'Jazz Hand' -- not keeping humor at arm's length

Most people get only two arms. Mary Theresa Archbold has gone through about 30.

The theater and improvisation performer was born without the lower half of her left arm and has dealt with almost as many prosthetics as she has absurd situations because of her prosthetics.

The challenges and quirks of life without an one hand are captured in the semiautobiographical sketch comedy revue, "Jazz Hands: Tales of a One-Armed Woman," which comes to the Manitou Art Theater this week. The show is written and performed with her two-armed husband, Pat Shay, who grew up in Colorado Springs.

"It's kind of funny," Archbold said of growing up with 1 1/2 arms. "Finding humor in a situation that many people presume to be a tragic part for my life has given me great food for fodder."

She had to have a sense of humor as the youngest of seven children - and the only girl. As a kid, her brothers took great joy in hanging her stuffed animals from the hook she had as an arm and, of course, using it as a mock weapon.

When she upgraded from a hook to a hand, one of her brothers broke off two of her fingers. They tried everything they could think of to reattach them so their parents wouldn't find out. In a sketch based on the event, ribbon and gum won't mend it. They stick a glove over it instead.

During an audition for the musical "Anything Goes" years later, Archbold's arm flew off in the middle of a tap dance. She continued dancing and managed to reattach the arm before the end of the performance. She didn't get the part, but she does get to perform the dance onstage for "Jazz Hands" (complete with flying arm).

And while the show focuses primarily on the humorous (Did you know prosthetics can make fart noises?), it also deals with the more serious side of being armless. In one scene, Shay discusses the financial aspect of his wife's prosthetic arms, which can cost as much as $15,000 to look realistic. In another, the couple contemplates having a child and whether the baby would come out with all its appendages.

"So many times the automatic reaction is pity, but it's not really a pitiable situation," Archbold said. "Everybody has something they hide in their life or with their body. Mine is just more obvious."

Or not. Shay didn't realize Archbold's arm was fake until after they had already decided to go on their first date.

The two met at an improv event in Chicago in 1998 and had spent an evening laughing and talking at a bar when Archbold asked Shay, "Do you notice anything different about me?" He didn't.

"Look down," she said. He stared at her feet and her ankles - nothing. Finally, she pointed out her arm.

"I looked at it for a second and said, ‘OK,'" Shay recalled.

Hearing all the humorous stories about her arm over the years, Shay encouraged Archbold to turn her experiences into a solo show. But they eventually decided to collaborate when they realized that other people's reactions were half of the humor.

"This is the perfect storm of awesome. I'm going to do a show I love with the woman I love in front of the people I love," said Shay, whose sister is local opera singer Judeth Shay Burnscq.

"Jazz Hands" premiered in August 2007 at the New York International Fringe Festival, where Archbold won the Fringe Excellence Award for Outstanding Actor out of 180 performances.

"It was probably the most personally rewarding show I've done," Archbold said. "In my own way, it's coming clean with my life."Although she's a pro at concealing her disability, she has now put her arm out there for the world to see. Or if you count all the arms she currently has in rotation, she has put out all three.