Show: C-47, BmB, JaCKPie @ Horizon Theatre

Mighty fine show Friday night...mighty fine.

Despite an epic struggle against my own sinuses, I had an amazing time at the show Friday. From setup to strike, everything went very smoothly. Everyone did a great job of helping to get the word out, which resulted in a nice house of a tad over 60. For traffic reasons, about 20 of those people came in just after we started the show. Creaking and crackling aside, it was good to have them there.

The C-47 cast of Mike, Corrin, Damian, Jim and Joel unfolded the tale of one girl and her man-skin rug Daddy vs. the band of scavengers led by the condor, the large horsefly and the dog.

My first dose of Babies mit Bearden in Captain, Corporal, Ensign was a delight. Life in The Shack at the toothpick-like railroad crossing is never as simple as you think. Eat it up.

JaCKPie was fun in the second half with Joel and Damian providing the score on strings. I couldn't smell the audience response but I think they enjoyed our wandering tale of brothers who can't get along and the relative value of rhetorical and philosophical engines. "Where does he keep his piggy bank?" "Where does mom keep my brother?" Brought to a nice close by Kelly, who kicked booty all night on the light board.

Which leads me to say that the show would not have been as successful and as low-stress as it was without the assistance of Kelly and our team of volunteers (Tom, Jayne, Sean and Dan). When you see these people share the love.

I heard a lot of positive buzzing in the audience during intermission and after the show. Several people mentioned they thought this style of improvisation was very engaging and cool. Lots of people were talking about trying the drop-ins and telling more people. The people want more.

Show: Chris in Mayfly at Hothouse STC

I just returned from a crazy trip to meet a friend of mine in Las Vegas. We drove from there to Santa Barbara and then down to Los Angeles. It was a travel-filled three days.

The good people at Hothouse STC in LA were kind enough to invite me to play with them in a show called "Mayfly". I was a bit nervous about performing with a group of people I had never met. Those nerves were quickly replaced by an excitement to get in the mix of what they've got going. After meeting my fellow players (there were 5 of us plus a 3-man band in this show), I could tell we were going to groove. The show felt great. I don't even remember half of what happened because it was such a spontaneous and wide open state of being...very physical and bristling with moment to moment awareness that in turn led to discovery after discovery. There was no "getting in your head". This play comes from another source. And the audience was right in there with it. Some of them were not new to the Hothouse style, but some were. A couple of my friends had never seen anything like it, but they thought it was very cool.

I'll post a couple of pictures from the show tonight.

I wish I could better describe what this experience is like, but I'd prefer that you experience it for yourself. I'll be looking for opportunities to do some organic workshops to see what cooks up. Some of you have already experienced a bit of this in classes with me, but I want to take it farther and make it more focused for a specific group of people. I'm going to start compiling a list of people who want to do this extra exploration. So, if you're interested, email me and I'll keep you posted.

Audition: Pharmaceutical mumbo-jumbo

I have an audition for the role of a pharmaceutical sales rep, probably an industrial bit. I'm talking to a doctor who I've just spent 3 minutes with lauding the safety and effectiveness of some antipsychotic or other. Then, I leave him with this,
"Thank you for your time today and I'm confident you'll find [drug] to be your drug of choice in the acute situation for patients requiring antipsychotic therapy."

Are you kidding me? Who writes this stuff? That's not a human interaction. No sales guy is going to say that. "Your drug of choice"? Who's taking the drugs anyway?

I almost want to bail out of this just on principle. I hate those drug commercials trying to entice people to get their doc to pump them full of purple pills, blue pills, green pills, pink pills, red pills, grey pills, etc. Just eat a bag of Skittles for heaven's sake.

update: The audition was a total waste of time. I did the one page of "script", and in my discussion with the guy afterwards he made it sound as though he expected it to be more free-flowing with a little improvisation. I'm thinking, "Then don't give someone a full page of chew-in-your-mouth text." He ended up saying they were really looking for "actors with pharmaceutical sales experience." Ha!

I am learning so much from the classes. If any of you reading this were in our Level 4 last night...thank you. You ladies and gents are amazing. Their willingness to explore, trust me, trust themselves, trust each other, and to let go led to some phenomenal play last night...and the week before for that matter.

I know it's summer and people have priorities that take them away from class from time to time, and rightly so. It's tough from a teaching perspective because we get into this great territory together and I'm thinking, "Oh man...i wish so and so were here for this. They'd be running with it too." Hey, it's life, and we can't have everything all the time. perfectly understandable.

I cannot wait for the next Level One to start here in the next 2 weeks or so. We've already got several people in for it, and we need about 4 more solid committments to make it really fly. We've got a series of Knucklebones coming up that will rock along with the party next weekend. I'm so happy that we have a place to do this in Atlanta.

Which reminds me...one gentleman who saw the show last weekend stayed afterward and talked to me about how amazing everyone was. He asked how much of it was scripted. No matter how often I hear that, it always amazes me. He was very jazzed about the level of committment to each other, the imaginations unleashed, and he summed it up by saying..."It's really play." Yes! He's going to take the class with us.

We had a great show Saturday. The first half was a fun mix of people with Jonathan, Damian, Dan, Kasey, Corrin, Jim and me. I don't even really remember all that happened except a large final scene involving a morphing/melding of all the characters from the show.

The second half was JaCKPie plus Damian (with Corrin on lights). It rocked too. At some point about halfway through, the concept behind the movie "Sliding Doors" came into play which led to a fast-paced finish brought to a lovely close by our improviser on lights. The players and the audience were all playing in the same world it seemed. Those are great moments. More people need to know how much fun this can be and play with us (in the audience and on stage).

"My partner didn't give me anything..."

I've heard this from various people over the past few years, and I'm sure I've said it myself. I think it's a very backwards way of approaching improvisation.

The burden of "giving" is not on your scene partner. Read the thread on improv and awareness.

Do you have a scene partner? Great. Then how can they not be giving you anything? They exist. He/She (the actor at least) is alive. Someone sitting there doing nothing and saying nothing is still giving you something if you are aware. Don't sit there and wait for someone to give you some magical gift that sets up a beautiful scene. Open your senses and GET IT.

Chris

2003/05/29 - 12:20:35

CIF 2003: May 16, shows and SHOWTIME

The day dawns.

After burning off most of the morning and grabbing lunch, we headed over to our 2pm tech meeting at The Playground. We met the venue manager and the tech improviser (who Jim knew from his time there).

The room itself is longer than it is wide. As you enter the front door, the main seats stretch in front of you in four or five long rows facing the stage, which is to the right and raised. It's roughly 16'-18' wide and 8-10' deep. Black curtains hang along the upstage edge of the stage and there's a 2"x4" railing also along the back that is about 3.5' or 4' tall. Behind the stage is a narrow pathway between the wall and the curtains. You can access the stage from either wing or through a part in the curtains and a gap in the railing upstage center. Backstage left there is a stairway that leads down to the basement/green room. It's cool, but a tad claustrophobic down there. The ceiling must be almost exactly 6'2.5" high. Part of the basement is directly below the stage, so that's not the ideal place to warm up. Fortunately, there's a back door upstairs that leads into a little fenced loading area outside. There's only one bathroom. With the added seats for the festival, the entire capacity was probably 95.

We went over the only cue we have, and that was that. They have two little lights in the booth. The blue light is turned on when you have 5 minutes remaining. Then, with 2 minutes remaining, the red light is also lit. The duos had 30 minute slots.

At 3pm, we had an appointment to meet Todd Stashwick, an experienced actor and director of Hothouse STC in Los Angeles. The Lincoln Tap opened at 3pm and since we were early, we popped into a small, antique shop to browse. The most interesting thing was a $50 collection of old 8mm porn reels and a small stack of 70's style porn coasters. Careful...you don't know where that hair in your drink came from...

At 3, we met Todd. Some photos from this meeting are located among Jim's threads. He's a very interesting fellow. We basically knew of him because he seemed to be the ring leader of The Doubtful Guests, our favorite show from last year's CIF. Jim sent him an email the weekend before CIF and he happily agreed to let us buy him a beer and discuss. So, we did. He has about 15 years of improvisation experience of all sorts. He was a performer at IO and Second City before moving to New York where he was part of Burn Manhattan. He moved to LA and found some like-minded folk who played around and put together The Doubtful Guests. Now comes Hothouse STC, a training and performance group Todd organized with the director of The Player's Space. It's a relatively new venture, roughly our age and size.

This guy who had never met us, probably never heard of us, rapped with us about theater and improvisation for 3 hours. I can't give a blow-by-blow of the conversation, but it included a lot about the history of improvisation, the present state of improvisation, and what might be coming next. We talked about television, the effect of SNL and WLIIA on the public's perception of what we do. It was a great conversation. For me, it clarified a lot of what I feel about the role of improvisation in art and the performance experience. I'm still processing a lot of it. Corrin and I were jazzed because we had managed to get into his Saturday workshop where we could put some of this to work.

After our brains were full, we parted ways and Todd said he might stop by to check out our show. We headed off to change and prepare.

This is a huge post and I haven't even gotten to the show. We had a blast. I can't say anything else about our show. There was an air from the beginning that led me to believe it would rock, and I guess it did. I'm sure there were some in the audience who hated it, but for the most part I think everyone had a good time. The whole thing felt good. I didn't feel like I was thinking, analyzing or working. It just had a flow...an absurd flow, but an entertaining one. I know that at one point in the show, I felt we must be nearing the end of our time...the show had been through so much already...I looked up, and neither the blue nor the red lights were on. Wow.

The end came on its own. The tech improviser saw it, called it, and it was over. Coming out of the show was like descending a mountain too fast. My mind was blurry. I had trouble for a couple of hours afterward recalling the show with any sort of detail. I don't even think we did a routine bow or anything after the blackout, but I didn't miss it.

We crept out into the back of the house for the final two acts...Men in Shirts and Monologue Ponies. The audience certainly got to see three very different shows. I'm pretty sure I prefer going first in situations like that. John D. and his duo buddy Matt came to visit despite having a play reading at Northwestern the next morning. We all went and had desserts at a little 24 hour diner place. That was it. Nothing to do but relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

CIF 2003: May 15

Operating on maybe 2 hours of sleep, I now attempt to recount Thursday for you.

Thursday...hmmm...at the moment, I'm not clear at all about what we did during the day. At some point, there were a couple of attempts to buy tickets at the Athenaeum. One of those attempts was successful. Guess which one.

On the first trip, as Jim and I were walking down the sidewalk, we heard yelling and other human exclamations coming from an open window in a small house. Jim supposed they were the sounds of domestic violence, while I held (quite without experience) that the sounds were those of an orgy. Later, when Corrin and I were returning along the same path, police cars were out in the street and officers coming out of the house. Fun eh? While we were walking to the theater, we ran into Kasey who had recently broken the law (not in that house) and who, unbeknownst to him, was well into the process of injuring his foot.

Thursday night we went to support our hospitable host, Mike, and his team 52-Hiccup at a little venue called Frankie J's. One of the three groups scheduled to perform did not show up, so they asked if JaCKPie wanted to do a set. We said, "Sure," and were on the stage within about 5 minutes. That's insane. It was good, though, to get our performance feet on the ground in Chicago. It was like a warm-up.

After the show, we caught a ride with a guy named Shafe whose head was shaved, and we popped over to the Lincoln Tap for the opening night party. We were greeted with "CIF Orgy Kits", which was a small purple bag with a condom, some "performance enhancer", and aspirin. Now, that's funny. Anyway, we got some beer and settled in, met some folks from Chicago, Canada and elsewhere. Paul and Travis showed up. It was loud, smoky fun.

Chris

CIF 2003: May 14

Last night we saw three Harolds performed by a relatively new team, a team of more veteran players mixed with newer ones, and a solid veteran team.

Rattlesnake H.S. - these guys did an interesting opening in the vein of a party conversations/shifting focus scene, but it seemed to be to large and unwieldly for them. I applaud them for working on it though. Throughout the show there were problems talking over each other, and it often felt like they were skipping the information at hand to get to something "better". Not a bad start though...

Johnny Roast Beef - Again, an interesting opening and a very cool transformational take on the games. Both were basically a personal twist on the object invocation. Unfortunately, that didn't necessarily translate into solid scenework.

Carl and The Passions - These guys, their confidence on stage, and their use of information clearly set them apart from their predecessors. It was a large team...10(?)...but they played unselfishly and did a great job giving focus in group scenes. Again, these guys had a very cool opening, and unlike the others, they nailed it. The scenes, except for maybe one or two that seemed to rely too much on caricature, were all excellent.

The tech person(s) missed calling the lights on the first two teams several times. You really felt for them, recognizing they had an ending, another one, another one...losing steam now...another one, and finally LIGHTS. Never take a good tech improviser for granted.


Then, we saw the fantastic duo of TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi. More on that after we run down to the theater to pick up some tickets.

TJ and Dave's show at 10:30pm Wednesday night was great. They did about an hour and 20 minutes of really interesting and entertaining work. The story involved a couple of teachers in love with special appearances by some of the students. It was definitely the best thing we saw Wednesday night.

The Bud Light was flat.

Coaching and breakthroughs

Anyway, Monday's level one class was a huge inspiration. The students made a real leap in understanding how important it is to be able to access emotion, to react to what is said, to grab onto the information that is put forth. I pushed more than in the past couple of weeks and they responded -- big time.

It's amazing when you're coaching/directing and you run into a player who has a "block" of some kind...emotional, physical, intellectual, etc...and you get a sense of taking that on yourself. Now, the "block" isn't that player's, it's yours. You are literally experiencing the struggle along with the other player. You long to be free of it. Then, you confront it like any obstacle. How can I get through, over, around, under this?

When the player overcomes the block, it's quite euphoric. I was riding this high for quite some time Monday night. I see these moments and think, "Yep. That's why we do this." It's so instructive, even beyond the realm of stage performance. This work can offer anyone the opportunity to drop the "mask" of their everyday life and explore the range of their personality and imagination.

Humana Festival 2003

So, this doesn't have a whole lot to do with improv specifically, but I just returned from a great weekend of seeing new plays. Having just finished a six month run of one show while juggling every other aspect of my life along with it, I really needed to get out of town for a bit of rest and marathon play watching (Insta-culture!).

The Actors Theatre of Louisville hosts the Humana Festival every year to showcase new work by established and emerging playwrights. I regularly read these plays, but this was the first year I attended the festival itself.

Going into it, 8 plays in 3 days sounds like a bore to a lot of people. However, there is a ton of excitement and anticipation surrounding the festival that really makes it a good time. I went hoping that at least 3 of the 8 plays would be good and no more than 2 would be subpar (all in my opinion of course). That's pretty much exactly what happened.

Ahhh...and now I'm back, re-energized by live theater and ready to rock n' roll again with shows and classes.

Show: Peachtree Playhouse March 22 2003

Must complete...the...pattern.

So, we switched things around last Saturday and put the group stuff in the first half and the two-man in the second. I actually liked the way that worked. The previous week we tripped through Africa, and last week we found our way to Argentina.

Audiences are holding strong at about 40-45 per show. We'd like to see that grow by at least 10 per show for April. The word is filtering into Atlanta about long-form though. Maybe it won't be long before in a condo somewhere in metro Atlanta someone says to a friend, "Hey, you want to go see an improv show?" and gets the response, "Yeah, let's go see those long-form folks."

Show: Peachtree Playhouse March 15 2003

Ahhh...so we had a great audience assembled for the show on the 15th. It's clear that the word is filtering through the community and people are hearing it.

The show was good...in terms of our duo first half, it wasn't our best stuff...but it was still good. You do this stuff for a while, but you can't ever get too comfortable. You're still going to run into an occasional night when nothing seems to work. The real test is how you bounce back.

The second half rocked in an other-worldly mindbending sort of way. Things moved quickly with CNik and Jeff added into the mix, and Jim and I were able to shake the dust off, dump our imaginations out on stage and play. It was just what we needed.

For next week, we'll probably make an adjustment to the line up so that the duo is in the second half and see how that works out.

This comment was posted with my original entry on another blog:
I didn't really know what to expect at the show, but I came, I saw and I nearly wet my pants.

Great show guys! My favorite part was well the fact that I can't explain to anyone how freakin' funny the whole split screen, acting elephants, naked old smoking woman, teenage prom, boy scouts in the woods, bizarre references to Jesus, strip club in a trailer and well all of it...I just have to say, "You just have to come with me next week and see for yourself."
Jenny

Show: Peachtree Playhouse March 1, 2003

Wow. I was really excited about this show. When I get excited, I get these crazy butterflies in my stomach. There's so much to think about not only being in the show, but from a producer standpoint. I wanted the first show to go well (for us and for the good people of Peachtree Playhouse). I think it was awesome. The crew and some of the cast of Peachtree Battle were very supportive. We had almost 40 people for the first show, which is not a bad start at all. The audience seemed to be very entertained, and initiated something relatively new to us...applause on the edits. As Jim said when we discussed it later, that happens a lot in Chicago, but here we are playing to a room in which the number of audience members with improv perfomance experience is probably 10%, those who had seen long-form of some kind before probably another 15%, and they all "get it".

JaCKPie in the first half was great. It felt good to get back into that. Even though we had done those shows in Avondale in the last couple months, it still felt like it had been a while for me. My excitement to be doing it manifested itself in a couple of "breaks" where Jim's characters were threatening to make me bust up laughing onstage. In one such instance, "I'm not like that. I'm not in college anymore," I tried desperately to keep it hidden, but eventually gave up and edited the scene.

Jim, CNik, Mike and I performed the second half. As predicted the energy and tone of the scenes is a lot different when the four of us play together. It's a nice gear shift. CNik did a monologue on the llama in a petting zoo as our source. The audience really got into this piece too. Favorite moments include:
"Need to change the signs on those barrels."-Brune
"Don't pull! Don't pull!" and "I'm going to pet the f'in llama."-CNik
The petting zoo animals' musical inner monologues- Jim

I can't wait for the next show. Peachtree Playhouse is a great place to play. Being next door to the Vortex is cool too. I've got a really good feeling about these shows.

Additional Comments Posted by Jim:
I had a great time from start to finish. Everyone on volunteer staff showed up on time, got their assignments and went straight to work with smiles on their faces. Damian and I got the set up in record time and I had a few seconds to breathe before Chris and I went on.

The crowd was wonderful... so supportive of everything we were doing. Chris and I did a good first half... It was like a flashback to 2001 when we first did our run of JaCKPie shows. It had a feeling of retro as well as a touch of newness.

If you didn't get a chance to see this one, definitely check out the ones on the 15th, 22nd and or 29th. They will be packed with fun.

Chris and Mike came in and gave the audience a different feel for long-form by adding their signature styles to the stage. I was even able to do an improvised Llama siren song to Chris Nik since there were more than two people on stage.

Can't wait for the next show.

Jim

Another one from Damian:
Star show! Very excited for the rest of the month. I learned so much as an improviser getting to see Jim, Chris, Chris Nik, and Mike play. EVERYONE COME SEE THESE SHOWS. Get a burger next door too.

This today...I got up early for work, and, though I usually wait until I get to the office to check my morning email, I decided to check it at home before leaving. There, to my great delight, was our official invitation to perform at the Chicago Improv Festival on the duo stage. That's very exciting news. It really seems like a lot of things are lining up all at once -- the classes are great, the Peachtree Playhouse shows, the Creative Loafing article tomorrow, and now, CIF. I'm looking at that "Improv Festivals" forum on the bulletin board, wondering what tales we'll have to share.

Thanks everyone for supporting and encouraging us.

Last night, I attended an audition workshop hosted by the artistic director of the largest theatre around here. In the course of her discussions on monologue techniques and acting, and her work with actors who were involved in "cold read" situations, she mentioned the benefits of improvisational training at least twice. It's an important thing for actors to take advantage of the benefits of training in improvisation. In improv, we're constantly dealing with objects and people who aren't there. We're focused on listening to our scene partners and reacting to that. We work constantly on inhabiting our characters, changing and adapting to the information. All of this is great stuff and invaluable to the actor in audition and performance settings. It was nice to hear a major player in Atlanta's theatrical scene discuss the value of improv in front of a room full of Atlanta actors.