Bollywood in Chicago

“Sold out weeks ago” I believe was the statement I had heard weeks ago, and yet there was a notable contingent of empty seats in the house Saturday night for our performance of The Great Puppet Bollywood Extravaganza at the Chicago Improv Festival. (I’m fairly certain we had a larger crowd for our show at the festival back in 2005.) Hmm… I am told the marketing material for the festival contained a very poor description of our show (a “90 minute puppet show” or some such) which just goes to show you should always pitch the show you’re actually doing not the one you think your audiences want to see.

In any case, we still put on a fun and solid show for the folks who braved an unseasonably warm and drizzly Chicago night for the 11:30pm show. Fortunately the good folks of the festival gave us a full 2 hour time-slot in an actual theater to do our show. (Most improv in Chicago is an hour long which we learned is partially because theaters rent space by the hour for about the same amount we get space for an entire evening.) Unfortunately this meant our show didn't end until almost 1:30. You haven't lived until you've taken an intermission at 12:15am.

I’m sure eventually we will get some footage up on our YouTube channel, but for the time being, here’s the show summary that will appear in this week’s email:

Pooja, Sagar, & Raja's Excellent Adventure or A Revolution in Time

Sagar (Christian) and Raja (Alan as puppet George) take a job with the eccentric village plumber (Dave as puppet Andy) so they can court his daughter Pooja (Mandy). But Pooja is betrothed to the evil Rajiv (Clay as puppet Dungeon) whose father, the mad Dr. Chowdhury (Jenny as a finger puppet) wants to take over the village with his inhuman ideas about science. Instead of working on her father's wind-powered indoor plumbing device, Pooja, Sagar, and Raja build a time machine that takes them on an adventure across time and space and pirates. Will their travels save Pooja from her arranged marriage, the town from destruction, and Raja from certain death?

I managed to work in the phrase “What the fish?” many times, and helped shape a time travel plot that actually made sense, complete with my character from the future showing up in the present and dying at the top of the second half. This made for some really interesting scenes between my character in the present and the characters who knew I was going to die. Then of course came the highly satisfying scene near the end when my character finally got stabbed.

Drama you can only have with time travel really.

I think my singing was even halfway decent too, as I continue my quest to actually sing in my range. Much harder to do than it sounds.

Rehearsal # The Last

One of the things that those few people who could be at rehearsal last week learned was “Dance so that you don’t get shot.” Meaning, pretend you have a big target on your chest and dance such that the audience never gets a good shot at it. To test that this week, Bryce brought in his vintage 1980’s Laser Tag set, but alas he did not bring enough batteries to run the gun so we couldn’t do it. Boo.

Instead we practiced singing rhythmic choruses that riff more on one note and split focus scenes. Puppets need to hardly move at all when they’re not the focus of a split scene because any movement draws the audiences attention away from who’s talking.

Christian brought up a good point he learned from watching a play in LA a few weeks ago. The company he saw perform is grounded in Comedia even though they don’t do Comedia, but generally speaking whoever is talking faces the audience and whoever isn’t talking faces the person talking. This is generally speaking a great rule to follow as a puppet.

We worked on finding the moment in a Bollywood scene when a song should happen, which is oddly different then song moments in Broadway, which I think I’ve touched on before.

Finally we worked on some larger group numbers and opening numbers.

Mostly though we just basked in the warm glow of our last rehearsal enjoying the last time we’d all be together at the same time.

Bollywood Clips

Clay has been busy posting video clips to Un-Scripted's YouTube Channel. Like this one, where part of the set comes crashing down at the end.



Or this opening number from the show on 12/6:

Week 3: Show Summaries

You may have noticed I didn't blog about last week's rehearsal. That's because less than an hour before it was to start we had to reschedule it for Wednesday due to a mishap with the space being double booked. Alas, I could not attend Wednesday, hence no blog. There is a rehearsal tonight however, so look for a blog about it later this week.

In the meantime, here's what happened last week:

Thursday: Used Car Desert or Road Trip to Love
The life of disillusioned used car salesman Raj (Pepper) changes forever when he sells a bum Miata to the young and beautiful Neesha (Jenny as puppet Evelyn). He quits the dealership and with the help of his best friend Ravi (Clay) fixes the Miata so that all three of them can escape the desert to the mountains! But soon Ravi becomes a jealous third wheel and the call of family threatens to end their fun adventures.

Friday: Look to the Stars or Love Returns... in Space!
Sanjeeb (Dave) falls in love with his boarding school headmaster’s crazy daughter Pooja (Christian as puppet Petal), but the headmaster, Rajeev (Jeff C.) won’t approve of the match because of Sanjeeb’s failing grades in Astronomy. Sanjeeb is expelled from the school and Pooja is locked in a tower, but when Sanjeeb returns to save her he is killed by Rajeev. Unable to live without her love, Pooja throws herself from the tower. Flash forward to a space station in the distant future. Will their reincarnated spirits finally be able to love in peace... in space?

Saturday: Armageddon Wars or Partners in Love
An asteroid is headed straight for a small neighborhood of Madras. An American Captain of a fishing boat, Rex Roger (Christian as puppet Stanley) must destroy it in order to win the love of the fair Reena (Christian as puppet Evelyn). The town scientists retrofit his fishing boat into a space ship and he launches into space. Little does he know that Reena and her entire family have dressed up as men and joined the crew. Will they get there in time?

Great Puppet Bollywood in the Blogosphere

Tim Bauer, cast member in last year's Great Puppet Musical, writes about seeing the show.

As does General Fuzz.

Week 2: Show Summaries

Thursday: The Late Train or Love on the Run
Reni (Jenny) is betrothed to the very large, very rich, and very mean Mr. Rashnish (Larry). She flees with the help of Amir (Clay as puppet Stanley) who has fallen madly in love with her. Pursued and hunted by Mr. Rashnish, all end up dead in a bloody sword battle… or do they?

Friday: H.M.S. Matrix or Art and Garbage
Shubhra (Mandy as puppet Nila), an artist at heart, goes in search of adventure with her faithful protector Rajesh (Alan), but find more than they bargained for when they’re captured and sold by a British slave ship. Will her father Samir (Bryce) save them in time, or will the long hidden love between Rajesh and Shubhra set them free?

Saturday Matinee: The Lost City of Snakes or Buried Desires
Brothers Sanjul (Alan as puppet Marcel) and Dr. Kamal Kamar (Dave) are excavating an ancient city near a small village. Soon ghosts start warning the terrified Sanjul to leave lest they awaken the hidden terror within, but Kamar refuses to stop exploring the site for the sake of scientific knowledge. It will take a lot of love and the help of the villagers to stop the evil unleashed.

Saturday Evening: Devil’s Tower or Do I Believe What I See?
Former Bollywood star Aisha (Mandy) has gone mad. From her mountaintop lair she kidnaps climbers and forces them to rehearse dance numbers with her daughter Pooja (Bryce as puppet Rita) whom she is grooming to fill her shoes. When simple watermelon farmers Salman (Jeff E.) and Rajul (Larry as puppet George) arrive as fans, Aisha turns Salman into Pooja’s co-star, but then Rajul and Pooja run off together. Aisha sends Salman, now corrupted by the glory of the spotlight, to kill Rajul. Will anyone escape Aisha's evil machinations?

Rehearsal #13 and Opening Weekend Thoughts

Yes, we rehearse even after the show opens. Why? Because once you get it up in front of an audience you can know… oh! That’s what this show is. That’s what we need to work on.

So what did we learn that we needed to work on?

We need to dance more. Hopefully a good way to accomplish that will be to do a better dance warm-up before the show itself, but we also worked a lot in rehearsal on the opening number. We have a set formation for the opening number. That’s about the only thing in the show that’s planned, except that even with the structure set up for the opening number, we still have no idea what we’re actually going to sing or dance.

We practiced the formation and the traffic patterns so that people can move around from place to place with in the formation without running into each other. In the heat of the moment in a show, it’s easy to forget where you’re supposed to go. So it’s good to practice.

We also spent a great deal of time practicing how to dance with scarves. Something that happens a lot, but that we really hadn’t worked at all. It’s very satisfying. Susan, who was in the audience Saturday night, pointed out to Mandy that if you’re performing as a puppeteer on a given night, you do not necessarily have to come out with a puppet to do background dancing. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. Especially if you want to work with scarves.

That leads me to a realization I had during the show Saturday night. In the last puppet show we did, and in this one, I would frequently find myself annoyed when a cast member who shall remain nameless, who was supposed to be a “person” on a given night, kept coming out as multiple puppet characters. Friday night, as a person myself, I discovered part way through the show that I was only playing one character, and for some reason found it difficult to come out as another one. We discovered during the Great Puppet Musical that it is indeed a challenge when playing a person to play multiple characters. Why? Because the puppets only every play one character. That trains the audience to make a 1-to-1 association between character and performer. Puppet X = 1 Character. Person Y = 1 Character.

To solve that problem, we had talked about coming out with a scarf or something to indicate that you are a different character than the other one you played. But Saturday night as I watched the person in question playing multiple puppet characters, it hit me. That’s the easiest way to play multiple characters as a person: grab a puppet. Wow, that will be useful.

We did not have a musician at rehearsal, but we practiced singing anyway. We worked on singing in more of rhythmic fashion as opposed to a melodic fashion. Singing melodies is a very western style of music. Hindi music often uses singing to mimic percussion instruments.

We also talked about changing the content and the placement of our songs. Songs in Bollywood musicals happen in different places than Broadway musicals. Bollywood musicals have a completely different narrative structure, which is taking some getting used to. We have trained ourselves very well not to add new information after the intermission or complicate the story at that point. Unfortunately in Bollywood the second half usually starts with some tragic incident. Trouble gets introduced then to reveal the consequences of the comic events of the first half. We find that so hard to do that Saturday night we introduced some trouble at the top of Act 2 and the immediately resolved it, leaving us struggling to make more trouble so the show wouldn’t end 15 minutes after intermission. That will be a major adjustment.

That also points out a limitation on the way we’re doing the show. .Because you’re average Bollywood movie lasts 4-5 hours, and we’re doing it in 2, we have to cut a lot out. We don’t have the same amount of time to develop storylines and characters that they do. That’s also how they get away with songs that don’t really reveal inner character emotions. The songs are very poppy and metaphorical because they have the time to develop the emotions in regular dialog. Broadway musicals use songs as a short cut to reveal those emotions without dialog.

It’s fascinating really.

Personally I think we should only do 1 show on Saturday December 20. Do the first 2 hours at 3 and then the second 2 hours at 8. It’ll be perfect.

Week 1: Show Summaries

Here's a sneak peek at last weekend's show summaries that will go out in tomorrow's email. We had a great weekend with packed houses. Make sure to buy your tickets early as we had to turn people away on Saturday night.

Friday: Naroosh’s Plum or Ambition!
Veeru (Bryce) returns home from the city to work for his family’s dung delivery service only to find he delivers more than just fertilizer to the fair Sarasvati (Jenny). He also delivers his heart. Can his ambition to win her hand be stopped? All he has to do is find the Plum of Naroosh... which probably doesn't even exit.

Ambition! - Sung by Bryce


Saturday Matinee: Love Train or Revenge Is Sweet!
Bashir (Pepper) and Rajul (Christian)have both fallen in love with Anita (Mandy) and pretend to be baggage handlers on a train to Bombay in order to be close to her as her family moves away from their village. When Bashir wins Anita’s affections, Rajul’s revenge takes a wrong turn, but that’s nothing a wedding on top of a moving train can’t fix!

Everything is New - Sung by Christian, Pepper, & Mandy


Saturday Evening: Raj’s Café or Everybody's Friend
Anuvab (Clay) just wants everybody to like him, but as a result he’s running his café into the ground. When his parents kick him out of the house, he’s forced to make the café profitable and becomes a tyrannical boss. Is the cost of success more than he’s willing to pay?

Everybody Likes! - Sung by Christian and Clay

Rehearsal #12: Final Dress!

Tuesday night we did a full-on dress rehearsal. Mandy chose a cast of 6 and everyone else watched. Things went very well. I have some work I need to do on the opening and closing. It’s been a long time since I ran a show’s opening and closing. I’ll get it, but it’s a good thing we did a dress rehearsal.

I also had an opportunity to play a villain, which is very satisfying. We haven’t done a show in a while where having a strong villain was appropriate. I’d forgotten how much fun it can be. I even had a chance to do some stage torture on a puppet. Basically I turned my back on the audience and grabbed the puppet, and Pepper made the puppet scream. The people in the audience said they all imagined I was doing some Reservoir Dogs ear cutting or something. The audience’s imagination is far more gruesome and graphic than anything you can actually do on stage.

Pepper has a great attitude that you almost have to have if you’re going to succeed as an improvisor. The best way I can describe it is “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m gonna do it anyway” and then you do it with joy and enthusiasm. I’ve come to really look for those moments and dive into them. They happen sometimes for me at the beginning of musicals. One actually happened at the beginning of the dress rehearsal. We’d all gone off-stage and someone needed to go out and set the chorus for the opening song. But no one was moving. And it got to that moment where too much time had passed and someone just needed to go out there. So even though I didn’t have anything, I went out there and just trusted that I would come up with something. And I did.

That’s really what it’s all about: trusting yourself enough to go out there with nothing and knowing that you’ll come up with something. It’s improv after all. You can’t say the wrong thing.

One of the other things that came during notes was learning how to inhabit a character and do the things your character would do, while still having the detachment to watch the show as an improvisor. Oftentimes your character wants to do this, but the story wants you to do that. You need to be able to see those things and chose the one that’s best for the show. Jeff E was the protagonist in the show and in a few parts he made choices based on what his character would logically want. But as the protagonist, the audience needed to see him be effected by what was happening, so even though his character would probably want to keep a brave face, the story needed him to show his emotions.

But being able to separate what your character wants from what the show wants is just as important for side-characters. After all, a side-character doesn’t know the show isn’t about them, but the improvisor needs to know that or they risk stealing focus and derailing the show.

"The Set Is So Pretty"

We loaded in for the show last night. The set turned out really beautiful. Mandy just kept walking around at the end saying "the set is so pretty!!"

Here are photos:

Rehearsal #11: Group Mind and Dance

We had rehearsal Wednesday night at the movement studio space at ACT. If you haven’t rehearsed at ACT in a while, they’ve completely re-done the 8th floor. It’s very disorienting if you’re used to the old lay-out.

We started by working on group mind characters. That’s when a group of characters (a group being as small as 2) share a group mind. They may not say exactly the same thing or even have exactly the same personalities, but they are essentially the same character. They have the same opinions and reactions. When you have a lot of characters on stage at the same time, it’s generally useful to gravitate into group minds. It generally keeps scenes from devolving into chaos as everyone tries to get in their ideas. Group minds can also be very fluid. One moment you might be in a group mind with characters A and B and then be an individual in the next moment. As with anything, there are no hard and fast rules.

But it’s a useful skill, recognizing when group mind characters are needed and knowing how to do them.

They often take the form of Character A and their group of followers who are all of a group mind. That’s what we practiced as it’s fairly common in Bollywood (and most stories really); you see Male love interest and his friends (of group mind) and Female love interest and her friends (of group mind).

For some reason, whenever we work on group mind characters, I feel compelled to mention that we at Un-Scripted first started working on group mind when founding member Brian McBride noticed that the cheerleader in Better Off Dead dates the entire basketball team and how the basketball team functions as one character.

But that’s not all we did. As we were in the movement studio, we also worked a lot on dancing. We would start a scene and then Mandy would play a Bollywood song off a CD (as we were sans musician) and we’d dance to it. Because we weren’t also trying to invent lyrics to the song as we went, we found we did much more interesting and fun dance numbers this way.

That got us to thinking, that generally when a song moment hits, we sing and maybe fit some dance in if we can. For this show, we need to think of them as music moments, not song moments, and remember that we can also just start dancing and throw some singing in if we can.

Rehearsal #10: Good, Bad, & Ugly

Last weekend, Mandy watched an obscene amount of Bollywood movies and remembered several things about Bollywood that she had forgotten. One such nugget of knowledge involved the general tonal convention of Bollywood comedies. The first half focuses on the hilariously comic and funny situations. Then there’s an intermission. Then something horrible happens as a result of the comic antics in the first half, and everyone cries a lot. Then everything works out in the end.

So we practiced that. We did a scene where we focused on hilarious comic situations. Then we did another scene from the later in the story after something had gone horribly wrong involving lots of histrionics and weeping.

Bollywood films have a great deal of embedded melodrama, but in our brief little scenes we discovered we were taking things a bit too far. The point is to play the serious consequences with truth and real emotion. Ok, perhaps the point is to dial them up a notch higher than real, but the truer they are, the richer the emotional journey of the characters and the audience.

We also revisited a disturbing (dare I say “ugly”) fact about working with puppets: Puppets, unlike humans, can die on stage. When an actor lies on the ground and plays dead, even from the back row you can still see them breathing if you look close enough. Or maybe they move slightly. In any case, they are unmistakably alive.

When a puppet, removed from the hand of its puppeteer, is placed on the stage, they look truly dead. Because they are. The can’t get up. They can’t move on their own. They can’t talk. They are dead, in a disturbingly real way.

Play Schedule

Here's the play schedule for the show. As always, there may be last minute substitutions, but this is a fairly accurate picture of who will be performing when.

Friday, November 28th:
Alan, Bryce, Clay, Jenny, Larry, Pepper
Musician: Daniel Walling

Saturday, November 29th Matinee:
Bryce, Christian, Jeff C, Mandy, Pepper
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday, November 29th Evening:
Alan, Christian, Clay, Jeff C, Jeff E, Jenny
Musician: Daniel Walling

--------------------

Thursday, December 4th:
Christian, Clay, Dave, Jeff E, Jenny, Larry
Musician: David Norfleet

Friday, December 5th:
Alan, Bryce, Jeff C, Jeff E, Mandy
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday, December 6th Matinee:
Alan, Bryce, Dave, Pepper, Jeff C, Jenny
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday, December 6th Evening:
Alan, Bryce, Jeff E, Larry, Mandy, Pepper
Musician: David Norfleet

-----------------------

Thursday, December 11th:
Clay, Dave, Jeff C, Jenny, Mandy, Pepper
Musician: David Norfleet

Friday, December 12th:
Dave, Christian, Bryce, Larry, Jeff C, Jeff E
Musician: We need one. You know one? Email me.

Saturday, December 13th Matinee:
Alan, Christian, Jenny, Larry, Mandy, Pepper
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday December 13th Evening:
NO SHOW

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Thursday, December 18th:
Bryce, Christian, Dave, Jeff C, Jenny, Pepper
Musician: David Norfleet

Friday, December 19th:
Alan, Clay, Jeff C, Jeff E, Larry, Mandy
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday, December 20th Matinee:
Christian, Clay, Dave, Jeff E, Jenny, Larry
Musician: David Norfleet

Saturday, December 20th Evening:
Alan, Bryce, Christian, Clay, Dave, Mandy
Musician: We need one. You know one? Email me.

Rehearsal #9: Improv in Union Square

Photo from Alamedainfo.com

Oftentimes I go to the gym before rehearsal. I get off work around 5. Rehearsal doesn’t start until 7. I have some time to kill and a good workout usually does the trick. Tuesday, however, I was feeling a bit under the weather. I’ve been fighting a head cold pretty much since last week’s rehearsals. So instead of going to the gym, I dawdled at work and then headed over to the theater, arriving about an hour early.

Only to find people holding auditions in the space. Due to a scheduling oversight, someone else was in fact booked in the space until 8pm. A mad dash ensued to attempt to secure another venue. Unfortunately every other theater in the building was booked. As 7 o’clock arrived, with the cast gathered in the first floor hallway, Mandy decided we should all go to Union Square to warm up for a little while and then return to the theatre at 8pm to continue rehearsal.

So that’s what we did. Fortunately Union Square wasn’t that crowded and we didn’t get kicked out by security. We found a nice little corner under an awning near the Half Price Tix booth and played some warm-up games: The Addams Family (invented by Larry and similar to the Dukes of Hazard game we’d played earlier) and I Am a Tree.

When we returned to the theater did a more formal dance and vocal warm-up (David Norfleet was at rehearsal to play music), and then we dove into two short practice long-forms.

I was in the first and in the very first scene, much to my surprise, effortlessly found myself in the role of the protagonist. Frequent readers know that I am a master of deflecting the protagonist role onto someone else and often struggle with becoming the protagonist even if I want to be. But in that first scene I latched on to it right way without even trying. What made that all the more remarkable was that I was playing opposite Christian in that scene. As I am the master of deflecting the protagonist role (even unconsciously), he is the master of becoming the protagonist (even unconsciously). It was like we reversed roles or something. It was amazing.

I also had no fear at all going into my opening protagonist song. Also something quite new for me, given my historic issues around singing. Those seem to be a thing of the past. I mean, I don’t want to get cocky, and I know I can greatly improve my singing, but at least I’m not terrified of it anymore.

The second long-form included one of the most hysterically funny, and just plain wrong, songs I’ve ever seen improvised. The story involved two competing two companies. A large one that made violent war toys, and a small family company that made peaceful toys. Then came an almost innocent romantic song between a very young puppet character and an inappropriately aged suitor about the peaceful toys of love she was selling. You know, her “love toys”.

If only Clay had been there with his iPhone.

Rehearsal Video

Clay posted a video clip from rehearsal to the Show Blog. Go here to see me and Jeff do our best dance moves.

Rehearsal #8: Opening Numbers

When doing improvised musicals at Un-Scripted, we often decide in advance that we're going to start the show with an opening number. We don't plan out the opening number, we just know we're going to do it and we develop some conventions around how we're going to do it. Someone will come out along and establish the chorus. Everyone will come out behind them in formation and repeat the chorus. The chorus setter will step back into the formation and someone else will step forward to do a verse. Then the chorus setter will return to center to repeat the chorus. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. With maybe a few surprises thrown in.

But we don't know the tune, the words, the subject matter. We just have a framework to hang that first song off of. It gets things started with a lot of energy and it gets everyone in the cast on stage.

Once the song is over, someone, possibly the chorus setter, goes backstage and writes the chorus down on a white board. Then, hopefully, at the end of the show, the closing song reprises the opening chorus. It's really quite amazing.

We don't do this for every musical, for instance Theater The Musical did not feature an opening number. But we do think we will start this show off this way.

So that's what we practiced on Wednesday night.

Again we had David to accompany us, and Mandy ran us through some interesting warm up exercises to try and break us out of traditional melodic patterns (1-3-5). We also practiced sliding around the scale, which is something voice teachers will tell you never to do but is something they do a lot in Bollywood. We also practiced bending notes and ornamenting them in "Bollywoodesque" ways.

The opening numbers themselves went quite well. We relearned some lessons from The Great Puppet Musical:

It's hard for a puppet to lead a dance move.
You can hold the puppets up in the air if they're in the back and can't be seen.
Performers can stand in front of Puppeteers.
Remember to keep looking at your puppet while you're singing (don't sing out Louise).

And many more.

We also did two completely different opening numbers where both choruses started with the words "You can do it". They were so different in fact, we didn't immediately notice the choruses had almost the same words.

Rehearsal #7: Solo Songs

Tuesday night we worked on singing. We had David Norfleet come to rehearsal to play music for us. He's somewhat afraid of Bollywood as a genre, but I think Mandy is pushing and pulling him in the right direction. He will be playing most of our shows, and I'm sure he'll be wonderful. As the producer, I'm in charge of scheduling the musicians, and I still have 2 open nights to fill. If you know someone interested in improvising Bollywood Music, let me know. I also would love to hire a second musician to accompany David for a few of his shows so that David can do percussion. He is, after all, a drummer at heart.

We focused mainly on solo songs, but we didn't just throw everyone up on stage alone one at a time and make everyone sing. Two people went up and started a scene, one as a puppet and one as a person. Then when the moment was right, one character would sing a song.

I sang a song as the puppet Marcel (my favorite puppet) about being in love and air and I don't remember, but it went fairly well. Once I latched on to the air metaphor things went better and I need to remember to sing loud even when I'm not sure of what I'm singing.

One of the new cast members is struggling with the singing portion of the show, but in a very good natured way. He reminds me a lot of how I was early in my improvised singing life, which just serves to remind me how far I've come. Of course I've also worked on it a lot. The very first year we did Let It Snow (4 years ago! Eeep) I spent about 6 months leading up to that show taking voice lessons. I think I'm just now starting to get some of the things she was trying to teach me.

I think Theater The Musical was the first show where I wasn't particularly petrified of singing. Now, I think, I'm actually looking forward to it!

Rehearsal #6: Improv and Movement

I missed the last two rehearsals because I was out of town on business, and boy did I miss a lot. They sang. They dance. I have a lot to catch up on.

We started rehearsal by reviewing the dance vocabulary, and this was where I realized how behind I was. They had apparently practiced complex maneuvers called “cascade” and “waterfall”, and I had no idea what was going on. I think I picked them up, or at least get the general idea. They should allow us to improvise some pretty complex group dance numbers that will hopefully look pretty impressive. It’s all just following a leader, really, but doing it in an organized way. I’ll go into more detail about it once I’ve had more rehearsal time to master it.

Then we moved into improv. At Un-Scripted, we often find that it useful to practice the first three scenes of a long-form. If those are solid, the rest of the show pretty much falls into place. We’re also experimenting with different types of suggestions to start with. We tried some plot heavy suggestions before that not surprisingly made the scenes very plot heavy. Last night we focused on suggestions that were more relationship oriented. This seemed to work nominally better, except that all the relationships ended up being very similar.

One thing we need to get a handle on is family relationships though. These figure hugely into Bollywood, and as we explored last night, the family you live with might consist of a fairly far flung assortment of distant and tangential relations.

We also have some new puppets, thanks to Mandy’s tireless construction efforts and the help of our interns. We needed some new girl puppets and the new ones are going to be fun to work with.

I don’t know that much was revealed to me from the scene work we did. I have a better sense of how certain people play and how to play off/with them. I’m interested in getting to know a few of the newer people and very interested to see how they react to being in the middle of a show.

The most useful part of the rehearsal came at the end when we experimented with using movement and dance to tell silent scenes between a person and a puppet. One person and one puppet (with puppeteer) would go up onstage and interact (with music in the background) as if there were two good friends having a great time or as if one was pursuing the other who was playing hard to get. They were very inspiring. We need to incorporate some of that movement both into our regular scene work and in our dancing.

Next week: 2 rehearsals! And I’m not missing any more.

Bollywood Half-Off for Halloween!

I will unfortunately be missing the rehearsals this week as I am off to Tucson for a work conference. Here's information on the show and a special ticket offer taken from our mailing-list email:

Tickets are now on sale for the Great Puppet Bollywood Extravaganza! We had such a great time last year doing the Great Puppet Musical we decided to do it again, only this year instead of just doing a 2-hour improvised musical with a mixed cast of people and puppets, we’re doing it in the style of Bollywood!

What’s Bollywood? Only the largest movie industry in the world. Based in India, Bollywood movies combine nearly every genre of storyline imaginable with dancing and toe-tapping Hindi pop songs. We won’t be singing in Hindi, but we will be singing and dancing our way through a Bollywood-inspired good time!

You don’t need to know anything about Bollywood to enjoy the show. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a world where puppets and people live together. And everyone’s still got the same damn problems, Bollywood style!

Buy your tickets now: www.un-scripted.com

Half-Off Through Halloween!

All tickets for the Great Bollywood Puppet Extravaganza bought online from now until the end of the day Halloween (that’s October 31) are just $10! That’s half off the regular adult price. Take advantage of this half price offer now, because missing it would really be scary.

Rehearsal #4: Metaphors

Last night we worked on using metaphors. We generally work a lot on metaphors when we do Shakespeare, and during the last run the “metaphor game” became a staple of the show. What’s the “metaphor game”? Well, boiled down to its simplest form, you take something, for this example we’ll use an emotion such as anger, and then you take a random object such as a towel, then the improvisor has to justify why anger is like a towel: My anger is like a towel, it chafes and makes me dry.

Why did we work on this? Well, metaphors are common in Bollywood movies, not just in the songs but also in the dialogue. We played some rapid fire games where people had to justify metaphors combining random emotions and objects, and then moved in to doing scene work wherein we incorporated metaphors whenever we remembered.
We did scenes with mixed puppet and people casts really for the first time in rehearsal, and they went very well. Personally, I need to work on varying my character choices more. I immediately fell into my comfortable stock character choices both as a person and as a puppet, but that’s why we rehearse: so we can push past those habits.

I also need to work on my mouth-sync. Even though I’m right-handed, I tend to be a left-handed puppeteer. That is to say that I use my left hand to work the mouth and my right for the hands. A few months ago I had surgery on my left hand to remove a cyst. I don’t think the muscles on my left hand have fully recovered yet. I’m not sure if I should keep working left-handed and assume the muscles will come back, or if I should try switching to my right hand.

Time will tell, but fortunately we have time.

Unfortunately I am going to miss both rehearsals next week while I’m out of town for a work conference. They’re going to work on singing and dancing without me. I always hate missing singing rehearsals. I always feel like I need the practice, and lately I’m enjoying them more.

Rehearsal #3: Genre Combo

We worked mostly on improv last night. Jeff S. taught us a new warm-up game called “The Dukes of Hazard”, which we all really enjoyed, and then we dove into scene work.

We started by doing a scene here and a scene there, before working up to doing the 2 scenes from a long-form. To get a suggestion we experimented with taking a movie, and then describing a few elements of the movie that we liked. Then we took that and Bollywood-ized it.

In addition to being a Bollywood, singing, puppet, musical long-form, we’re realizing the nature of Bollywood (wherein they take any movie genre and add musical numbers) makes this also a gigantic Genre Combo show. We’ve always done a lot of genre combo work in our short-from improv at Un-Scripted. We like taking two very disparate genres and combining them into one scene where we’re doing both genres simultaneously.

It’s a lot of fun and we’ve become quite good at it over the years. We’ve often talked about figuring out a way to turn it into a long-form format, and… well… we may be accidentally doing just that.

Last night we did scenes from a Heist Movie Bollywood, a Nerds at College Bollywood, and a Sci-Fi Bollywood. All hysterical. We didn’t actually do any singing in these little two-scene slices of shows, but we did try to flavor them as Bollywood with our choices of character names and other details.

We’ve got a lot of hoops to jump through on this show, but so far each one is a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to trying to jump through them all at once.

Rehearsal Photos

From Rehearsal #2

Guest Blog: Andy's Transformation.

By guest blogger: Andy

Hello.

I’m a puppet in Un-Scripted’s Great Puppet Bollywood Extravaganza. When they first asked me to do the show, I hesitated. I was in the Great Puppet Musical last year and had a great time, but I wasn’t sure how a puppet as white as me would fit in a show with an Indian heritage. I’d also had a rough time recently and lost an eye.

But Mandy talked me into it, mostly by offering to fix my eye.

Here’s me showing off my new eye:



Last night’s rehearsal involved a photo shoot for promotional materials. Everyone had to dress up in Indian clothes. I was nervous. I mean, most of the people in the show are white, but only a few of us puppets are. How would I look all dressed up?

Bryce took care of my transformation. He started by adding clothes:



I’m not used to wearing clothes, except the occasional hat. But they seemed to go on all right. Then he came at me with a roll of black tape. What was that for? I thought. He started putting some on my face. I’ve never had facial hair before, other than the fuzz of my fabric face. I wasn’t sure I’d like it. When he’d finished the mustache, I still wasn’t convinced:



But then he added a goatee. I… I… couldn’t believe it. I’ve always been just a little wisp of a puppet with tuft of hair on my head and complexion that made me look both boyish and old all at the same time, but now… now… I look like a man! I feel like a man! There’s nothing I can’t do!





Jenny and I hit it of in this photo set, I might add. I wonder if I’d have a chance with Petal? She and the new guy Stanley were hitting it off last night, but now… now… I think I can take him!

Rehearsal #2: Mouth-Sync and Photos

We started rehearsal last night with a few warm-up games, including Bipity Bipity Bop, which I hadn’t played in a long time. We warmed up to it pretty fast and soon all were having a raucous time. Mandy, who arrived a little late after dropping off the photo equipment and parking her car, said that as she was walking down the hallway to the theater it sounded like a sit-com in there, which had to be a good sign.

Then we all used a puppet and lip-synced part of a song we had brought in. That way we could practice our mouth-sync without the added burden of figuring out what to say. I did Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt. I had practiced it a few times with just my hand, but I was surprised to see how much harder it got when I also had to control the puppet’s arms. Wow, that was a whole other layer of thought that threw me off.

Everyone else’s songs were hysterical. Sure, we can all use some work on our mouth-sync, but we didn’t do have bad and picked up some useful pointers from Mandy.

Then we went over our dance vocabulary again and worked up a good sweat just in time for the photoshoot portion of the rehearsal! We needed to take shots for the program of the new cast members and then take some shots for the flyer. We dressed ourselves and the puppets up in Indian garb and got some good shots. I took a lot of pictures. I’m hunting for a good photosharing site to post them on and then I will link to them here, or embed a slideshow. Stay tuned.

GPBE Rehearsal #1

Wow, what a productive rehearsal!

We started with some warm-ups so we could get to know each other a bit. We've got 5 new people in this show, so some introductions were in order. Everyone dived right in though. We had a very good round of the Joshua Bordy Name Game and then some hilarious I Am a Tree (and that can be a painful game if you're not all on the same page.)

Then we picked up the puppets and practiced some non-verbal work with them, making them show different emotions and playing some scenes where they weren't allowed to talk. It really is amazing how emotive they can be without any facial muscles.

Then we did some short 2 person scenes. When the scene got to the point wherein a musical one would sing, whoever would have sung talked about what they would sing about.

Finally, we started building up our Bollywood dance vocabulary. It's not that much different than the dance vocabulary we did for Let It Snow or the Great Puppet Musical, just with different accents. Man, what a workout, but everyone picked it up quickly.

This show seemed so daunting just yesterday, but now I'm so excited. The cast is strong and learning fast. This show is gonna rock!

**

We had a new puppet audition to be in the show last night (pictured above and below). Stanley did quite well, especially in this scene where Christian, as Stanley, played a hard-boiled detective interrogating a witness. We've decided to cast him. Then I discovered his blog and his audition video for Real World Sydney. He's not exactly MTV material, but I do think he'll work out fine for our show. We're committed to him at this point anyway.

What I Learned from Running the Bollywood Auditions

We had auditions last week for the Great Bollywood Puppet Extravaganza. As the producer for this show, I was in charge of coordinating the auditions. About a week or two earlier, I attended Impact Theatre’s season auditions because I will be directing Briefs for them next spring. A lot of actors didn’t show up for their scheduled auditions slots, and we all sat around talking wondering if actors realize that directors remember when they don’t show up. The next time they audition for the same director, they already have a preconceived notion that the actor is a flake.

When I was putting together my email to send to auditioners giving them all the details on the audition, I thought of that conversation. I wondered if maybe actors had just never thought of the idea that flaking now could bite them in the ass later. So I added this line to my email:

If you're going to be late or can't make it, call me at as soon as possible. Failure to do so will hurt your chances of getting cast in this and/or future productions.

Wow, did that work! Everyone who cancelled gave me plenty of warning they weren’t coming, and not a single auditioner was late.

So if you’re running auditions any time soon, you might think about saying something like that to your auditioners. Having it spelled out like that really hit home.

Bollywood Production Meeting #1

We had our first of an indeterminate amount of production meetings for Bollywood on Friday. It went well as production meetings go. We talked a lot about auditions, which are coming up next week, and we brainstormed ideas for the set and scenery. It’s been a long time since I produced a show and I’m having trouble getting myself back up to speed. I’m sure there’s a million things I should be doing. Right now I’m just focused on making sure the auditions go smoothly.

Bollywood Auditions

The Un-Scripted Theater Company (www.un-scripted.com) is looking for
experienced improvisors for their upcoming show: The Great Puppet
Bollywood Extravaganza!

This November, we'll be bringing you a show that will send our sixth
season out with a bang. The puppets from "The Great Puppet Musical"
are back, visiting an exciting new world: India. Classic, universal
stories of true love, family, and adventure unfold, along with music
and dance, all in the style of a Bollywood movie. People and puppets
will be improvising together onstage as they sing and dance their way
through a 2-hour Bollywood adventure. Don't miss it!

We're looking for improvisors who ideally have experience improvising
longforms. Singing and dance experience is a definite plus;
puppeteering and/or Bollywood experience would be an awesome bonus,
but is NOT required.

Rehearsals will begin September 30th, and will run Tuesdays with
occasional Wednesdays, until the end of the run.
Performances will be weekends, at the SF Playhouse Stage 2: Nov. 28 -
Dec. 20, probably Thursday/Friday/Saturday with a possible Saturday
matinee as well. There is a $50 stipend for the run of shows.

Auditions will be conducted as a group in one two-hour block, with
everyone present at once. In order to give you the best opportunity to
show us your improv skills, we try to keep our auditions as light and
low-pressure as possible (more like a workout or improv jam than a
normal theater audition). We'll even email you the audition paperwork
ahead of time, so you can fill it out in the comfort of your own home
and bring it with you. We want our auditions to be fun and
stress-free, so you can just come and play with other improvisors who
love improvising as much as you do.

To reserve an audition slot, send an email here with your choice of
audition date: Monday, September 15th, or Tuesday, September 16th.
Auditions will be in the Union Square neighborhood; you should be
prepared to show up around 7:15 and you'll likely be done by 9:30.

Once we receive your email, we'll send you a confirmation notice with
your date and time, location, and the audition sheet to fill out at
home.

Let us know if you have any questions. Cheers!
Mandy Khoshnevisan, Director
Dave Dyson, Assistant Director
Alan Goy, Producer