Have Fun Kids

Harris, as herself, acts as the master of ceremonies as well as the central character in the story of how she learned of her friend Jordan Mechano’s death. Harris takes the audience through the agonizing hours leading up to learning the news of Mechano’s passing, during which she had to act as ring leader in trying to get anyone she could to give her a straight answer about Mechano’s state. Throughout this story’s unfolding, the audience is addressed directly in a warm conversational manner by Harris, which works to lighten the tone of a piece which is at its core about a genuine tragedy.

Throughout the show, the projections, which initially resembled the image of stars in the night sky, slowly begin to shift and move to form an image of Harris holding her daughter. This approach recalls the pointillist works of Georges Seurat [1], but in my view acts more as a visual metaphor for the piece’s scattered and fragmented structure, which mirrors the way the human mind breaks down and compartmentalizes traumatic memories: in bits and pieces [2]. 

Among these bits and pieces, Harris holds strong to her love for her daughter, much in the same way she holds strong to her love for her friend. Being that Mechano’s death was self-inflicted, she worries for the world her daughter is living in and wonders what she can do to fortify her from the toll the world and mental illness take upon us all. The conclusion she draws is as simple as it is darkly humorous: Procrastination. This, she asserts, is by far the most effective method of staving off suicide attempts. To paraphrase: “Just put it off one more day”. Being someone who has dealt with suicidal ideation and my fair share of scary nights filled with scary thoughts, I can attest that this method has worked wonders for me.

The downside, however, is that despite the framing of the narrative being reflective of the scattered form these experiences can take in one’s memory, the piece as a whole ends up suffering for this approach. With the pacing oscillating between Harris’ recounting, pre-recorded readings, and the asides decided by the audience, every time the story gets going it will undercut itself by introducing something new or jarringly pivot to one of its other sections. This makes sense from a framing perspective, but ends up leaving the moment-to-moment experience feeling uneven.

Despite this, Harris maintains a tone which never dips too far into oppressive darkness, while keeping the gravity of the subject clear in the audience’s mind. What quickly becomes evident throughout Harris’ account of trying to proverbially herd proverbial cats is the expansive and eclectic network of people whose lives Mechano touched. From other creatives, to friends from High School and College, to his own sister, Have Fun Kids is as much about the tragedy as it is about celebrating the life of someone taken far before their time. This then positions Harris’ daughter (who is mentioned throughout) as a symbol of hope for the future.

Although Harris admits throughout the piece that Mechano was a very private person, and that nobody ever really knew everything about him, he lives on in the memories of the people who loved him, and the work he left behind. Harris illustrates this point beautifully by literally holding a bundle of Mechano’s work printed out and bound in twine for the last few minutes of the piece. I, for one, am glad to have been given the chance to know Jordan in even the small glimpses given through this piece, and am impressed with the ambition shown in Harris’ approach.

Note on Accessibility

The pre-recorded segments played throughout were often too quiet to make out all the words which was troubling as someone with a processing disorder.

Bibliography

[1] Perl, O., Duek, O., Kulkarni, K.R. et al. Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD. Nat Neurosci 26, 2226–2236 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01483-5

[2] Seurat, Georges. “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884.” The Art Institute of Chicago. Accessed July 9, 2025. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/27992/a-sunday-on-la-grande-jatte-1884.