Something Like a Chicken Sandwich

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.

Rehearsal #5: Dancing with the Improvisors

2009-10-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

We rehearsed last night in a mirrored dance studio at ACT, largely because our regular space was booked but also so we could do some serious dance work. We started with the standard dance warm-up, made all the more interesting by the option of looking at yourself in a mirror doing it. Then we went into the choreography teaching exercise.

Alyssa took a small group of 4 people out on to the ACT balcony and taught them a wonderfully simple dance that involved standing in a straight line while bouncing and leaning in different directions. Of course, I do not do it justice. It was wonderful. Karen took the rest of the group (one of the assigned choreographers had thought they were on the schedule for next week) and put us into a long sequence of stepping around and crossing each other. Again, I do not do it justice, but large group numbers are very effective.

From there we moved into some couples dancing. We always work on couples dancing in Let It Snow rehearsals, but so rarely do we do it in shows. I’m not sure why. I’d love to see it and do it in a show. I think one hurdle is that it’s hard to do in groups because everyone has such a tenuous grasp of the footwork that they can only do it over one span of distance. With every couple traveling at different rates, traffic jams become problematic and messy. But maybe one couple doing some dancing behind someone singing a solo would be easier to work into a show? I don’t know. I’ll have to hunt for ideas.

Then we warmed up our singing voices with some Dona Nobis Pacem and did a Color/Advance exercise. We did it once telling a story and then we did it again singing a song. It was amazing how much more natural coloring is while singing. We often talk about not putting plot elements into our songs, and I think that exercise really drove home how little plot you need in a song. I think I even learned more from directing the other person’s song than I did singing my own.

Then we moved into some faux opening numbers. “Faux” because we didn’t focus on the words at all. We mostly sang gibberish. The focus was on the backup dancing. We worked on developing movement to go along with our choruses and on crisping up the background dancing during verses.

I think the biggest thing we learned from all this was “Commitment”. Commit to your movement, and it’s ok to put all of your energy into one gesture rather than having lots of extraneous movement. As clay said “have a moment, not a seizure.”

We also learned that having a “leader” during the backup dancing behind verses makes them so much easier. So, commit to being the leader. Either take control or if you sense that you’re in charge, go all the way with it. And, perhaps more importantly, don’t be afraid to say what you’re doing. Tell everyone in plain English what attitude you want them to affect or what dance move you want them to do or what direction you want them to go. It’s easy to forget you can direct movement with your voice, but it’s so helpful when people do it.

Then we closed by singing some solos (or rather having everyone sing their own solo simultaneously) with the focus being on dancing during the song, either while singing or during a clearly defined dance break. Frankly, in terms of my own work, I’m discovering that I like exploring footwork more than arm or torso movement. But I also discovered that the more footwork I did, the more natural arm and torso movement became. I’ll have to push that further.

(Sunset from the ACT balcony last night)

Rehearsal #4: Oops, I missed it

2009-10-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

I did not go to rehearsal this week as I was recovering from some strange non-flu virus that had me sleeping 24 hours a day. Here's Clay's picture from rehearsal:

As I understand it, they started with this week's choreographers teaching their dances:

Clay -- aggressive poppy hip-hop
Trish -- tense contemporary conflict (Massive Attack!)
Merrill -- flirty girl pop

Then they did some singing and finally some show starts.

Rehearsal #3: Formations

2009-10-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

Last night at rehearsal we started a little late due to the crazy rain storm we had yesterday. We moved pretty quickly into Mandy’s dance warm-up, which you can see in all of its glory here. And then split up into three groups so that three more cast members could teach us choreography. Susan taught her group a Fosse-esque tap routine. Dave (the group I was in) taught some zombie dancing, and Michael led some sexy partner dancing. The big take a ways were: 1. moving towards or away form the audience looks cool. 2. looking like you’re having a good time is way more important than being spot on with the dance moves.

From there we went over some group dance formations. Things like circles, lines, columns. And ways to move around in those formations. In previous shows we’ve tended to get locked into one or two formations. We’re trying break out of that and make things more textured.

Then we warmed up our singing voices and practiced some Verse/Chorus songs in a circle before attempting some actual opening numbers.

The opening number of Let It Snow has always been very structured. It’s a good way to kick the show off right and set the tone for the rest of the night. Mandy & Susan are mixing it up in several ways. First off, instead of one person going out to set the chorus, everyone is going to go out and “inhabit an environment”. Mill around, interact. Be somewhere that suggests the town. Then one person will emerge to sing the song’s first verse, while everyone’s still inhabiting the world. Then a second person will start singing the chorus. Everyone will notice them. Then when everyone repeats the chorus along with them, they’ll assume a formation. We’ll return to that formation for every chorus, but assume new formations during the verses. That will hopefully spur some more movement. Fortunately so many people in the cast have done this show before and everyone can handle all this complexity.

We did three opening numbers last night. The three towns we did escape me at the moment, but the details weren’t important. The important thing was seeing that structure in action and seeing that it can work and look good. We also learned to “mill” with purpose and energy, to really grab the moment when you want to sing the next verse or set the chorus. The new structure makes it less apparent who’s going to sing next.

Next week we focus more on improv and the week after on dance. The shows coming up fast! Did you know that ticket are already on sale? From now until November 1, you can use the coupon code “SPECIAL” to get 25% off when you buy tickets through our website. Buy Ticket Here.

Every Day Improv

2009-10-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Susan's teaching a class in the East Bay in October:

Every Day Improv with Susan Snyder
Enjoy exploring the world of improvisation in a low pressure, playful environment.
Increase your confidence, improve your public speaking skills, and enjoy the experience along the way. This class is for adults wanting their first taste of improv, and those returning to deepen their range of improvisational expression. Shy people welcome.

Dates: Sundays, October 18 & 25
Time: 12:30-3:30pm
Location: Temescal Arts Center, Oakland, CA
(street parking, walking distance from MacArthur BART)
Cost: $40 single class/ sign up for 2 or more $30 a class

Contact Susan

Rehearsal #2: A Little Bit of Everything

2009-10-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

For our second rehearsal for Let It Snow we did a little bit of dancing, a little bit of singing, and a little bit of improv. Sort of an overview of the entire show.

I got lead my favorite name-game warm-up exercise for the firs time with this cast. Since we didn’t do the exercise during the auditions, this was several cast members first time playing. Even so, it went very smoothly. We made it all the way up to four patterns. It went so smoothly in fact, I kept thinking I was doing something wrong in leading it.

Mandy and Susan want everyone in the cast to experience being a choreographer. At every rehearsal three people have to teach a group of 3-4 other cast members some sort of choreographed dance. I was one of the choreographers this week. We had to choreograph a minimum of 16 counts, so that’s what I did. It was mostly stepping and jazz hands with one complicated turn. In any case, it took me the entire 10 minutes to teach it.

Then as we watched the other groups perform their dances, I was astounded to see how complicated and long other people’s pieces were. I should have done more, but at the same time I showed all you really needed to do was 16 counts. Still, good to see how far people are willing to push things.

Then we worked on the Verse/Chorus song structure we’ve been experimenting with. Instead of starting a song with a chorus, we start a song with a verse. Then the second person to sing sets the chorus. It’s more like regular songs, but can be tricky. Still, it went well. We followed that up by singing duets. Mandy and Susan had everyone pair up and sing a duet all at the same time. That way everyone got to sing 3 songs.

Finally we did two show-starts. Susan had printed out some brief info on small towns that we used as suggestions and then dove into the first three scenes of a show. We did Genoa, NV and Cranbury, NJ. I was in the Cranbury one and played a not-so-swift hardware store employee who confused “asphalt” for “screws”. There was some good word play in that scene including Susan saying “I think you’re screwed” and Dave singing a song about it not being his “fault” they were out of “asphalt”.

The take-aways, I think, were to look for themes to develop (“Nevada started here in Genoa, so we’re going to start something”) and to remember small towns do have upper to upper-middle class residents (we tend to only ever play working-class folk). We also saw perhaps the first scene in a Let It Snow rehearsal or show ever to take place in someone’s garage. Lisa also did some kick-ass space object work establishing the hardware store.

Rehearsal #1: Dancing and Group Scenes

2009-09-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

We had our first rehearsal for Let It Snow! 2009 last night. We’ve done this show three times previously (2004, 2005, and 2007) making it our first quadruple threat show! (I think we did only did You Bet Your Improvisor and The Short and the Long of It three times each, but the complete list of all Un-Scripted shows seems to have not survived the new web redesign. Hopefully it will be reappearing soon.) But we’ve never done Let It Snow! like this before. For the first time ever, someone other than Tara is directing it.

Tara developed the show based largely on her experiences growing up in a small town in Maine. In fact, she was so committed to her vision of the show that she has moved back to a small town in Maine. This regrettably makes her unavailable to direct the show. This year the show is being directed by Mandy with a healthy dose of assisting from Susan. Now, while audience members frequently confuse Mandy for Tara or Susan for Tara, technically speaking Mandy & Susan are not Tara. Rather than wondering “What Would Tara Do?” Mandy & Susan are going to just going to do what they would do within the same framework. Thus the show will inherently be different, because, as previously stated Mandy & Susan are not Tara.

This show marks a number of other firsts. It will be the first time ensemble member Clay has ever performed in Let It Snow! It will also be the first show Trish performs in as an ensemble member. We also have a nice mix of returning and new cast members. The full list is:

Bryce Byerley - ensemble
Dave Dyson - ensemble
Michael Fleming – previously in Shakespeare the Musical
Alan Goy - ensemble
Merrill Gruver – previously in Shakespeare the Musical
Alyssa Harvey – previously in Fear
Karen Hirst – previously in Theater the Musical and Let It Snow!
Scott Keck – previously in… many shows.
Mandy Khoshnevisan - ensemble
Clay Robeson - ensemble
Jodi Skeris – new!
Susan Snyder - ensemble
Trish Tillman - ensemble
Christian Utzman - ensemble
Lisa Wang – new!

And we got off to a fine start last night. We opened with some ice-breaking exercises so we could all get to know each other and then launched right into dancing. Mandy ran us through a series of moves and then made everyone lead the group in some dancing to different styles. It was a workout, fortunately I’ve been hitting the gym in recent months to prepare.

We capped off the day with some improv! We worked on group scenes where several characters ganged up on another for some reason. Why? Because those scenes generally give the audience the sense that the characters all know each other very well. As Keith Johnstone says (paraphrased) “friends play with each other’s status while strangers leave each other’s status alone.” But these scenes are often difficult to improvise, as they can easily devolve into everyone talking over each other.

All-in-all we did a reasonably good job. We learned to focus on nuance and relationships as opposed to activities. I was in one scene the set up for which was a group of people waiting outside for the fishing license shop to open for the season. Quickly it became endowed as ice-fishing season and Scott and Karen launched in with Northern Minnesotan “Fargo” accents. I was amazed at how much fun I had doing the Fargo accent and how easily I was able to do it. Within the scene I was actually aware of how I wasn’t thinking about the accent at all. It was just coming out. I love doing accents and I’d forgotten how much I love doing Fargo.

Mostly though we all did a good job of talking over each other just enough to look like friends, while still being able to hear what was going on. A promising start!

Fear 2004

2009-09-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

This poster was framed and at the bottom of the stairs leading into La Val's when we did Fear in 2004