacher. He’ll release it on his YouTube channel Friday.
Following up his 2020 Dry Bar Comedy special “Glorified Baby Sitter,” Baxter was looking for somewhere to record his next special, and he saw an opportunity to help lift the spirits of teachers coming back to the classroom after a particularly rough year. “Stress was at a pretty all-time high, morale was kind of low, and to put on a comedy show at the school was something the staff needed,” said Baxter. “So it all made sense.”
Originally, Baxter had intended 30 minutes of jokes about teaching. But the day of the show, surrounded by old friends and thinking about his connections to the school where he had enrolled as a 15-year-old sophomore, he began to change his set.
“When I looked at the situation,” he says, “and the opportunity to kind of reveal myself, you know, and let people have some insight into why I have this love for this school, I felt compelled to tell my background, because I think people would appreciate it more.”
Read the full article here: Comedian Orlando Baxter goes back to school — the one that turned his life around