Something Like a Chicken Sandwich

Rehearsal #11: Games and "Middle" Scenes

2010-03-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

All Female-Cast this Thursday!

We had our last rehearsal for the show last night, and we made it count.

Lyn returned after two weeks in China, so we spent the beginning of rehearsal going over what we’d learned and worked on over the last couple weeks. Then we moved on to playing games.

In the shows we’ve gotten into something of a rut of playing the same handful games all the time (and even playing them at same points in the show). Our homework was to come in ready to introduce a game within the style of the show that we hadn’t really done yet. I set up the “audience word song” game by pretending to be Clive Anderson hosting a show like Who’s Line Is It Anyway. (I called it What’s My Line Anyway.) That’s an idea I had a few weeks ago, to try and set up a scene as a scene from a different improv show. Let’s see if I can do it in a show.

(Mandy said I did a good Clive Anderson impersonation. I also got good feedback on my George Lucas impersonation in the show last week. Who knew I could do impressions of arcane celebrities?)

After a heated debate on whether or not the game Oxygen Deprivation (a.k.a. Head in a Bucket) could be performed without a set up, we moved on. (Personally, while it could be done without a setup and the audience would catch on, I think it would be stronger with one. An example for the no-setup faction was Spit-Take which we play sans intro. My feeling is that spitting water at a shocking statement is something that could exist in reality. But putting your head in a bucket of water on the side of the stage doesn’t exist in any reality outside of an improv show, unless one is given to it. Another example given was Bell Games that are played without setups. I actually don’t like those either. I think they break from the reality we’re creating and are stronger when set up somehow.)

I took notes a couple times last weekend, once while I was also lighting. I noticed, perhaps only because as the lighting improvisor I was particularly focused on the scene’s endings, that scenes tended to fall into three categories: Sketch or Short-Form Scenes, Slice of a Long-Form Scenes, and Self-Contained “Middle” Scenes. I also noticed that we didn’t know how to end the latter of those. I could see the improvisors getting deep into a “Middle” scene, realize it needed to end, and then search for a Sketch ending, which wouldn’t end the scene.

We spent some time working on these and quantified some of the differences. A Sketch Scene riffs on an idea and ends when it peaks. It doesn’t really matter if the character change or not. They probably don’t. We don’t often know because the scenes are very surfacey.

A Slice of a Long-Form Scene has a lot of backstory. A lot has happened before this moment and a lot will happen after. It’s a tiny piece of a large arc, and as a result the scene’s arc itself is rather flat. The character’s probably don’t change unless this slice happens to be the change moment.

A Self-Contained “Middle” Scene has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a complete arc within itself. One character might go on that arc or all of them, but for the scene to end the arc needs to arc. For that to happen, a character generally needs to change.

That can be the key to saving a scene that’s not going anywhere. Simply allow your character to arc, build emotion and the release it, and that becomes what the scene is about.

Rehearsal #10: Dance and Play

2010-03-03T18:00:00.000-08:00

We started off last night’s rehearsal by working on dancing. We end up singing a fair amount in this show and anytime there’s singing, there’s likely to be backup dancing. So we worked on movement and basic dance vocabulary a little. Then we took turns leading steps with a couple followers and finally had someone fake sing a lead vocal while three people danced behind them. The point was to be aware of stage picture and style matching so that the dancers all look like they belong from the same show.

One of the cast members of this show, Dave, is a social dancing instructor. He ran us through a quick 15-minute lesson in partner dancing, and I learned so much in that short period of time! About how to lead. About how to follow (in improv you never know when your character might be a woman). It was amazing!

Then Christian wanted to work on letting one scene inform the next, not necessarily overtly, but through taking some element of the first scene and using it in a different way in the second. Then we added on top of that the desire to perform more theatrical and play-like scenes. That’s accomplished by not looking at each other so much (improvisors are trained to make eye-contact a lot which is necessary for beginners but isn’t necessary in plays), speaking obliquely (characters in plays frequently don’t directly answer questions or they carry on separate conversations concurrently; the key for doing this in improv is to not let the offers drop even though you’re not immediately responding to them), allowing for small parts (you might be onstage the entire scene but only have one line), and only saying as little or as much as the playwright wrote (meaning, some lines can be incomplete thoughts and some lines can be monologues).

After we did that for a while, we added yet another layer: we played arms, moving bodies, audience lines, he said/she said, scene in reverse, etc. The point here was to not let the game’s hoop derail the scene. Instead use the hoop to inform the scene. You’re still doing a committed scene from a play, it just happens to be the forward/reverse version.

This weekend’s shows should be a lot of fun and feature some unique casts. Friday and Saturday’s casts are identical: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa. Ever wondered if it’s really improvised? Come see the same cast perform two nights in a row and find out!

Thursday’s show features an all-male cast: Alan, Christian, Clay, and Dave. Next Thursday’s show features an all-female cast: Lyn, Mandy, Melissa, Merrill. Come to this week’s show and you can get in to next week’s for just $10!

Rehearsal #9: Tenor Switch

2010-02-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

Whoa, what happened? Suddenly it's Friday and I haven't blogged about Tuesday's rehearsal. (Well, our new dog is what happened.) The further away I get from rehearsal, the harder it always is to write about.

We do continue to rehearse throughout the run of the show. That allows us to spot issues during performance and then work on them in rehearsal. I don't know if the production team spotted any specific issues we needed to work on, but we did sit around and talk about our experiences in the shows.

The main thing I remember about rehearsal, aside from having yummy yummy key lime pie for Clay's birthday, was a new game we stumbled into called "Tenor Switch". It started out as a playwrights exercise. We took two similar playwrights with opposite tenors and played Genre Switch with them. We did Tennessee Williams & Beth Henley and Eugene O'Neil & Neil Simon. It was soooo much fun. We soon learned that it didn't really matter if you started with playwrights, what mattered was switching tenors from light to dark when the bell rang. I hope we break it out in the shows this weekend.

We have a couple of last minute discount offers for this weekend. You can still take advantage of them:
- Use the coupon code "CRAZY" when buying tickets online through our website and get 65% off! This offer is only good for this weekend's shows.
- Say "Wish Clay a 'Happy Birthday' for me" at the door and get tix for just $8! This weekend only.

Rehearsal #8: Run Through #2

2010-02-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

We did another run-through last night, this time with the cast of Friday night’s show: Dave, Mandy, Merrill, and myself.

We were not in the theater itself, but the one across the hall. As always, tonight will be a storm of chaos before the show trying to get everything ready, but I’m trying not to think about that.

Let’s see if I can pull some takeaways from last night out of my sleep deprived mind:
- We mixed a few longer, slower-paced, scenes into the evening last night that felt like they came straight out of a play. The takeaway was that these scenes can exist side-by-side with shorter fast-paced “sketch-like” scenes, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them or their length. (And lighting improvisors should light them as if they’re from a long-form, not from a short-form show.)
- Commit, something, and something else. I can’t remember. Christian had some three word, three point note. It was brilliant.

Special side-note for Merrill who’s not reading this anyway: Don’t worry so much about getting things “right”. The point-of-view song didn’t falter until you started doubting yourself and worrying about doing it correctly.

Highlights:
- Living at Wonderland
- “Gladiolas” on the porch
- Who’s Afraid of Noel Coward
- Selling your script and getting laid
- Interviewing the great actress
- Everyone needs a secretary

Tonight we have an actual show. My voice seems to be holding out ok, but I’m exhausted. Tonight should be fun! Tomorrow should be even more fun, as long as I can stay awake through it.

Rehearsal #7: Run Through #1

2010-02-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

We did a run-through last night at rehearsal with the cast of Thursday night’s show: Christian, Melissa, Lyn, and myself. I’m glad I got to play with Melissa, because I’m only in the 1 show with her (see the play schedule here).

We were in the actual theater where we’re doing the show, although we didn’t quite have the stage set up how it will be. We still need to put up the doors and wings on the sides of the stage. I’m not sure when that’s happening.

It’s an interesting space to perform in. The stage is larger than we’re used to and it’s raised, which also makes the ceiling shorter than we’re used to. The lights come at you pretty much from eye level, which is always fun.

The run itself went well. The takeaways were:

- Be wary of getting stuck in a “tone rut”.
- Work to vary the number and combination of performers in scenes. It’s easy to get stuck in “2 on / 2 off – 2 on / 2 off” and end up only doing scenes with one person all night (as evidence by the multitude of Christian/Alan scenes).
- Passenger more / fill out background characters.

Some of the highlights of the “show” included:
- “That’s how we did it in Wisconsin!” A Midwestern couple goes swinger speed dating with some cheese.
- Benjamin Franklin, Franz Ferdinand, and Francisco Franco teach children the word “fecundate”.
- Superhero House. The new reality show featuring a very drunk Batman arguing about kitchen cleanliness with Superman.
- “It’s a Meal” and “It’s a Mule”.
- Frankenmime
- Lesbian love in Shakespearean Iowa.
- Room-mate love and existentialist foreign films.

As usual, my “highlights” are probably skewed to scenes I was in, because those are the ones I remember the best. I’m sure other people did brilliant stuff I’m missing. Of course with such a small cast, there weren’t many scenes I wasn’t in.

Tonight we have another run through with Friday night’s cast, which also includes me. I’ll effectively be doing 4 shows this week. Which is great, as long as my voice holds out. Come see me Friday night. My brain should be good and fried by then.

Un-Scripted: unscripted Cast List!

2010-02-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here is the play schedule for Un-Scripted: unscripted! Note the all-man show on March 4 and the all-woman show on March 11.

Full Cast:
Alan Goy
Merrill Gruver
Melissa Holman
Mandy Khoshnevisan
David Madison
Clay Robeson
Lyn Travis
Christian Utzman

Thursday, February 18: Alan, Christian, Melissa, and Lyn
Friday, February 19: Alan, Dave, Mandy, and Merrill
Saturday, February 20: Christian, Dave, Lyn, and Melissa

Thursday, February 25: Christian, Clay, Melissa, and Merril
Friday, February 26: Alan, Dave, Mandy, and Merrill
Saturday, February 27: Alan, Clay, Dave, and Merrill

Thursday, March 4: Alan, Christian, Clay, and Dave
Friday, March 5: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa
Saturday, March 6: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa

Thursday, March 11: Lyn, Mandy, Melissa, and Merrill
Friday, March 12: Alan, Dave, Lyn, and ~~Melissa~~Merrill*
Saturday, March 13: Alan, Christian, Clay and Mandy

*Transcription error in the original list

Rehearsal #5 and #6: Song and Match

2010-02-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

Two more rehearsals, two more to go. After rehearsals Tuesday, I had the strange realization that normally at the point in the process (with 3 rehearsals left at that time) we’d have more than 3 weeks until opening night. Instead, we had a little more than 1.

Tuesday we sang. We had a new musician we’d never worked with come in to play so we could get to know each other. Like a first date at a coffee shop that couples argue about later as to whether or not it counted as a date. I suspect you’ll see him play some shows for this run. His name was Jacob.

What did we sing? Well, we warmed up a lot with scales and a Dona Nobis Pacem. We did some simple Chorus/Verse songs and Verse/Chorus songs in a semi-circle. We did the Un-Scripted Theater Company version of a point-of-view song in groups. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Three people start a scene, then they each take turns singing a verse about their inner thoughts on the topic at hand, then they all sing at once. When they sing together they’re singing “chorii”, or rather each is singing a simple chorus to the song they sung without trying to unify the choruses or really be heard. When three people sing their own thing all at once:

A. The audience can’t really follow content.
B. It sounds really powerful.

Then generally everyone gets another solo verse and you end on another round of chorii. Ideally the person with the most to say will sing the last solo verse.

Typically in short-form improv shows, a point-of-view song goes like this: One person starts and sings “I love cheese”. The next person, forced to take a different point of view sings “I hate cheese”. The third person also forced to choose a different point of view and feeling pressured by the rule of “Comedy Comes in Threes” to be funny, sings “I am cheese.” We try to avoid this way of playing the game because it’s a lazy shortcut.

Then we did three scenes with songs as if they were snippets from a full-length musical, with an eye towards making out musical scenes more nuanced. The tendency in short-form is to cram an entire story of plot into one 4-minute scene. We’d rather the scene feel like a slice out of a larger work.

We performed one series of these in the time period of “Viking”, which I had never seen before. I wish we’d get that as a suggestion more.

We finished with the “Audience Word Song” Game, wherein you get a list of words from the audience while the singer is out of the room, they start a song and are then shown the words one at a time having to work them into their song as immediately as possible. This does not require singing a brilliant song. The game is impossible. The audience knows it, and roots for you the whole time. As long as the song isn’t a non-sequitorial mess, the audience loves it.

Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. We did more of what we did the Wednesday before, running every cast member through 6 scenes focused on playing with them. We did not finish everyone, but moved on after a while to an exercise in style matching. One person would leave the room. The other three would decide on a genre/playwright/time period/film director to do the scene in. Then the one who doesn’t know just has to follow along and style match as best they can.

The distinction I think, with this exercise, is that it is not a guessing game. You’re not trying to get the other person to guess the genre right. If you know the genre, it’s not your exercise. You just play it as committed as you can and give the other person something to match. That’s their exercise: matching and letting go the need to get it right.

We performed one of these in the genre of “Bronte”, which I’ve also never really seen before. I wish we’d get that one more too.

Rehearsal #3 and #4: Doors, Games, & Ensemble

2010-02-04T19:00:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes… We had two rehearsals this week, and as they’ve both blended together in my mind, you’re going to get them in one post.

We continued our work on space-objects by working on space-object doors. We had a couple of epiphanies. For one, no one holds on to a door knob the entire time they open and close a door, yet improvisors seem to do that universally for space-object doors. Generally we use the knob to unlatch the door and then swing it open. We grab on to the side of the door to open it further or guide it closed, or we catch it behind us. (I also noticed today that, depending on how heavy the door is, we don’t just use our arm muscles but throw our whole body weight into it.)

And then there’s the twirl.

When opening a door that pulls towards us, we often open it and then do a little twirl as we spin around to pull the door closed. Try it and see.

We also did some work on games and playing games without setting them up. Now, in this format, at any time during any scene someone off stage or on might ring a bell. It could be any bell game in the world or it could just be a bell. The actors in the scene just have to decide how to react to the bell, and that’s the game you’re playing. We discovered that not every actor has to be playing the same bell game at the same time. Oh the possibilities…

I also made some people do an alphabet scene as a half-life scene.

A large part of the success of this show hinges on us building a good ensemble. Part of that involves learning what everyone likes to do. To that end we spent some time talking about what we like to do in shows and what excites us about improv. This is something we’ll probably do at several rehearsals because I already know I forgot stuff I meant to say. There are so many aspects to consider.

Then we started an exercise that will continue through at least one other rehearsal because we didn’t get through everybody. One person is on the “hot seat” and is in every scene for about 6 scenes and every one else rotates in and out getting a chance to play with them and learn what makes them tick. We got through Merrill, Dave, and Lynn last night.

Things are going well, I think. And quickly too. Tickets are on sale now!

Rehearsal #2: Walk Like a Man

2010-01-29T12:30:00.000-08:00

We started off our second rehearsal with the photoshoot for the program and flyer. Normally this might not happen so soon, but considering we open three weeks from yesterday, we needed to get it done.

Then we moved into space-object work, which somehow lead us into a discussion about playing cross-gender characters and the difficulties therein. We spent a lot of time walking around trying to look like men or women. Or more specifically, attractive men & women and then unattractive men & women.

The primary difference between the way the sexes walk is how we counter balance. Men, who generally are wider on top and have a higher center of gravity, counter balance with their shoulders. Women, who have lower centers of gravity, counter balance with their hips. A woman's arms swing differently too, as their breasts are in the way.

Attractive men tend to stand up straighter, throw their shoulders back a little, raise their elbows slightly as if they had muscular arms, and lead with their abdomen as if they had a six-pack. The also walk with a little bit a jaunt or swagger.

Attractive women do the same thing, essentially, only they tend to highlight their chest or butt depending on which part they feel looks better.

Unattractive people are more slouchy. They protect themselves by covering up their front sections and tend to walk flat-footed, landing on the middle of their feet. They never look comfortable, even when they're trying to look casual.

Of course those are sweeping generalities and intended to inform the physicality of the characters you're playing, but useful nonetheless.

We also learned that Clay, Christian, and I have all dated at various times in our lives a twin.

Rehearsal #1: We're already behind

2010-01-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

We had our first rehearsal for our first show of 2010. It’s official: we’re kicking off our 8th season with Un-Scripted: unscripted!

This will be the third year in a row we’ve done this show, each time with a different director. I was at the helm of the previous iteration. I confess it was not a show that played to my strong suits as a director. I’m glad Christian’s in charge this year (and hopefully I’ll come up with a show that fits me better to direct in 2011).

It’s going to be a small cast version of the show. I believe we had 5 people per show last year. This year we will have 4, which will make for a hectic, high energy, no time to stop and think show that should be very fun and challenging to perform. The total ensemble for the show is 8 people large, 4 of whom are regular Un-Scripted members (me, Christian, Mandy, and Clay) and 4 non-members. We have one returning player (Merrill) and three first-timers (Lynn, David, and Melissa), making for a nicely gender balanced cast.

We spent a lot of time last night getting to know each other, which is extremely important for such an ensemble based show. We need to know each other well and know how to make each other happy by the time the show roles around. We need to learn to really play together and have fun.

We worked a lot on the “everything warm-up” which is an extension of Jeff England’s Duke’s of Hazard warm-up that just devolves into playing every circle warm-up game all at once. Then we moved into doing genre based scenes without setting up the genre first. After all, this show is all about starting scenes without explaining them.

I’m not sure what we’ll work on tonight. That’s right: we have rehearsal again tonight. Why? Because the show opens in 3 weeks! We had a bit of a space kurfuggal, so this run which was originally supposed to open in March and run through April is now opening in February and running through March. And we’re not in our usual space at the SF Playhouse. Instead we’ll be returning to Off-Market where we once performed Love at First Sight (only we’ll be in the larger theater across the hall).

So fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a fast ride!

Let It Snow Week 5

2009-12-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Check out the Let It Snow Interactive Map, featuring every town the show has ever featured, complete with performance date, show description, and a picture from the town itself!

***

For the Birds – Thursday 12/17/2009
When a reality film crew led by brothers Chuck & Chester (Christian & Bryce) and their French cinematographer Jaque (Michael) comes to Bodega, CA (pop 571), everyone wants to be a star. Laverne (Jodi) attempts to step into the limelight, but her rise to stardom is complicated by Chuck & Chester both falling in love with her, an angry ghost (Karen) who puts the "Hitchcock curse" on film crew, and a local femme fatale Tiffany (Merrill). Add in the ever-ready and eager firemen (Bryce, Michael & Christian) and the quiet town of Bodega is in for quite a ride.

Why not, Minot? – Friday 12/18/2009
Inga (Lisa) has always lived in the shadow of her attractive out-going sister Olga (Mandy) in Minot, ND (pop 36,567), but when her friend Bart (Clay) writes her a letter from college signed “Yours Truly”, Inga has hopes of love. Will she overcome her shyness to go out with him when he visits for the holidays? Will Bart overcome his meddling mother? Will they get a pheasant for Christmas dinner before the mountain lions get them? Why not?

A Steak through the Heart – Saturday Matinee 12/19/2009
Love-em-and-leave-em Jerry (Christian) makes a bet with his co-worker Pete (Dave) that he can date Pete’s ex-girlfriend Ilene (Jodi) for a full 8 ½ months. Somehow he makes it through the August fish fry and Thanksgiving with Ilene’s drunken family. He just needs to make it through Christmas to win Pete’s car! Then Ilene finds out about the bet, and Jerry learns she meant more to him than his little black book. Nothing that a steak dinner at the Port Hotel in Port Washington, WI (pop 10,467) and a marriage proposal can’t fix!

Photo Finish – Saturday Evening 12/19/2009
Nancy (Trish) runs one of the three bars on the one street in Dayton, NV (pop 5,907). She wishes just once the horse would win the annual race against the Harley. To even the odds, the town decides to hold the race during the holidays on an ice track. Even then, Phyllis (Mandy) is determined to keep her unbeaten streak aboard the Harley alive, while Nancy goes a little crazy rooting for the horse. In the end, they both learn it’s just a race, but what a race it was!

Rehearsal #12: Fin

2009-12-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Last night we had a light rehearsal. It was the last rehearsal of the run, which is always something of a bittersweet affair.

We spent a fair portion of the beginning of rehearsal pouring through the care package we received from Leakesville, MS. (Thank you!) The family who had come to the show and suggested that town sent us a lovely card, some books, the local “Coffee News”, autographed pictures of two local beauty queens, and some tasty food items. Yay! Here's our special thanks:

Then Mandy and Susan talked about some things from the previous weekend’s shows that really worked for them. Mostly they’re really enjoying the subtler, less protagonist-dominated stories we’ve been telling. And apparently the shows Friday and Saturday did a good job of establishing a protagonist early without them taking over the show.

Then we all warmed up our voices and everyone took turns singing a solo song with a set-up from Susan specifically targeted at something we each should be working on. My set up was to sing a song as the local holiday pageant director and to get into detail about the amazing plans I have for this years pageant and what those plans meant to me. I had a good time with it. I could really see the crazy things I was coming up with. That, and I was occasionally even singing pretty notes. Karen remarked about that as well and said she knew a voice coach who might be able to help me develop my range. I might just do that.

I was really impressed with everyone’s songs. People took their direction well and ran with it. Hopefully that will shine through this weekend.

**

If you haven’t seen the show yet, you’ve go one last weekend to catch it!

Let It Snow Week 4

2009-12-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

Check out the Let It Snow Interactive Map, featuring every town the show has ever featured, complete with performance date, show description, and a picture from the town itself!

***

Long Day’s Journey into Christmas – Thursday 12/10/2009
When the local high school geometry teacher Crandall “Bernie” Hendrickson (Alan) loses his desire to teach, he becomes a comically alcoholic Scrooge. His wife Margaret (Merrill) clings to her family for support including her Uncle Alfred (Bryce) and niece Dawn (Jodi) who’s visiting from Wisconsin. Unexpectedly Dawn’s romance with the town cab driver Pete (Lisa) teaches Bernie he still has something to teach his students. There’s a lot of promise in Kalamazoo, MI (pop 76,145).

Your Home is Your Castle – Friday 12/11/2009
Carleton (Dave) returns home to Newcastle, NH (pop 1,010) after 10 years away in the big city of Portsmouth and wants everyone to know he's no longer a womanizer. He’s serious about his foot-model girlfriend, Cyndi (Susan). His sister Margaret (Trish), the town schoolteacher, is skeptical as are his friends and exes, but the local Reverend (Clay) helps her to see how people can change. It all ends with a wedding (a surprise to Carlton)...because "your home is your castle in Newcastle."

30 Minutes to Everything – Saturday Matinee 12/12/2009
Sam (Michael) is 34 and wants it all, but he’s torn between his love of ice football and his dad’s (Dave) insistence on building gingerbread models of famous civil war battles. Then he finds himself at the center of a catfight when his longtime (but non-committal) girlfriend and local junior CIA agent Marcie (Jodi) vie for his affections. Who will be victorious on this ice-strewn battlefield of love in Stafford, VA (pop 124,000)?

A Doll's Palace – Saturday Evening 12/12/2009
Charles (Christian) just wants to be a man, but running the Bothel, WA (pop 30,150) Doll Palace museum under the thumbs of his mother (Mandy) and aunt (Karen) has left him emasculated. Then his controlling girlfriend Becky (Trish) leaves him. Could a budding romance with the local tomboy grease monkey Skeeter (Jodi) make him a man?

What I Learned from Week 4

2009-12-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

(Former Let It Snow director Tara McDonough at Kellyville, OK)

I was in one show last weekend, but I learned a lot from that one show.

One thing I learned is that running the opening is hard for this show. I have new found respect for Tara doing it alone all those years. This year the host isn’t even alone onstage and it’s still difficult. I’ve run it three times and messed it up in three different ways. I should get one more crack at it in the matinee this Saturday. Wish me luck.

I also learned that I’ve come a long way in my protagonist work. I’ve traditionally been the master of avoiding the protagonist role. Even when I actively sought it out, I would unconsciously shed it. This run, I’ve been one of the main protagonists three times. Thursday night I went out on stage with a character fool-proof for not being the protagonist. He was bigger than the other characters on stage. He was broader. He wasn’t “normal”, and he didn’t care about anything. And yet somehow it ended up me.

Why?

Let me set the scene: to start the show Merrill and Karen went out on stage as high school students. They began talking about college and Merrill very quickly became the protagonist, at least in my mind off stage. So, in order to raise the stakes for her as a high school student who wanted to go to college, I came in as the world’s worst Geometry teacher. I told them they’d never need Geometry. I told them I didn’t care, that I was a borderline alcoholic, and I put on a movie for them to watch. Then I left.

However… Merrill a week before had played a protagonist high-school-student who wanted to go to college. In her mind, she could not do that again, and eliminated any possibility that it was her. Unfortunately the audience didn’t know that, nor did the show. The show wanted her to be the protagonist, but she didn’t, so she threw it on me. Why? Because she felt that my character had more going on in his life.

Ruminating on this opinion for a while brought me to this theory: It’s not what you say that makes you the protagonist, it’s how you act. Yes, on the surface, my character had a lot going on, but because I didn’t care about any of it and wasn’t being affected by it, I was not the protagonist.

Except of course I was because the story quickly began revolving around me. This left me in the strange position of being a protagonist who didn’t really care. My want became caring, which worked out, but isn’t exactly the most dynamic.

The show also took rather a dark turn through the second part of the first half. Why? Because people were taking my joking “borderline alcoholism” too seriously and making it a big deal. Suddenly it wasn’t a joke but tragic. Had people taken it lightly, it would have played lightly. By taking it seriously, it played darkly. Fortunately Bryce found a way to end the half on an up note even after Merrill had just sung a sad, depressing song about my alcoholism.

But back to the opening scene. It’s sparked another theory: If you’re going to go out on stage with someone to open a show, and your intent is for neither character to be the protagonist, then you either need to character-match and have both characters feel the exact same way about things, or you need to start talking about a character who hasn’t entered yet and begin endowing them as the protagonist before they even get on stage.

But if you go on stage as distinct characters and start having a status interaction, one of you will become the protagonist of the moment, and in the first scene of the show that will target you as the protagonist of the story.

Rehearsal #11: Protagonist

2009-12-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

Rehearsal! Yes, we had rehearsal on Tuesday. What did we do? We did some protagonist work. Mandy and Susan had deliberately not done any heavy protagonist work during the rehearsal process to this point in hopes of telling some more varied richer stories. That has certainly happened, but we’ve also run into problems with “protagonist ball”, where no character is willing to take a hold of the protagonist role. Then when a character does grab a hold of it, everyone tries for it. It’s a little strange.

Even though we still don’t want the shows to be protagonist centric, every show still needs to have a protagonist and their journey to hang the rest of the show off of. They might only be in a few scenes here and there, but they’re the through line. So we still need them.

We worked on this by doing the first three scenes of a bunch of shows. We’d get a town and a little bit of info and then do three scenes as if we were about to do a whole show. We tried to make sure the second scene reflected on the first in some way and pertained to the main character of the first scene even if that character wasn’t on stage. This should help keep our stories from straying too far a field.

Unfortunately, a lot of people teach that the second or even the third scenes of a long-form should have nothing to do with the first scene or each other. I’m not sure why this is. I guess they’re really teaching people how to tell triptychs. I think it’s also a result of different definitions of what “long-form” improv is. Some people consider a half an hour of unrelated scenes to be a “long-form”. I’m not sure why. I guess in that definition “long” pertains to how long you go without breaking the 4th wall to address the audience out of character. To me that’s just short-form masquerading as long-form. If the scenes don’t connect together to tell a cohesive long story, it’s not “long-form”.

Of course, I also wouldn’t consider half an hour long, or 45 minutes to an hour for that matter. San Francisco is possibly the only place in the world where “long-form” means a two hour show with a single narrative, much the same as a play or movie.

Back to rehearsal, the show starts we did all went very well. We learned a lot about listening and zeroing in on offers. Generally speaking, after just a few scenes you have everything you need for the entire show. That’s why we often practice the first three scenes of a long-form, because they’re the most important in a lot of ways.

We also did some movement work, trying to use the stairs, windows, and the door with purpose. That was fun.

(No picture of rehearsal to embed. Clay took one, but I can't get twitpic to load. You can try to see it here.)

Let It Snow 2009 Week 3

2009-12-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Check out the Let It Snow Interactive Map, featuring every town the show has ever featured, complete with performance date, show description, and a picture from the town itself!

***

M-E-R C-M-A-S Spells Merry Christmas – Thursday 12/03/2009
Teenager Darla (Trish) is on a mission to shake up Goble, OR (pop 2,744). After growing up in a town so cute that the town holiday signs are missing letters, the kindergarten teacher (Mandy) tap dances at the Goble Tavern, and the elementary school Santa is really the janitor (Michael), she's itching for some danger. She gets her wish when tap-dancing teacher Tabitha (Jodi) storms in from rival town Clatskanie. Tap-off in the Tavern! Darla soon learns it doesn't matter how you spell "Merry Christmas," as long as you believe it.

You’ve Gotta Be Smart – Friday 12/04/2009
Carly (Merrill) is tired of being poor and living with her extended family in Española, NM (pop 9,688). On the other side of the tracks, Derek (Christian) spends all his time in the family mansion working on his low-riders with his younger sister Elizabeth (Lisa). When the two meet at the town bowling alley/casino, Carly hopes she’s hit the jackpot, while Derek just hopes he can avoid a gutter ball.

East De Pere is Right Here – Saturday matinee 12/05/2009
Pete (Alan) and Shirley (Mandy) have been best friends in East De Pere, WI (pop 20,000) since they were yea high, but when a picture shows up in the town paper of the two of them ice skiing from the same tow handle, all the town assumes they’re an item. To prove they’re not, Pete dates another girl, and Shirley gets arrested storming West De Pere as part of the French Explorers Historical Reenactment Society. Soon they both learn their heart’s desire was right here all along in East De Pere.

Practical Marge – Saturday evening 12/06/2009
The whole town of Hornitos, CA (pop 64) knows Marge Ballard (Trish) as “Practical Marge”. She runs the town bar, raises her daughter Jenny (Susan), and shovels manure on the family ranch under the watchful eye of her demanding father (Bryce). One day she just snaps and builds her own hut out in the desert, and her father and Jenny learn they can’t live without her… except that Jenny’s been making a lot of money scaring out-of-towners on ghost town tours. It’s a Christmas Eve to remember for the Ballards.

Rehearsal #10: Fine Tuning

2009-12-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

We started rehearsal last night with the fun and silly Dukes of Hazzard warm up, which then evolved into the every-circle-warm-up-game-at-once warm up game. Always fun. Always enjoyable.

Then we talked a bit about protagonists. We haven’t done much protagonist work in the rehearsal process, mostly because Mandy wanted to experiment with not doing that. All told, that approach has resulted in some interesting ensemble shows that are really about everyone in the town. The problem is that we’re not doing a good job of recognizing from to scene to scene who is the protagonist of the scene.

To help with that, we did some PRAWN circles. PRAWN is the Un-Scripted Theater Company’s version of CROW.

P – Protagonist
R – Relationship
A – Aim
W – Where
N – Nuance

We also worked on talking to the audience. Before our shows, we like to go out and mingle with the audience. One purpose of this is to explain the show ahead of time so we don’t have to spend a lot of time on that at the top of the show. But that’s not the only reason to talk to the audience. In fact, that’s really the secondary reason to do it. The #1 reason (and the element we’ve been missing) is to create a feeling of community with the audience, to connect with them as people so that they’re already rooting for the performers to succeed. So we worked on talking to each other how we might talk to the audience.

Then we did some scenes where we worked on blocking. Not improv blocking, but stage blocking, or in other words moving with purpose. And we worked on facing out more even when we’re talking to people on stage. One thing we discovered in a scene that I did with Bryce, is that being onstage in front of the door you can be inside a room with the door leading out, or you can be outside with the door leading in. AND you can move through the door in such a way that the scene moves from inside to outside or vice-versa. Cool.

We did sing some. We focused on short 30 second songs. I had a hard time with this and am interested in seeing how this works in the show. It was difficult for me without the context of a show. Without back story, the 30 second songs all felt contrived.

Oh! And we did some movement exercises that resulted in some very interesting “dances”. The point was to practice moving with purpose or standing still with purpose. Clay recorded one on his iPhone and posted it to twitter. View it here.

There’s a show going on right now as I type this. I have the night off and am spending it writing and watching the Oregon/Oregon State Game. I don’t know who I’m rooting for. I guess I’m rooting for Let It Snow. Oh! And we got reviewed in the Marin Independent Journal.

Rehearsal #9: Vague Recollections

2009-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

We did have rehearsal last Tuesday. Unfortunately a pesky thing known as Thanksgiving Weekend got in the way of me writing about it. Now a week later, it’s hard to remember what we worked on.

I know we did some opening numbers. I know that because we used each other’s hometowns for suggestions and gave Merrill that special Let It Snow glow when we did hers.

I also remember doing some “environment” songs. These aren’t necessarily songs designed to create a physical location, but they exist more to color the town. They’re light, up-beat, throw-away songs that aren’t sung out of a deep emotional moment. That makes them hard, because we’re so trained to sing in emotional moments. Singing something fun just to sing is an adjustment, even though it happens in musicals all the time.

The only one I remember is the one I was in. It involved a customer finally showing up at a rabbit farm. There was lots of hoping involved.

Let It Snow 2009 Week 2

2009-11-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

Check out the Let It Snow Interactive Map, featuring every town the show has ever featured, complete with performance date, show description, and a picture from the town itself!

***

Blinking Red, Blinking Yellow – Friday 11/27/2009
After Cletus (Christian) breaks his leg playing the angel in the mortuary’s Angel Pageant, Marcia (Susan) takes a shot at winning his heart. When she misses, she uses the Saturday night Blinking Light Social as an opportunity to make him jealous by kissing another boy. Only she ends up the jealous one when Cletus dances too close to Sara (Merrill). There’s more to life than being dead in Leakesville, MS (pop 1,026).

Life is Not a Game – Saturday matinee 11/28/2009
Twins Jeff (Christian) and Judy (Mandy) share a deeply uncool secret in Mercer Island, WA (pop 22,650). Neither of them are in the 400-person-strong high school marching band. Instead, they trade off being inside gorrilla suit, the Marching Islanders’ mascot. Their tech-geek parents (Scott & Trish) can’t understand why their kids aren’t happy in spite of all the technology-based hoops they make them jump through everyday to keep them sharp. Can the holidays save this family, or will they crash like the blue screen of death?

Barbs of the Heart – Saturday evening 11/28/2009
Different generations clash in DeKalb, IL (pop 39,000) when the new NIU agriculture students show up for their first day of work on a real farm. Meanwhile Luke (Michael) gives his family’s stockpile of barbed wire to Sally (Mandy), but he can’t bring himself to tell her he loves her. When Luke’s brother Peter (Bryce) returns on break from rival school U of I, he threatens to steal away Sally’s heart. Love is a thorny issue in the birthplace of barbed wire.

Let It Snow 2009 Week 1 - All Performances

2009-11-23T19:00:00.000-08:00

Check out the Let It Snow Interactive Map, featuring every town the show has ever featured, complete with performance date, show description, and a picture from the town itself!

***

The Same but Different – Thursday 11/19/2009
After finally asking Mary (Alyssa) out on a date to the Holiday Parade, Chet (Alan) gets conflicting advice from his friends Max (Bryce) and Carl (Dave) on how to treat women. Meanwhile Mary takes advice from her cougar mother (Karen) and octogenarian surfer father (Bryce). Watch your step in Vero Beach, FL (pop. 16,939) where the old folks still have lots of pep!

Not So Secret Spots – Friday 11/20/2009
Brothers Jack (Clay) and Christopher (Christian) work for their father Edward (Michael) at the family gas station/apple orchard, but Jack hardly works. Instead he chases the love of Susan (Lisa) who’s really in love with Christopher who’s too busy working to notice. Throw in a crazy poet (Jodi) who’s in love with both of them and the junk shop/moonshine still owner Agnes (Merrill) who’s in love with Edward, and you’ve got trouble in Paradise, CA (pop 26,408).

Let It Snow Week 1, Performance 1

2009-11-20T11:47:00.001-08:00

The show was a lot of fun last night and probably one of our best first performances of a run. The audience seemed to really enjoy it. (You can read a lovely email one of them sent me here.) I ran the opening and interviewed the audience member about the town. In the middle of it I realized I’d never done the opening of Let It Snow before and really had no idea what questions I was supposed to be asking, but I think I faked it pretty well. We got some good feedback during the talkback session after the show about what types of questions to ask. Very helpful.

The town was Vero Beach, FL. Here’s the official blurb:

The Same but Different – Thursday 11/19/2009
After finally asking Mary (Alyssa) out on a date to the Holiday Parade, Chet (Alan) gets conflicting advice from his friends Max (Bryce) and Carl (Dave) on how to treat women. Meanwhile Mary takes advice from her cougar mother (Karen) and octogenarian surfer father (Bryce). Watch your step in Vero Beach, FL (pop. 16,939) where the old folks still have lots of pep!

Things were very relaxed backstage throughout the entire show. No one was panicking about what should happen next or how we were going to get out of some hole we’d just dug for ourselves. The show itself was also very relaxed and character driven. For the first time ever, we had a show without enough plot. We just needed a little something else to happen to bring in a little more conflict and dramatic tension.

Why was there so little tension? Largely because of a split second decision I made in the first scene. Alyssa and I quickly became the protagonists and love interests in that first scene. After establishing that I’d been working up to asking her out to the Holiday Parade for two years, and singing a song about how I needed to ask her, I had to decide: Do I chicken out at the end of the song and make the show about asking her out, or do I just ask her out at the end of the song? Not wanting to bridge, I asked her out at the end of the song, and immediately felt the giant sucking sound of the plot flying out the window.

That is the sweet spot I need to find: when bridging isn’t bridging, but building tension. Still, personally I’m overjoyed that we finally went too far away from plot. Now we can pull back the other way and hopefully find the sweet spot.

Rehearsal #8: Holy crap we have a show tonight.

2009-11-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

We had our “last” rehearsal Tuesday night before the first performance. I put “last” in quotes because we continue to rehearse throughout the run. Why? So we can learn from the shows and make them better as the run progresses.

We did two first-halves of shows, talked through the second half and then performed a closing number. I was in the first one. It was pretty much the train wreck I expected it to be. We had a lot of offers on the table. Every character seemed to want to get of the town. We didn’t have clear environments. People weren’t listening all that well, and instead of swimming around in the characters, we got lost in plot.

That said, there was some really strong stuff. Good characterization. Good singing, etc.

The second was much better. Learning from our mistakes, they had very clear environments, kept from veering to hard into to plot-land, and did some wonderful things.

I’ve been trying to crystallize what I think I learned down into one bullet point, and here’s what I think it is: If something happens in the story (i.e. a “plot point”), nothing else should really happen until we know how all of the pertinent characters feel about that something that happened.

I’m excited about being in the show tonight! I think we’ll learn a lot doing an entire show in front of an actual audience. (I was so caught up in the rehearsal, that I didn’t take any pictures.)

**

Mandy posted to the show blog:

A Let-It-Snow Letter from the Past!

Play Schedule

2009-11-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

So here's when I'm performing. As always, this is subject to change:

Thursday 11/19
Friday 11/27
Saturday 11/28 – evening
Friday 12/4
Saturday 12/5 – matinee
Thursday 12/10
Saturday 12/19 – matinee
Saturday 12/19 – evening

All shows are at 8pm except the matinees which are at 3pm. If you'd like to see the entire cast list for a given night, you can check out the Un-Scripted Events Calendar and just click on the show you're interested in.

Rehearsal #7: 7 Kinds of Love

2009-11-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

Last night at rehearsal we had a photoshoot for headshots for the program. We take our own headshots for our programs so that we can keep them consistent and give them themes that go along with the particular show. For Let It Snow, everyone’s dressed in hats or scarves or holding something that indicates “winter”. Fortunately we didn’t have to take a new shot for everyone in the cast as many people have already been in the show.

While the last few people were getting pictures taken, this week’s choreographers taught their dances. When the photos were done, we had our last round of choreography. Once again we saw how talking during dance numbers doesn’t take anything away from them (and by talking I mean counting or describing the dance moves, not just rambling about something) and how important it is to sell what you’re doing from the waste up even if your feet are hopeless inept. Oh, and diagonal movement is cool.

Then we warmed up our voices, did a round of DNP, and tried our hands at improvising rounds. That was incredibly difficult. I think it might be impossible to do in this show but perhaps possible in a short form or cabaret type show. We also did a very interesting dynamics exercise where we experimented with singing at different volumes. One takeaway from that exercise was just how effective singing quietly can be, especially mixed in with singing loudly.

Next Susan ran us through “7 Kinds of Love”. Everyone got to sing a love duet, and Susan set everyone up in a different type of love duet (for a total of 7 duets in all). I sang with Jodi, and our set up was that at the start of the song one of us was in love with the other, but the other one wasn’t. Then by the end of the song we were to switch points of view. Oh, and we were singing such that the other character could hear what we were singing. Oftentimes in duets your singing inner thoughts that the other character isn’t hearing. In any case, it was a very fun song to sing.

Then we moved into point-of-view trios and large group songs with an eye towards finding different types of songs that could be used to end the first half. There are no hard and fast rules for ending a half, but generally something with a lot of energy and a lot of characters is a good way to go.

We have previews next week! We still have to load-in the set and have one more rehearsal before we unleash this puppy on an audience. I can’t wait. This show’s so much fun.

Rehearsal #6: Exit Pursued by a Bear

2009-11-04T19:00:00.000-08:00

Last night’s rehearsal was all about improv! We’ve spent a lot of time working on singing and dancing, and it was finally time to focus on some scene work.

We warmed up by playing “Bitty Bitty Hop”, which is similar to “Bippity Bippity Bop” only you have to physically hop before the person in the middle says “hop”. The game then proceeds as usual.

Then we split up into groups of three and did a “coloring” exercise. For the first iteration, one person flipped through an imaginary Town Annual (like a town yearbook) while the other people asked detailed questions about the items discovered in the book. Then who was being asked the questions rotated and the imaginary record became a time capsule and then an actual high school yearbook for the final iteration.

Next, we split up into pairs and talked about our improv goals for the show, what we’re working on, etc. I want to play more characters that aren’t in control of their situations. My characters tend to have an answer for everything, and I’d like to explore playing some that get in trouble and don’t know how to get out of it. I’d also like to improve my space object work and push the show into new and interesting locations. Of course there are other things too, but those are the big ones.

After that we did some quick protagonist work. We just had 3 or 4 people start a scene and everyone watching raised their hand once they thought they knew who the scene was about. Once most people had raised their hand the scene was stopped and we found out if we all agreed. Generally we did. In the past we’ve spent entire rehearsals on protagonist work, but everyone seemed to have a handle on what made someone the protagonist (being likable, the most normal, effected by what was happening, set apart from the other characters somehow, etc).

Then, we moved into some large group scenes. Six people would go up to perform (we’re planning casts of six people every night) and do two scenes. One a public scene with lots of people and then a second private scene between just two. Somehow we naturally fell into doing these two scenes seamlessly without any sort of blackout or hard ending between the scenes. We’d have a group scene and then eventually the side characters would leave two people alone for the private scene. It felt very “play like" as if the actors had scripted entrances and exits.

We capped things off by doing two 15 minute long forms, figuring in an actual show we’ll only have time for about 15 minutes of plot anyway. The first one involved a pair of identical twin teenagers struggling to date and find their own identities. The second involved a group of co-workers. The twin story reminded us all that, like in Shakespeare, even if the actors playing the twins look nothing alike, the other characters can find them so identical that they can’t tell them apart. The co-worker story reminded us that a workplace can be an even smaller small town within a small town.

We finished off by splitting up into groups once more to discus the main takeaways from rehearsal. I think one of the biggest was “listen, listen, listen”. We had a lot of missing offers, multiple names, confusing family relationships, etc. Name people. Repeat names. Be obvious about the environments you’re creating. Things of that nature.

We also learned that Bryce can wrestle a bear.