Snip Snip

Another successful read through yesterday.  With all of our editing, our read through came in between fifty-seven and fifty-eight minutes.  Not bad, but still too long.  Ideally, we should be at fifty minutes. In theory, we'll shave more time in the coming weeks with rehearsals and the actors getting into a rhythm with the lines.

Still, were running too long and had to make the painful decision as a group to cut one of our sixteen sketches.  As a group, we are not good at this.  We are all far too polite and wary of not stepping on anybody's toes or hurting somebody's feelings.  Out of the gate, though Joe suggested a few sketches that should not be cut: our lone musical offering, two sketches with the same characters that gives our show a theme, and a very funny sketch gets entire cast involved.  This standoff in civility lasted several minutes.  Finally, the ice was broken when one of us -- I think it was Detroit Angie -- offered to cut her own sketch.  What ensued was almost all of us offering to ditch one of our own.  This finally led to a more frank discussion about our roster of sixteen sketches and which ones overlapped in terms of their characteristics, i.e two-person relationship scene, messing with the audience, physical comedy, etc.  In the end, we had two two-person relationship scenes involving very physical comedy on the block, and one of those was removed.  This saves us approximately 3 1/2 minutes.  If we are able to trim our running time in the coming weeks, we'll hopefully keep fifteen sketches in our show.  If not, we'll have to make another painful cut in a few more weeks.

Yesterday wasn't all painful, though.  We began with a very fun warm-up while we waited for a few people to arrive.  During the readings, we were treated to Sam's sultry Mexican accent, Dave's hand play, and an onslaught of East Coast privilege with Andy deftly handling the role of patriarch.  Janna had her hands full with a son destined to masturbate himself into the grave, and Michelle turned in another "solid" performance as a penis.

Speaking of penises, when I saw the two pieces of mine that Joe selected a few weeks ago, I felt that one of the sketches was definitely stronger than the other. To distinguish between the two, we'll call one the cross-dressing sketch and the other the penis sketch.  I thought the penis was stronger.  (That's a line that's dying to be taken out of context.)  However, after the actors have been involved, I think the cross-dressing sketch has become the stronger of the two.  The penis gets a little weak at the end. (Pun groan.)  I can't quite put my finger on it.  (Double pun groan.)  Fuck it, why not:  I think I need to play with the penis some more.  (Triple pun groan.)  Mark has volunteered to lend a hand (quadruple!), and he's a logical choice for such an endeavor.