One Night in Bangkok....

Last day of Conservatory 1.  What a great class.

Our warm-up exercise was the word association game that we did in our first class.  (Look through previous posts if you don't believe me.)  We begin with "you" and eventually a word gets said after "you," and the group votes on these words by repeating them or stating words that agree with the word said immediately before. Eventually, a narrative arises from these words.  In our first attempt yesterday, it took us a while, but a story emerged where a guy went on a vacation to Hawaii and was attacked by a shark at a beach.  He was taken to the hospital, a limb was amputated, and he eventually had sex with a nurse.  (It's undetermined whether the nurse was male or female.) We got some suggestions and did it again. The second time, we had a murder, a burial in a shallow grave, a manhunt, a chase, and then a trial.  (Knowing our group, it's somewhat surprising that prison sex wasn't introduced to the equation, but perhaps if had had more time....)

Tim then took suggestions from us for four categories: social/political issues, book or fictional works that have influenced us, things that we have done for the first time in the last several years, and locations (the more detailed the better).  These categories were used as jumping off points for black outs and sketch ideas that consumed most of the rest of our class time.

We began by being divided in groups to work on three black outs.  I was grouped with two very funny and talented friends: Scott and Kristin.  Writing in a group is usually a source of frustration for me, but working with these two this was a very energetic, fun, and smooth process.  We targeted a news issue (gas prices), a social issue (corporate citizenship and so-called right to lifers), and a place (the Air & Water Show -- we could hear the planes during class).  Dr. Evil made an appearance in our gas prices blackout, Kristin had a PTSD flip-out induced by the airborne war machines at the Air & Water Show, and Scott and got to play rabid corporate right-to-lifers.  (Note to self: you are too angry; it scares people.) We received some classic advice from Tim after our corporation abortion blackout: kill the bad people because audiences want justice.

Siera, Mario, and Christine had a very funny blackout regarding Chik-Fil-A.  Siera and Christine were two lesbian lovers having a kiss in outside a Chik-Fil-A.  Mario was a conservative evangelical who was at Chik-Fil-A to show his support for its social stand and the company's free speech rights.  Despite his foaming hatred of "gays" he gets turned on by the sight of two women getting it on.  All we need is love, right?

Our sketch work had us shuffled into new groups with the goal of choosing a place off our list of suggestions and focussing on character, action, and support.  Ryan, Christine, Casey, and I were working in a slaughterhouse in Chicago during the 1920s.  This involved several accents.  (We were mostly immigrants.)

Scott, VP, and Kristin had a funny scene involving a roommate (Kristin) coming to sleep in the same room as her roommate (VP) and her friend/stud-muffin Scott.  She eventually climbs into bed with them because the floor is too uncomfortable.  And things get very uncomfortable.

The last group was Mario, Dan, and Siera.  The setting: Bangkok.  The premise: Mario was an effeminate Thai man.  Dan was trying to get his lesbian sister (Siera) this girly boy as a mail order husband. But actually, Dan and Mario had hooked up the night before.  Mario's antics were super funny in this scene.

Tim's insights after these scenes was that trying to be funny in a scene can break down the support between the actors which then short circuits the scene's development.   We just have to trust that the funny will happen because our scene partners are talented and funny people instead of forcing the funniness.  A counterexample to that advice is that even with silly characters the scene can progress and  develop when the actors are playing their characters with emotional truth.

We ended class as we usually do with montage work, but we had a twist: we used the suggestions from earlier in class.  We had Bill Clinton at a roller park, Romney and Ryan hanging out at a hipster bar in Logan Square, a women's studies class, and wild west saloon whose proprietor is allergic to cats.

We had a great time this term, and I cannot wait for next term.

Tada!

Move, move, move

Yesterday we focussed on movement and action.  Before we got to that, however, we had an extended warm-up exercise.  We played the game "I know people who have...."  The premise behind the game is this:
One person is in the middle, and everybody else in the class is seated around the middle person.
The person in the middle says something about him- or herself, but phrases that statement, "I know people who have...."
Anybody seated who has also had that experience has to get up and take a new seat and the person in the middle can snatch a seat.  The person left standing is in the middle.

Confused?  Here's an example:

A is in the middle and B, C, D, and E are seated.

A says, "I know people who have masturbated during their lifetime."  Obviously, that statement is true of everybody in the group, so everybody scurries for a seat. B is the person left standing.

B then says, "I know people who were born in Michigan." B was born in Michigan, and so was C.  So, C has to get up, B takes C's seat and C is in the middle.

C then says, "I know people who have had a jelly donut and chili dog with Mel Gibson and Paul Ryan.  C is the only person in the group who has done this, so he remains standing and gets a round of applause from the group.  (And, unfortunately, this factoid can't be shared with the public at large because what is said in the circle of truth stays in the circle of truth.)

So, we played this game for a good while, which was pretty cool from a class bonding perspective.

We then did montages.  The goal was to practice juggling our variation of characters and not getting into a rut performing the same type of character.  A highlight of this exercise was Mario as a teenager talking to one of his friends.  Mario's mom had found his stash of pot and thought that he was suicidal, so his friend suggested killing Mario's mom.  (As you do.)  The murderous friend got tagged out for a new friend who was talking to Mario about how his mom was overreacting to think that just because she caught him masturbating, that he wasted to kill himself.  The solution? Well, go into your mom's bed and whack off. (Duh.)  That friend was tagged out for Mario's new friend: Geez, just because your mom caught you trying to hang yourself, she thinks you're suicidal.  Mario's classic response: I know, was just doing that for a better orgasm.  (Scene.)

Our work with action consisted of raising the action in the scene and going from space to space on the stage.  The action is supposed to pull the actors from part of the stage to another (or even off stage).  This makes sense.  Action keeps the actors moving around the stage and the audience has something to look at.  A scene with two people planted in the center of the stage talking for two minutes gets a little old and stale.  In the sketch world, scenes like this are criticized as "talking heads."  It's very easy to get trapped into writing a talking heads scene, and perhaps it's also easy to get bogged down with a talking heads improv scene when the actors are trying to focus on emotion of character traits too much.  (In my experience (albeit limited), the main culprit in getting stuck in the talking heads muck is focussing too much on plot.)

All in all, it was a great class, even though it was far from being our funniest class.  It's hard to believe that next week is the last of our eight weeks of tutelage with Tim.

The Ecstasy of Defeat

Birthday Face made its debut last night.  We part of the Sketch CAGEMATCH! at Stage 773.  Seven teams performing sketch comedy to win a coveted three week run in October.

The rules: each team had ten minutes to do their thing.  After each team went, the audience members had to text their vote for their favorite team, and the team with the most votes wins.  These competitions are won and lost by getting your friends to show up and vote.  Spoiler alert: we lost.

Despite the defeat, this was a good experience.  We tried out three new sketches.  We were able to get all three completed in less then ten minutes (about ten seconds shy of ten minutes).  And we were in a room of people who mostly didn't know us, and we got laughs.

We also got exposed to six other groups to see what other people are doing.  The quality of the competition varied.  Some pieces were too talky.  Others were too heavy with their exposition.  Some sketches took too long to get to the point.  On the plus side, we also saw some very tight and funny stuff.

I thought we had a nice blend of material.  We began with a zombie attack, then we had a heartbreaking unrequited love between a nerd and the robot sex doll he made, and we ended with an orgasm.

So, no free October run for us.  Guess we'd better get to work on something new.

Emotional Rescue

Yesterday in Conservatory, we worked with emotions.  We did a whopping amount of work with emotion.

Tim coached us to be emotionally honest.  In fact, he's offered that advice several times during this course.  (Perhaps it's important.)  One of his insights was that truth, honesty, and realism make for good theatre.  In doing our scene work yesterday, he encouraged us to play characters close to who we are in real life.  However, this doesn't necessarily mean that we react to situations as we would in real life.  For example, an audience connects with people standing up for themselves. And standing up for oneself may not seem like "yes, and..." but it still affirms your scene partner's choice when you move the scene forward.

We spent a considerable amount of time coming up with a list of words to describe a spectrum of emotions.   We covered the following basic fields: Love, Anger, Fear (both normal and abnormal), Happiness, and Sadness.  No, I'm not listing the words here. Use the aforementioned word, grab a thesaurus, and make your own damned list.

In working with the emotions, our goal is to physicalize these emotions without saying the word.  Saying the word dispels its power. Tim's goal for us is to get us to be emotionally mobile as actors, truthful with our emotions, and able to change emotions with the scene. Most of the trick in accomplishing this goal is figuring out what your scene partner wants.  That being said, we were warned about hidden objectives in a scene because they can throw things off kilter if and when they aren't picked up by our scene partners.

As usual, we did an extensive amount of three person scenes.  We also did some five person scenes.

In the three person scenes, we had pretty funny one where VP and Christine were sisters who pushed Scott (Christine's husband) to the breaking point.  The poor guy's epic Labor Day weekend was ruined, but he got to have his barbecue during the five person scenes.  He played a roided-out suburban dad who intimidated his daughter's new boyfriend by lifting a huge barbecue grill -- while it was cooking steaks.

Jesus Christ, is that all I have from yesterday?  Making that list of words took up a lot of time.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

We did extensive character work in Conservatory today.  In practice, this consisted of doing scenes in accents.  At least for this week.  Last week, we also did some character work at the start of class, but accents weren't necessarily part of the package.

Trying to improv a character is hard yakka.  It isn't necessarily easy when writing, but the risk of getting it wrong on the page is less immediate or painful than getting it wrong on stage.  In fact, the process that goes into writing a good character for a sketch is in many ways the opposite of improvising: it's calculated.  When a character is written for a sketch (or a sketch is written for an existing character), the character's foibles, wants, and needs are usually carefully and meticulously plotted out by the writer beforehand.  A very detailed character profile may include traits or details that never even find their way into the sketch, they just help the author add depth to the character that's in the scene.

In improv, on the other hand, we're encouraged to keep our mind open until the instant that we get on stage. We're meant to initiate our character or our scene after we step out instead of thinking five moves ahead before doing so. Again, it's tough.  The task is made all the more daunting when trying to navigate those channels in an accent that you may or may not be able to pull off well.  Of course, half the fun with accents in comic sketches can be when they're done poorly.  (I'm thinking of Andy Samberg's atrocious attempt at an Australian accent as Hugh Jackman -- when the real Hugh Jackman was onstage with him.)

In class yesterday, we had Australian accents, English accents, German accents,  Indian accents (as in the subcontinent), and southern accents.   A highlight was Siera and Casey's scene set in an English convenience store with Scott as a Yank tourist (complete with fanny pack) who had his banger pointed at by Casey's take on a homophobic English git.

We were encouraged/told/directed/ordered to bring energy and emotion to the scene because we owe it to the scene.  That recommendation comes with a word of caution: if this emotion or energy is too over the top, you will be scolded.

An insightful tidbit from yesterday was that scenes fall apart when one or more of the actors panic and think "this is comedy, I have to fuck it up."  Yeah, it gets fucked up, but all-too-often it gets fucked up in the sense that that it doesn't work.

We concluded with montage work and ended the class with a wedding scene involving the entire class.  the groom was having an asthma attack and his best man had to keep administering his inhaler to him during the vows.  The bride had a nasty bout of eczema afflicting her skull and her maid of honor had to keep scratching her head for her.  They lived happily ever after.

Geburtstaggesicht

You can't keep a good team down.

We are hard at work on our next project: Sketch Cagematch on Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 10:00 p.m.

This will be a ten minute gig with 3(!) sketches crammed into that time.  We'll be competing against other sketch revues for the prize: a four-show run in October. So, we need all of you reading this to come to Stage 773 on August 4, love our gig, and vote for us to win the competition.  Yes, all of you reading this -- we'd love to see our Russian fans.  And we'd love to see whoever is responsible for our three page views from Israel during this past week.  Come one, come all.

We've got a sketch from Laura, a sketch from Shane, and a sketch from our Duke of Whacky, Mark.  All sketches are entirely new material in that they haven't been staged before.  We also have a new name.  (It's disguised in this blog entry. Happy hunting!)

We've brought back some of our favorite actors: Sam, Michelle, and Brigid.  And -- this will be the triumphant return to the stage for me and Dan.

It's interesting going back to doing this on our own.  More work.  Less swanky rehearsal space.  More discussions about what looks right in a sketch, what doesn't, and whether we should go with tested material or entirely new material.  That said, I think we've learned to be more open as a group about material that works and that which doesn't.  We've emerged from this last show as a better, more professional group.

And we're gonna keep making funny.

Black Out

Yesterday's Conservatory class began with the usual warm ups.  We were missing one of our classmates, but we had a guy from another Conservatory time slot, Trevor, in our class for the day.  He was a very high energy guy.

We spent our early scene work in class trying to develop characters.  I took a punt on a character that I've been working on that's actually based on a friend of mine.  I always feel kind of wrong when I base a comic character on somebody who's a friend.  (I feel even worse when it doesn't get any laughs. That proves that I'm a selfish bastard.)

The remainder of class was different from any improv class I've ever taken.  We wrote.  I understand that eventually in Conservatory, the goal is to develop a sketch show inspired by improv.  As part of that education, we'll eventually learn to write sketches by being introduced to the common styles of sketches and reading archived material.  Basically, the stuff they teach you over the course of a year and six courses in the writing program.

Interestingly, our introduction to writing was blackouts. We didn't do blackouts until writing three.  We also attempted to write our black outs in groups of three.  This inevitably leads to chaos.  Ideas get spit out as fast as possible, and it's damn hard to keep up or even spend a decent amount of time distilling an idea.  I was tempted to just steal some of the ones that I had already written. I was even more tempted to steal some of the blackouts that Mark has written.  (Hey, that's a compliment to Mark.)

Ultimately, we had four groups of three people attempting to write six blackouts each.  Three of these were meant to be topical/news related and three were meant to be almost anything.  Tim actively encouraged us to be bawdy, raunchy, and borderline stereotypical in our content.  He later explained that blackouts are an outlet for all of the bottom of one's intelligence, smutty, going-blue tendencies that funny people are often prone to indulging.  And that perfectly explains why blackouts are so difficult and so hit or miss.  When we had an entire class of sharing blackouts in writing three, Joe was satisfied in our output because "we had a couple good ones and even more that stunk up the joint."

I don't think we were told about the rule of ten yesterday: out of ten ideas that you have, you're doing well if one of them hits the mark.  Yesterday was no different.  Some were good, more were bombs, and others were just pedestrian.  Still, when you're writing these amongst friends, the terrible ones are actually as much fun as the good ones.  So, we got some good laughs out of this exercise.

The end of the class we tried to develop a sketch idea using a historical time period as our reference to make a comment about current events or something that is as true today as it was yesterday.  It would've been cool if we had had time to review some archival material as examples, but we didn't have time.  We were split into two groups of six each for this exercise and did not have a very long to try to come up with a sketch idea.  I'm curious to see if we come back to this in future classes.

Some highlights from yesterday: Kristin had multiple improv orgasms in class. One resulting from Fifty Shades of Grey and the other resulting from apple strudel. One blackout involved people on a train getting jostled into each other that culminated in all of them groping each other.  There was also a shoot-out at a cupcake store.  Poor Scott was inadvertently cock-punched.  (Occupational hazard.) Oh, and Tim declared that I am crazy.  I'm taking that as a compliment.