Mazzy Jensen of Clinton, Iowa, walked to the front of the Great Room and stood before her 89 fellow cherubs.
“Hi guys!” she said.
“Hi!” they shouted back.
She said she wanted to share her poem to express her gratitude to the cherubs and the program.
“I used to be quiet, a kind of violent silence,” she read. “The thing is, I am alive. To not speak was to die, so I opened my mouth.”
Her act was the second-to-last of Cherubs Got Talent, a Mandatory Fun event with 35 performers and a loud audience.
The cold open: 10 cherubs performed a “Saturday Night Live”-style skit. Colin Jost, played by Carter Heit of Haworth, New Jersey, invited President Donald Trump, played by Owen Zeller of Chicago, on as a guest host. The group even secretly gave certain audience members questions to ask.
Heit’s favorite part of his script, penned by Zeller, was a joke about Taco Bell lettuce causing explosive diarrhea. (Heit wrote Zeller’s lines.)
“I really couldn’t hold it together,” Heit said. “I thought it was absolutely hysterical.”
During the third act, the audience sang “Viva la Vida” while Jayen Shah of Princeton, New Jersey, strummed it on his guitar. In dozens of past performances, nobody had sung along.
For the talent show, he chose the Coldplay hit because of its “campfire-y” nature.
“When I think of the song, I think of people sitting around a campfire, sitting around a campfire, enjoying s’mores,” he said. “I wanted to evoke that vibe for the last week of cherubs to bring us all together.”
The event was a yes for cherubs.
“If there is a talent show next year, you should definitely do it,” Jensen said. “Everybody will be supportive, and there’s no reason to be afraid to share whatever talent, no matter how small or big or stupid it may seem to you.”
