Two-Man Show this Weekend

Christian and I will be performing a two-man show as part of the San Francisco Improv Festival this weekend. The format will be something akin to Theater: the Genre. We'll get a playwright and a genre and then combine them.

The other half of the show will be USC's Second Nature who will feature a different guest monologists each night, including DANIEL HANDLER on Saturday!!!

For tickets or info go here.

Here's the skinny on Second Nature's guest monologists:
Thursday July 24th Guest Monologist:
Midori
An educator and columnist on adventurous sexuality, she's also the author of "The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage", "Master Han's Daughter" and "Wild Side Sex: The Book Kink". Midori travels the world presenting to universities, education events, organizations and media.

She's known for her humanistic, humorous and warm classes that help people to spice up their sex lives and encourage self-discovery and personal growth. www.planetmidori.com

Friday July 25th Guest Monologist:
Andrew Leland
To all accounts, Andrew Leland dropped out of college to become the managing editor of The Believer, a national monthly literary magazine based in San Francisco that stresses the interconnectivity of books to pop culture, politics, art, and music. He also serves as managing editor of the magazine's imprint, Believer Books. His writing has appeared in BOMB magazine and SF Weekly. Mr. Leland has served as a Judge for the Jackson Phelan Tanenbaum Literary Awards.

Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler
Saturday July 26th Guest Monologist:
Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket
Daniel Handler is the author of the literary novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written a sequence of books for children, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than fifty-three million copies and were the basis of a film starring Jim Carrey. His intricate and witty writing style has won him numerous fans for his critically acclaimed literary work and his wildly successful children's books.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Handler attended Wesleyan University and returned to his hometown after graduating. He co-founded the magazine American Chickens! with illustrator Lisa Brown (with whom he soon became smitten), and they moved to New York City, where Handler eventually sold his first novel after working as a book and film critic for several newspapers. He continued to write, and he and his wife returned to San Francisco, where they now live with their child.

Handler has worked intermittently in film and music, most recently in collaboration with composer Nathaniel Stookey on a piece commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, titled The Composer Is Dead (the book with CD will be released in 2008). An adjunct accordionist for the music group The Magnetic Fields, he is also now a member of the post-punk combo Danny & the Kid. He is the screenwriter of the film Rick, a revamp of the Verdi opera Rigoletto, and the film adaptation of Joel Rose's novel Kill the Poor. He is the author of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Biography, The Beatrice Letters, and Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. Handler has also written for The New York Times, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, Chickfactor, and various anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories 2005.

He was crowned last year at the prestigious Literary Death Match at Litquake for not only his literary prowess but his mean small basketball toss. In other words, Daniel Handler is the MAN.

Finding the Game, Literally

You’ll often hear improvisors talking about “finding the game” of a scene. We took that concept a little further last night by actually playing improv games within scenes without setting them up or even agreeing amongst ourselves before the scene what game we were playing.

This made for some interesting scenes and some funny moments. People would go out on stage with the intent of playing one game, only to have it morph into another. Max, for instance, wanted to start a silent scene, which Tara then turned into Standing, Sitting, Kneeling, and Laying Down. Unfortunately Max never really caught on to the fact that that was the game.

The scene was funny on its own, but anyone in the audience familiar with the game would have enjoyed it on a second level as well. I wouldn’t want to do a whole show this way. I’m a big believer in not hiding anything from the audience, but doing it this way allows for some wonderfully playful discovery leading to scenes you would get no other way.

I knew as soon as we started the exercise that I wanted to start a spit-take scene internally. I kept my water bottle with me at all times, slipping it my pocket when I’d go onstage, not only so that it would be handy, but so that my fellow improvisors wouldn’t suspect anything like they would if I suddenly grabbed a water bottle before heading out. I casually took a drink of water every time I was about to out and start a scene, just in case. The first several times I did that, the scene moved off immediately in another direction so I just swallowed my water and played whatever game had come up, but one time…

I went out with Christian and sat for a long time with out speaking, while he stood for a long time without speaking. When he finally said something, I spit in shock and surprise and then pulled my water bottle out of my pocket. Ah, the effect was beautiful and launched us into a fun spit-take scene.

My other highlight of the night was Mandy and I playing “The Feables”. I’m sure Dave intended for us to sing (did I mention we had David Norfleet at rehearsal and sang a bunch?) when he went out onstage and said “Ladies and Gentlemen, I now present to you The Feables”. Instead we played really old people telling an inane joke as if we were on a seventies variety show. So fun.

Only one more rehearsal left and then we open! Woohoo!

Rehearsal #5: Acting

Last night we worked on our acting skills by doing some scenes in the style of playwrights. Actually that’s not entirely true. We started by practicing scenes wherein the characters follow along their own trains of thought rather than reacting specifically to what someone just said. This is hard to do, but produces scenes that feel like they’ve come from a play rather than improvised. We’re taught to Yes And so much and listen so attentively that scenes are way more linear than real life. To do it well though, following your train of thought requires a lot of Yes And-ing and listening.

Then we moved on to scenes in the style of Woody Allen and then onto Neil Simon. I did a really fun Neil Simon scene with Tara, Christian, and Dave as bumbling bank robbers.

Next, we practiced scenes that let into duets. We’ve been singing in rehearsal to a guitar, and it’s really interesting the difference between improvising to a guitar and improvising to a keyboard. I think I like the guitar better, but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s that the chord progressions are more predictable. Maybe it just fits my range better. Not sure.

Finally, in the remaining time, we practiced the format, doing a series of short scenes and games. Not sure what we’re doing tonight, but I’m sure it will be fun!

Intros and Transitions

Dave’s vision for this show is for it to be seamless in such a way that it doesn’t seem like an “improv show.” To accomplish that, we had to develop ways to get suggestions and set up scenes without just coming out on stage as an imporvisor to do them.

So, last night, we worked on ways that characters can interact with the audience organically in order to get their suggestions or participation and set up scenes. I’ll admit, when Dave first said were just going to spend some time just doing scene intros, I had a hard time envisioning how this would be helpful, but once we started I dove right it. We had such a fun time coming up with new and inventive ways to seamlessly interact with the audience. I can’t wait to try it out in a show.

Then we worked on transitions, or really, we worked on running little chunks of the show to see how each scene could flow from the next, using what we’d just done with intros. It worked really well. The show is shaping up quite nicely.

Rehearsals #2 and #3

Rehearsal #3 was last night, but I wasn’t there.

Rehearsal #2 was last week, and I can’t really remember anything specific about what happened. That’s me falling down on the job. I remember doing scenes and singing and having a really good time.

Rehearsal #4 is next week and I will be there. I’ll also blog about it! Crazy, I know.

Rehearsal #1: Getting to know you

We had our first rehearsal for Un-Scripted Un-Scripted last night. The exact punctuation of the title is still up in the air, so until it gets set, I’ll refer to it that way. I like the title. It reminds me of “pizza pizza” from the old Little Caesars ads, or the Circus Circus casino.

It’s a short form show, which we as a company haven’t done in over a year and I personally haven’t done in almost 2 years. I’m really looking forward to stretching those muscles again, especially with the cast Dave’s assembled. Unfortunately it looks like Derek might not be able to do the show after all, but even without him I think it’s a strong group.

Last night we worked mostly on basic exercises, word-at-a-time stories, I am a tree and genre freeze tag. Then we moved on to playing some moving bodies. That game really does show you all the different physical things you could be doing in any scene if you weren’t so focused on the words.

Many improvisors don’t realize this, but most games where developed to help build skills for regular scene work, but they were so enjoyable in their own right, they became used in performance. Moving bodies lets one person focus entirely on talking and another focus entirely on movement. The result is very eye opening for both. One thing we noticed, for instance, was the scenes had more head petting than we’ve ever seen in a regular scene, but there’s no reason not to do that in regular scenes.

Then we moved on to 4-way dubbing, which builds your listening skills as well as teaches you to have reactions to things. Since you can’t speak for yourself, you have to react and hope the person doing your voice gets it. Or, you have to react to justify what they just had you say.

Rehearsal #2 is tonight. I think we had a solid beginning.

Auditions!

The Un-Scripted Theater Company is looking for experienced improvisors for our upcoming improvised show: Un-Scripted: unscripted.

Show Description:
To heck with formats! This August, Un-Scripted breaks down the walls between us and the audience, bringing you . . . whatever we want! Short scenes, songs, musical instruments, things we did long ago and want to bring back, things we've never ever tried before and always wanted to. It's a shortform show that will seamlessly flow along without breaks for introduction, sweeping the improvisors and the audience on a ride of improvised possibility. Fun, huh?

Auditions will be Monday and Tuesday, June 16 & 17, 2008. They're group auditions, so you should plan to be there from about 7pm to 9:30pm. To sign up, email the producer Mandy (rhymes with Gandhi) and let us know whether you prefer Monday or Tuesday. Mandy will send you a confirmation with your date, the location (still TBA), and your handy-dandy audition paperwork.

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.

If you'd like more information about the audition and rehearsal process, and what we might be looking for when casting, you can visit the auditions page of our website. We offer a stipend of $50 for the run of the show.

Rehearsals will begin around June 24th and continue on Tuesdays until the show is over. The show performs Thursday-Saturday, August 2 - 30 at 8pm, at the SF Playhouse Stage 2, 533 Sutter St. in San Francisco.

Reviewed!

We got a great review last week in the East Bay Express. Of course the show is over now, but still:

Meanwhile in San Francisco, the Un-Scripted Theater Company is improvising full-length stage musicals in the style of the non-musical playwright of your choice. The group has done fully improvised musicals before — notably The Great Puppet Musical and the holiday show Let It Snow — but this is the first go-round for Theater: The Musical. Over the month of May a rotating cast of actors has been coming up with two-act tuners in the mode of David Mamet, Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. (Simon wrote Sweet Charity, but rules are made to be broken.)

The night we saw the show it happened to be an all-female cast and the playwright chosen from audience suggestions was Lillian Hellman. (No one uses her book for Candide anymore, so it's easy to pretend she never wrote musicals.) Usually five out of the pool of ten actors perform, but this time six women quickly whipped up the characters and story arc on the spot and belted out improvised lyrics to the spontaneous keyboard compositions of David Norfleet.

More melodrama than comedy, the plot that emerged was somewhat inspired by The Children's Hour in exploring fear, loathing, and sapphic suspicions at a girls' boarding school. Susan Snyder became the new teacher, Mandy Khoshnevisan the snobby establishmentarian, Karen Hirst the spiteful gossip, Tara McDonough the awkward nerd, Debra Shifrin the budding idealist, and Laurie Glapa the absent-minded dean.

Some songs were meandering, others remarkably catchy, but on the whole what emerged was often quite funny and more solidly constructed than some scripted musicals that have passed through the neighborhood. (Lestat comes to mind.) When there were long pauses, especially when things were still taking shape, the actors used the awkwardness as a character choice.

Because each performance is an entirely different show than the last, you could see three completely new musicals in the one weekend remaining, each never to be seen again. Theater: The Musical isn't just subverting musical theater by making it look easy — in a particularly immediate form, it's what live theater is all about.

Week 4: Beckett Finally

Last Thursday was my last show and we got Beckett as the playwright! I was so happy. Read more about it on experimentfarm. There’s one more weekend of shows left. I won’t be there, but that’s no reason not to go.

Here’s the summaries of last week’s shows.
Thursday: Upstairs Upstairs – in the style of Samuel Beckett
Colfax (Laurie) and Mingo (Alan) wonder if anyone lives upstairs from them, while Elizabeth (Mandy) and Charles (Christian) wonder if anyone lives below them. When Mingo’s twin brother Milo (Christian) goes upstairs, he gets trapped as Elizabeth and Charles’s servant. Then the worms move in, and everything changes.

Friday: The Teacher’s Lounge – in the style of Lillian Hellman
Miss Prescott (Susan) gets hired by Dean Nickelson (Laurie) and Miss Leone (Mandy) to fill the post vacated after the suicide of Miss Annabelle Lee (Tara). When her teaching style clashes with the school’s traditions, and Miss Leone’s machinations, Miss Prescott soon worries she’s on the same path as Annabelle. Can the Dean convince her to stay, or will she jump out her own window?

Saturday: Gwen’s Men – in the style of Oscar Wilde
Gwendolyn (Mandy) would prefer to live out her days on the estate of her best friend Cecile (Tara) and her husband Edmund (Christian), but the Lord and Lady Trenton (Christian and Karen) are determined to find her a husband. Charles Maquire (Debra) would gladly oblige, but his poetry turns Gwendolyn’s stomach. Until some mistaken identity at the cross-dressers ball and a duel gone wrong cause her to change her mind.

Tonight's your last night to se ME (and Week 3 recap)

Tonight’s your last chance to see me perform in Theater: The Musical!

I missed last Thursday’s show because I had laryngitis, but my voice had recovered enough for me to play in Saturday night’s Tennessee Williams show. We kept it lighter this time, since the audience clearly wanted it lighter. I played a character who smoked the whole time which was a good exercise in space object work, and a character who was subtly in love with Larry’s character. It worked well, considering the main storyline was about Tara being secretly in love with Laurie. (The audience wanted lesbian Williams.)

Tuesday night at rehearsal we worked a lot on absurdist playwrights (Albee, Ionesco, Beckett) and split screen scenes. Something we’d been having problems with. I’m excited to play tonight, but sad it’s my last night.

Come tonight! If you can’t, come see the show before it closes May 31.

Here’s what happened last weekend:

Thursday: Writer’s Block – in the style of Woody Allen (yes, he wrote plays)
Marsha (Mandy) has writer's block until she starts dating her accident-prone therapist, Dr. Allen Goldstein (Christian), who is even more neurotic than she is. But when her cutthroat editor Kathleen (Laurie) convinces her to put everything into her new novel, Allen starts to wonder if Marsha's been grabbing the extinguisher because his arm's on fire – or because her career is.

Friday: Shooting Richard – in the style of David Mamet
Famous actor Richard Sylvestri (Christian) wants to make art films, but his agent (Mandy) and producer (Sal) keep forcing him into mindless Hollywood schlock. When the mob calls Sal’s loan, he needs Richard dead to save his skin, but he can’t dupe the young Hollywood starlet Cassandra (Debra) into pulling the trigger. So he pulls it himself.

Saturday: The Broken Figurine – in the style of Tennessee Williams
Virginia (Laurie) is becoming a woman and Peter Calhoun (Larry) has come courting. Melinda (Tara) tries to talk her best friend Virginia out of returning his advances. He’s a mean brute of a man, but that’s not the Melinda’s only reason. Melinda doesn’t like men. She wants Virginia for herself.

Week 2: Williams, Martin, and Simon

I managed to survive performing in all three shows in the second weekend of Theater: The Musical, but I’m not sure my voice did. I got off to a rocky start when my character had to scream at Larry on Thursday and it all went down hill from there. Hopefully I can recover by Thursday.

Other than the voice damage, this weekend was a study in playing supporting (yet important) characters who didn’t need to be on stage much.

Thursday night I went out in the second scene as Larry’s character’s old father. As soon as I left the stage after that scene I knew two things: I would have to yell at Larry at some point, and my character would die. Turned out that was my only scene in the first half. I had two in the second. My character didn’t need to be in it anymore than that and I was quite content. My yelling followed by my immediate death ended the show. Very satisfying.

Friday my character wasn’t as pivotal, but I got into a great banter with Larry onstage about the fact that my character refused to read specials boards at restaurants. I could have kept that argument up for hours.

Saturday I probably should have been onstage more. I played the love interest and should have had more songs with the lead character. Even so, I did have more songs in that show than any other. Unfortunately I had a heck of a time finding my notes. Finally in the last song I managed to sound good. At least I got there.

Over all, I think we learned this weekend that we need to sing more. Not only will it deliver more of what the show is promising (being a musical and all) but it will slow us down and force us to do less. More singing = less plot.

Here are last week’s show summaries:
Thursday: Southern Gothic – in the style of Tennessee Williams
Charlotte (Tara) struggles to change her abusive husband Beauregard (Larry) on a southern plantation. When the ghost of Beauregard’s mother seeks to intervene, the whole family must confront the truth about their past.

Friday: Pirates & Producers – in the style of Steve Martin (yes he’s also a playwright)
Rachel (Mandy) tries to get her producer sister Carol (Laurie) to make her 400 page pirate romance script with little success. Then she starts dating Richard (Larry) whom she thinks owns a bowling alley, but when she discovers he too is a producer can she make the 7-10 split?

Saturday: The Wedding Plan – in the style of Neil Simon
All Sandy (Debra) and Brian (Alan) want is a simple wedding, but when Sandy’s family takes over the planning, the wedding start spinning out of control. They call off the wedding, prompting Sandy’s mother (Mandy) to dig herself a grave in the living room. What will she do when she finds out they eloped?

Week 1: We Can Do It and I Can Sing!

Theater: The Musical successfully opened last weekend. Our houses Thursday and Friday were on the lean side, but Saturday sold out, which is great for opening weekend. I came away from the weekend with two nuggets of incite.

First off, we can do this show and do it well. Thursday’s Mamet was definitely the rockiest, but it was the first night and happened to be the cast least suited to doing Mamet well. Tara excelled, but everyone else seemed a bit at sea. Even so, it was a solid show. Friday night we nailed Eugene O’Neil right down to his darkly depressing core, and Saturday night we did a highly entertaining Neil Simon. There was some room for improvement on the Simon, but I’m not sure we could do a better O’Neil. Maybe if we sung less in the first half. Either way, I’m convinced now that we can take any playwright the audience gives us and do an entertaining and satisfying show, even for playwrights we’ve never heard of (I’ve never read any O’Neil).

Secondly, I had a bit of an epiphany in regards to my singing. I’ve started listening to the music more closely, mostly as a way to not listen to the sound of my own voice. When I’m focusing on the music, I can harmonize more naturally and singing feels easier. When I’m paying too much attention to the notes I’m singing, I get too self conscious and singing gets really difficult. I’ll have to see how that works moving forward.

Here are little summaries of each of last weekend’s shows:

Thursday: Don’t Screw Up! – in the style of David Mamet
Miss P (Laurie) hires competing photographers to follow her ex-lover Laroue (Mandy), but one of them (Susan) double crosses her. The slow-witted Tina (Tara) figures it out and spells doom for Laroue’s double (Larry). In the end, Miss P discovers that Laroue was right under her nose the entire time.



Friday: The End of the Play – in the style of Eugene O’Neil
Aspiring author Tim (Alan) struggles to break free from his overbearing family. His father (Karen), an alcoholic washed up actor, uses the young Mary (Debra) to recapture some of his youth, while Tim’s younger brother Robert (Christian) resentfully fills the void left by their dead mother.


Saturday: Big Plans – in the style of Neil Simon
Christopher (Christian) has gotten into UCLA, but his mother Rachel (Tara) doesn’t want any of her children to leave their home in New York City. Meanwhile Chris’s father (Alan) is so eager for his kids to move out, he’s started turning Chris’s bedroom into a solarium, complete with fully grown corn. Will Chris and his sister Kathy (Laurie) finally have the courage to stand up to their mother?

Rehearsal #10: The Office by Beckett

We ran another entire show last night in rehearsal. This time I played instead of watching. We even had a little audience composed of the half of the cast that played last Wednesday, Shaun Landry (who was just visiting) and an extra musician. Actually we had Joshua play music for the first half of rehearsal, and new musician Kevin play for the second half.

Our playwright, suggested by Joshua, was Beckett. Fortunately I’ve just read a lot of Beckett and even recently posted my synopsis of his elements. I was all set. Susan was terrified, but she still dived in head first.

I can’t even begin to describe how much fun it was. I hope we get Beckett again on a night I’m performing so I can explore some other aspects of him. The show itself took place in an office conference room. Susan’s character was obviously lowest on the totem poll, somewhat rebellious, and had a fascination with her hand. I played Sebastian, who was onstage for the entire show! He was the next man up on the chain of command and spent most of the show deliberately moving two chairs into place in the center of the conference room. Christian played middle-management-man who did nothing but spout corporate buzz words. Laurie played the gender ambiguous boss. Debrah played a customer. We sold vacuums. The play ended when I choked Christian to death.

All that makes it sound way more normal than it actually was. Again, words fail me at Beckett’s brilliance and how much fun it was to improvise in his style. I understand why 90% of people think Beckett is rubbish, but there’s a reason he’s famous. The other 10% of us think he’s ripping brilliant (and soooo funny).

Rehearsal #9: Run Through

Last night we introduced ourselves to a new musician: Kristen. We've never worked with her before, and she's never really done exactly the kind of improvised music we're asking her to do. She did a great job! We'll have to get used to working together, but I'm looking forward to doing a show with her.

Then, after the musical introductions, we did something we've never really done before at Un-Scripted: We ran an entire show in rehearsal. Normally the first time we do a whole show from beginning to end is preview night. This can be highly nerve wracking, going up in front of a paid audience never really having done the show before. You never know what's going to happen.

Years ago when I directed Fear, I attempted to set up rehearsals where we would run an entire show, but every time we ended up inviting an audience or selling tickets for it, making it an actual show and not a rehearsal.

I did not play. I will play on Tuesday when we run a whole show again in rehearsal. Instead I was treated to a wonderful show in the style of playwright Lorraine Hansberry filled with beautiful songs and poignant moments. Perhaps more importantly this was the first time we ever tried playing characters of other races on such a scale, but they pulled it off quite well.

The key to playing a different race is the same as the key to playing any character different from yourself: play truths not stereotypes.

Rehearsals #7 and #8: Drama is scarey

We had a pick-up rehearsal on Monday night in which we did nothing but play. No singing. No playwrights. Just lots of free form short improvised scenes. We also went over stage combat. Everyone had a good time.

Then last night we did two first halves of shows again. For both we used Arthur Miller as the suggestion. I ended up the protagonist in the fist and I definitely learned a few things about improvising drama.

Years ago I used to direct a show for Un-Scripted called Fear wherein we improvised horror. Drama is a lot like horror with two differences:

1. In drama, the protagonist isn’t in danger of having their face eaten off by blood sucking zombies, but they might be in danger of dying.
2. The “bad thing,” be it death or what have actually does happen to the main character. The buxom teen-age heroine doesn’t summon the strength and determination to kill the blood sucking zombie. In tragic drama, they get eaten.

Knowing this, I can now use techniques from Fear to help my drama, such as talking about how nothing bad could possibly happen to me, right? There’s no reason not to go down in the basement. Let’s split up. (All translated in drama speak, of course: My boss wouldn’t screw me over. You cancer will stay in remission. I can afford to buy that home because I know I’ll get that raise soon.)

Rehearsal #6: Common Language

Wednesday night at rehearsal we had David Norfleet there to play piano and did two first halves of shows complete with singing. For the first one we did Chekov and the second we did Ibsen. I was in the Chekov. Both went quite well, I thought.

We’re starting to develop a common language for discussing playwrights, which I think will be essential for this show’s success. Perhaps the most useful thing we’ve discovered is how to describe one playwright in terms of another. For instance, Chekov is Ibsen with hope. Neil Simon is the comedic Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller is the Neil Simon of tragedy. Beth Henley is Tennessee Williams only upbeat and quirky.

Here’s my analysis of Becket based on the general categories of information we hope to get from the audience:

BECKETT

Theme: Beckett explores the nature of existence by striping life down to its basic elements and expanding or contracting time, often through repetition of similar events.

General Outlook: Beckett is very fatalistic (i.e. life is a terminal condition), but his plays are definitely tragicomic. They can be very funny, but don’t generally have happy endings. In fact, they tend to end without any resolution at all.

Setting: Beckett’s settings aren’t “real” but they are constructed out of recognizable elements. The entire play is a metaphor and not rooted in any specific place or time.

Chracters/Relationships: Beckett explores status relationships. As a result you have characters of varying social status such as servants, parents, lower class, upper class. Often these status relationships are tilted by giving a high status character socially some sort of physical or mental impairment to lower their status. Conversely, the characters on the low end of the totem pole are usually the smartest. Low status characters socially are always extremely low status to the environment, but in a very stylized way.

The verbal pacing is slow. People speak in short sentences punctuated by long pauses. Phrases and exchanges are often repeated. Movements are often repeated as well.

Rehearsal #5: Mr. Angry

Last night we did two mini-long forms. I was in the first one in a group with Susan, Tara, Lauri, and Larry. We chose Wendy Wassertein as the playwright, and while I couldn’t give you a detailed account of her style, I have at least seen two of her plays.

We told a fun little story that centered mostly around Laurie’s character as the protagonist. I good time as a side character in a volatile relationship with Tara’s character, but I came away with a couple realizations.

The first being, playing opposite someone you’ve been playing with forever and know very well is like riding a favorite roller coaster. You know all the twists and turns, but they still surprise and excite you.

The second being, I have hard time playing angry onstage. I wanted to be bigger and angrier than I was, but just couldn’t go there. This was not entirely my fault. The story was obviously a comedy and intense anger might have derailed it into drama, and yet Larry managed to be quite angry in the second long form, a Neil Simon inspired comedy. I guess this is something I need to work on: Playing anger. Playing mean. Playing characters who aren’t nice.

This could be a whole new way to avoid being the protagonist I haven’t explored!

Rehearsal #4: Dirty Old Carpet

Last night at rehearsal we finally started working on singing. As with any rehearsal, we started by warming up a bit with a name fry exercise and then moved into a vocal warm-up. We concluded the vocal warm up by standing in a half circle around our musician and singing a Verse/Chorus song. One person makes up a chorus, we all repeat it, then each person takes a turn singing a verse, with all of us repeating the chorus in between each verse. We chose to sing in the style of a David Mamet play.

We then moved into doing David Mamet style scenes that contained songs. After we’d done that a bunch, we moved on to Neil Simon style scenes into songs.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

We were rehearsing in a theater that is currently housing a run of Jean Genet’s The Maids. They’ve constructed a set that supposed to look like a run down tenderloin apartment. It’s done very well, right down to the rust orange-brown carpet that obviously came out of someone’s bedroom once. The carpet has obviously been cleaned, but no amount of cleaning could remove the inherent dirty quality of the poor floor adornment.

As the rehearsal progressed I could feel my chest getting congested, my nose filling up, my head starting to drift off into the land of loopyness. Soon I realized, it must be the carpet! Maybe its former owners had a cat. Maybe it’s just dusty or moldy. Either way, I was counting down the moments until I could get the hell out of there.

That said, as I lost my grip on reality, I found improvising and improvised singing so much easier. I was incapable of thinking, so I just opened my mouth and let stuff flow out. My brain felt directly connected to my mouth in a very strange way.

Now I just need to figure out how to recapture that feeling without the aid of a dirty old carpet.

Rehearsal #3: Acting Your Beats

Last night in rehearsal we talked a lot about what playwrights we might get form the audience as suggestions and worked on acting.

At Un-Scripted, we typically do a lot of work with protagonists. Most often we strive to identify a show’s protagonist in the first three scenes and then the rest of the show revolves around that person. This is especially true of the musicals we have done.

However, plays aren’t really like that. Plays often don’t have a strong central character whom every scene revolves around. Each scene, and even each beat within a scene might have its own protagonist.

First we went over some of the elements that can make a person the protagonist or allow them to deflect in on to someone else.

1. The protagonist is usually on stage. If you’re the protagonist, you should stay on stage. If you want the other person to be the protagonist, you can leave.
2. Protagonists talk about themselves, revealing their feelings to the audience. They say “me” and “I” a lot. To not be the protagonist simply say “you” a lot and talk about the other person. (WARNING: as with anything there are exceptions to all these rules, as Karen discovered last night. In a scene her character started telling another character how she was about to break down because of her crazy husband, but because she was using it as a tactic to illicit a response from the other character, not simply as a revelation, she was throwing the protagonist role on to the other character.)
3. Protagonists are the most normal and relatable person on stage. If you want to be the protagonist, be slightly more normal than the other people on stage. If you don’t want to be, be weirder.
4. Be changed. Protagonists are changed by what’s happening to them. If you’re not the protagonist, don’t be changed.
5. Protagonists respond to new information, but rarely supply it.

Then we played a game where played 3 person scenes and tried to bounce the protagonist around each character throughout the scene. We chose to do this in the style of Neil Simon for the practice. The result was scene that could have been straight out of a play and didn’t seem improvised at all.

All this made me think: I should be in a scripted play. Suddenly acting seemed so much easier. Just figure out who’s the protagonist of the beat and act in a such a way that makes them the protagonist. Since the script will have taken care of numbers 1, 2, and 5 above, simply act broader and weirder than the protagonist in those moments and don’t let your character be changed. If the protagonist is you in a beat, act more normal than everyone else and be changed. How easy is that?

Rehearsal #2: Banter

Wednesday night we worked on how to make dialogue sound less like improvised dialogue and more like written dialogue. Oddly, improv dialogue generally sounds more natural, and in order to make dialogue sound playwritten you have to make it sound unnatural. Because apparently very few playwrights actually write like people talk.

Christian and I improvised a scene about two people meeting at a bench in the park. Then we did it again with the requirement that we speak in complete sentences. Suddenly we were in Zoo Story.

Eventually we attempted to make it sound like banter. As we worked on it throughout the night we discovered the key, in many ways, is to ignore the improv tenant of “Yes And”. Your character has one thing on his mind and that’s all you talk about regardless of what the other person is saying. You still have to listen, so you know when to speak, but what you say doesn’t necessarily follow from what the other person just said. It’s a logical train of thought for you and your character, but the dialogue might sound like a non-sequitor.

This is harder than it sounds, especially after years of improv training, but works very well. I guess people are generally wrapped up in their own world most of the time and playwrights take that fact and exaggerate it for comedic effect. We don’t do it in improv because it’s so much extra work. You have to come up with your own stuff rather than building on what the other person just said.

Rehearsal #1: Theatre the Musical

We had our first rehearsal last night for Theatre the Musical. The premise of the show is simple: Take a playwright and improvise a show in the style of that playwright… only as a musical. We’ll play everything straight and the comedy will come from the juxtaposition. I mean, lets face it, Ibsen or Becket as a musical is comedy enough right there, let alone the untapped melodic potential of Mamet, Wasserstein, Albee, Miller… need I go on?

Last night we started by getting to know each other a bit. We have three people in the show who’ve never been in one of our shows before, and one understudy who is completely new as well. In fact the understudy has no improv experience at all, but has opera experience. Between rehearsals, my intro class, and Christian’s Thursday night class, we hope to have her up to speed to perform in at least a couple of shows by May. Otherwise, we’ll just enjoy having her voice around.

Then we worked on various status and style matching exercises. Style matching is one of the cornerstones of Un-Scripted’s improv philosophy. If you can style match, you can play any genre, even ones you know nothing about, as long as one cast member does. You just style match the person who knows what they’re doing. This allowed us to do a Brecht long form that drew a standing ovation when only a couple cast members knew anything about Brecht.

Then we closed by working on some improvised Mamet. The newbies leapt into it pretty well, though I noticed a tendency to rush and add more information than was necessary. Christian, our fearless director, isn’t so good at improvising Mamet, largely because he’s not a big fan of the playwright in general. He did quite good though.

I have no nugget of blinding incite to give you all from this first rehearsal. As we move forward, I’m sure epiphanies will follow. In the meantime, you have 2 weeks left to see our current show: Three (also designed to be more like a modern play than a traditional improv show.)

(photo: Brecht)

Let Theatre The Musical Snow

I attended auditions Monday night for Un-Scripted’s next show: Theatre, The Musical. Christian’s directing the show and he was having problems solidifying his concept for the show. Brainstorming with Mandy and I before the auditions started we hit upon some ways that the show can borrow from Let It Snow in terms of how suggestions are gathered.

The basic idea for the show is to get a suggestion for a playwright from the audience and then perform a musical that playwright might have written had they ever written musicals. It’s essentially a way to do a genre combo show, we’re just limiting the genre’s to Playwright, and Musical.

The problem is, how do you get a playwright? If I’m in the audience and am not familiar with the chosen playwright, will I enjoy the show? What if the performers don’t know the playwright?

Well, in Let It Snow, only one person from the audience was from the town, but the whole audience enjoyed it. The performers certain weren’t from the town either. So the answer is to ask for playwrights the audience likes and is familiar with and then interview them to find out what that playwright means to them. Then we bring their version of that playwright to life.

And it snows at the end.

Jukebox Stories

Tara and I went to see Impact Theatre’s Jukebox Stories last Friday night at La Val’s in Berkeley. The show left us both tingling with an inspired feeling that only a good night of theater can induce. We immediately began asking ourselves “how do we improvise this?”

The show has no fourth wall. Prince Gomalvilas tells stories and Brandon Patton sings songs. While certain pieces are performed each night, the others change every performance based on requests and random audience input. In many ways the show felt more like a concert than a play, but that’s not surprising given that one of Prince’s inspirations for creating the show came from a Green Day concert, which he describes as one of the most amazing theatrical experiences he’s ever seen.

While none of the show is specifically improvised, it’s not overly scripted either. They interact with each other and the audience naturally, and Prince takes no care to hide the fact that he reads most of the monologues off cheat sheets. They play trivia games with the audience and effortlessly shape the show around the feedback they’re getting from the crowd. Perhaps more importantly, they look like they’re having a great time. By the end of the evening (which flew by) I felt as though I had just hung out with them in their home for a couple hours.

In many ways, they’ve taken key elements from improv and applied them to theater:
Look like you’re having a good time.
Interact with the audience.
Listen to the audience and tailor the show to their tastes.

The trick with improvising this format is that for these two performers each monologue or song is an old friend they get to relax comfortably into performing whichever one is chosen. It’s hard to improvise a monologue or song as if it were an old friend. It’s not impossible, but the improvisor needs to be exceedingly comfortable and confident in their ability to sing a song or tell a story on the spot.

But Jukebox Stories felt more personal than your average improv show, largely because the stories and songs were more personal and revealing. To really improvise this format, we would have to tell real stories about our lives, in which case is it really improvised?

As it’s not exactly scripted either, it would fall under our jurisdiction as the Un-Scripted Theater Company, but I’m left feeling this is probably the direction live theater should be exploring: combining scripted theater with improv and song. Maybe the question isn’t “how do we improvise this?” but rather “how do we do this type of show ourselves?”

Jukebox Stories runs through March 22nd. Visit www.impacttheatre.com for ticket info.

Our own production, Three, opens this weekend!

Lighting Can Bring Clarity

I ran the lights for the final performance of Let It Snow, and I suddenly had clarity on some important aspects of improvising single-story long-forms like we do at Un-Scripted. In rehearsal, we spend a lot of time working finding and establishing the protagonist, but not much time on what to do once we’ve found the protagonist. Watching the show and looking back on the run, certain lessons coalesced in my mind.

In the show Sunday, Dave A. got frustrated that his offer of letting Susan (the protagonist) use his pig in the Pork Princess competition was being deflected. Why was it being deflected? Because it was too early in the show to be helping the protagonist.

In the Holland, MI show, I uttered a line now famous among the people in that show: “Is she hot? Go to Norway.” Dave’s character was contemplating following the exotic Inga to Norway, and her family was trying to talk him out of it. Unfortunately, it was too early in the show for that. Everyone should have been encouraging him to leave and make the wrong choice, which was why what I said had such an impact.

In the Trent, TX show I should have let Molly’s character seduce me and given her the secret to my chili recipe right away because it was the wrong decision.

In short, during the first half of the show, after the protagonist has been established, throw obstacles in front of the protagonist, raise the stakes, make things difficult, encourage the protagonist to make mistakes, and if you are the protagonist, make mistakes. Do things that you the improvisor know aren’t right, but your character doesn’t.

In the second half, you can start helping the protagonist. You can start fixing things, and the protagonist can make smarter choices and, most importantly, change.

Lighting the show Sunday, I noticed another interesting thing. Karen and Christian were playing Tara’s overbearing parents. They were pushing her to be the Pork Princess, when she preferred cows. Then at some point, without any prodding from Tara, Karen changed and encouraged her daughter to do what she wanted. Her instinct was right, to start trying to fix things for the protagonist, but the effect was to lower the stakes and make the show less dynamic.

Why? Quite simply the only character who should ever change or effect change is the protagonist. If the story has a strong antagonist, they might also change, but generally only because the protagonist forces them to. The side characters should pick an objective or attitude about the world and stick to it.

Karen’s instinct to start helping was dead on, but by changing on her own accord without being forced to by Tara (who by this point in the show had become a co-protagonist with Susan, or rather the protagonist of her own sub-plot) she muddied the narrative.

So, here’s a chart:
Scene 1: Find a protagonist with a want/need.
Act I: Raise the stakes. Get in their way. Get in your own way as the protagonist.
Act II: Help them by changing at their request. If you are the protagonist, change.

Show #4: Protagonist Again!

My last show was the Saturday Matinee. We had a great crowd and got the lovely town of Suffield, CT as our suggestion. As the first scene developed, Trish was setting up Scott to be the protagonist. He hadn’t been the protagonist yet in the show and had expressed a desire to. Trish kept saying “You look blue. What’s bothering you?” A clear opportunity for Scott to open up about his feelings, sing a need song, and be the protagonist. But he didn’t bite. He later said “I had nothing,” a not uncommon occurrence in improv.

The scene ended without a song and without a clear protagonist. Throughout the scene, however, Scott and Trish spoke about their son, a character named Ricky, who was coming home soon for the holidays. Tara and I went out in the second scene and she immediately endowed me as being Ricky. She was my girlfriend. I didn’t want to go home. She was forcing me to.

Ah, I slipped into that scene like a nice warm bath. It was one of those moments when I could really revel in the fact that I’ve been improvising with Tara for 7 years or so. We knew how to play-off each other and delight each other and anticipate each other’s offers. I sang a need song, that turned into a nice playful duet with her, and whamo, I was the protagonist for the second time in the run!

Every now and then a couple other people entered the scene. Our characters found ways to send them away because they really weren’t needed. I think they were trying to raise the stakes, but the stakes were raised enough and didn’t really need the superfluous characters. Mostly they got in the way of the scene. That’s something I think we could have worked on more in this run: knowing when not to enter a scene. Not going on can be just as helpful as going on, sometimes.

Interestingly enough, I felt like Christian, who can often times be a pestering stage hog, did a much better job of staying out of scenes that didn’t need him than he did in say The Great Puppet Musical where his omnipresence onstage bordered on the ridiculous. I speak of this honestly mostly because I’m reasonably certain he’ll never read this, and if he did, I can trust him not to take it personally.

The show went rather smoothly from that point on. I did a better job of getting into trouble, and it was really the first show of the run where the protagonist didn’t like the town. This was something that happened frequently in previous years doing this show. One thing that it does, is make everyone else love the town to raise the stakes. Tara did an especially great job of this. Her character came with me and had never visited the town before. She delighted in everything.

Which brings me back to another interesting moment: In the first scene between Tara and I, when her character was convincing me to go home for the holidays, we set that scene in one of the towns we hadn’t taken as our suggestion. We often find ways to mention the runner-up towns in the show, but this was the first time we’d ever set a scene in one of the other towns. So Massapequa Park, NY has now appeared in a Let It Snow, even if it’s not been featured.

Rehearsal #12: And Scene

We had our last rehearsal last night for the show. At the last minute, Tara made the rehearsal optional, which was good as two people couldn’t make it and a third chose to stay home. We had David, so we sang. I didn’t really sing much feeling the effects of a food allergy. As a result, I don’t really have much to say about the rehearsal as it was all pretty much a blur.

I do remember we did a Cirque de Soliel inspired dream ballet number that was pretty kick-ass. We’ll see if it works its way into the show. Hope you all can make it!

Rehearsal #11: Eye Contact While Singing

Even though I’m not in any of the shows this weekend, I wanted to go to rehearsal Tuesday night anyway because we were going to be singing!

We worked on trios and duets and color songs, songs that have no plot or emotional content but fill out the environment and mood. I’ve come a long way in my singing over the years, but definitely needed the extra practice. I jumped up to sing as often as I could.

I did a duet with Dave Dyson in which we were brothers having just read or parent’s will in which I got nothing and him everything. We were fighting as characters and used the song to fight as well: in the beginning I kept singing verses without letting Dave in. I also learned that I have a problem making eye contact when I’m singing with someone else.

I hardly did it at all during the song with Dave, and in a later song, Tara had to side-coach me to do it during the song. Once I did, the difference was immediately noticeable to me and the audience. I was instantly more connected and expressive (amazing how that works). As Tara pointed out, my avoidance of eye contact in songs is probably an outgrowth of my predilection to play characters that don’t have to show emotion or change (a predilection that makes playing the protagonist challenging).

I must remember to do that, make eye-contact while singing!

I am not in any of the shows this weekend, as I was supposed to be out of town. Now I am in town, but I’m still not playing baring any unforeseen changes. I will be at the show tonight though! I hope to learn a lot from watching it, assuming a get a seat.

Shows 2 & 3: Protagonist = The One Who Moves First

I ended up playing in two shows last weekend instead of my originally scheduled one. I filled the spot vacated by Derek on Friday night.

The first show was somewhat frustrating for me. I had psyched myself up mentally to play the protagonist that night, and went out in the first scene playing an upbeat, positive, normal character. Somehow Dave still ended up the protagonist, even though his character was not very real. How did this happen? I have my theories. Dave simply spoke more in the scene. It was a large group scene and a bit hard to navigate, but Dave had the most to say, even if his character was a bit overly excitable in a way more suited to a side character.

Ultimately, however, I think the thing that made him the protagonist was that when the lights came up he made a large physical offer. I noticed this phenomenon during the Great Puppet Musical, and I find it interesting. The person whose character makes a big physical motion at the top of the first scene tends to be the protagonist. It makes sense, really. Whatever physical gesture or offer they’re making draws focus to them, not only from the audience but fellow improvisors. It’s assumed that this gesture (and the character who made it) is important and we all want to know why.

(Dave didn’t hold on to the protagonist role, by the way. His character wasn’t real enough to bare it out. The mantle shifted to Trish as she was more normal and her reactions real and strong.)

Saturday night, I again went onstage in the first scene with the intent of being the protagonist. This time, I started the scene stirring a space object pot. Low and behold, I easily became the protagonist. I did alright. My initial offer (wanting to win the chili cook-off) was a bit plot heavy, and even though I quickly altered it (to wanting my life to be more spicy like chili) the show still ended up a little clunky on the plot heavy side.

Early on, Mandy was ambiguously endowed as my girlfriend, which gave me difficulties as I ended up being seduced by Molly’s character. In retrospect, I think I would have had an easier time navigating the story had Mandy been endowed as my sister. This would have brought in more of a family aspect; she could have served as my confidant; and Molly’s character could have been my love interest. All of which would have made the show cleaner.

I felt good about my singing, and got some good notes from Christian on how to improve. I also need to remember to let the protagonist get in trouble and make bad decisions early in the show. I should have let Molly’s character seduce me sooner, but I was in my head about how to do that and still remain likeable (which wouldn’t have been an issue had Mandy been my sister).

I’ve got one more show left. I suppose it’s possible I may pick up another of Derek’s slots, but I’m going to assume I only have the one show left. Not sure I’ll aim for the protagonist in it or not. I may want to just enjoy playing around as a side character. I’ve got plenty of time to think about it though, as I’m not performing again until the 15th.

Rehearsal #10: Keeping It Real

Yes, we continue to meet and workout even after the show has opened. In fact, in order to perform in the coming weekend’s shows, you have to attend the rehearsal that week. Why? There’s so much about an improv show that you can’t learn until you’re up in front of an audience. After 4 shows, we have an idea of our strengths and our weaknesses and can go back and work on skills that need augmenting, or even work on skills we didn’t know we needed before we opened.

Tuesday night we worked on improv and acting. We did scenes where we explored the different roles and types of characters that may come up in the show. Tara wrote out lots of different types on pieces of paper and we pulled them before going out to do a scene, forcing us to try different things (although I kept getting “confidant” and Molly kept getting “ex”). Then during the scenes on person watching was in charge of the “keep it real bell”. Anytime our acting didn’t ring true, they rang the bell. Another person watching dolled out points based on how well we used the space, identified environments, used names, etc.

Towards the end of the evening, we hit our high point in a wonderfully rich family scene that could have been straight out of “A Very Eugene O’Neil Christmas”. While it was way darker than anything we’d want to do in the show, it illuminated a lot of interpersonal dynamics that we could explore in the show to give it more depth and a deeper holiday feel.

We call the show a “Holiday Musical” but year after year we avoid holidays in the show out fear of being too denominational. What we’ve discovered is, it’s not so much what holiday we’re celebrating. We can create a holiday feel simply by bring family and friends together, and letting them have random holiday traditions of their own.

One Show Down, Bollywood Style

I performed in the show Saturday night. For summaries of all this weekend’s shows and pictures of the towns we did, see my previous post.

Saturday night our suggestion was Fairfield, IA, which is not only a small Iowa farm town, but also the home of the Maharishi University of Management. The inventor of Transcendental Meditation himself founded the University after coming to this country from India. Huddled in front of the whiteboard backstage, as soon as we learned this little tidbit of information, I dreamed of being able to work a Bollywood number into the show.

We at Un-Scripted, spearheaded by combined interest from Mandy and Dave, have thrown around the idea of doing a Bollywood Musical for years. The idea tends to surface on our annual retreat, where we’ve spent time watching Bollywood movies and last year even practiced improvising some Bollywood numbers.

Last year, during the Impossible Film Project, I did a Bollywood film with the help of Mandy as dance director. That was so much fun. We even had dozens of people in Union Square dancing along. Then, during the Love Show last February we finally did a Bollywood number live in a show, and during one of the Maker Faire performances of the Great Puppet Musical, we did a puppet Bollywood number. All went over fabulously, but we’re still not sure if the concept could sustain itself for a whole show, let alone a whole run. We also don’t want to come off as racist, given that we’re an entire troupe of white people doing Bollywood. However, the idea of doing the Great Puppet Muscial: Bollywood Edition next year has been bandied about as a possible way to get around that issue as well as allow a bigger cast of characters.

But back to Saturday night. After singing a verse in the opening number, I came off stage not wanting to leap right back out for the first scene. This did keep me from being the protagonist, but that’s alright as I do enjoy playing around with side characters. I did, however, enter the first scene as an older local farmer who’d turned over the family farm to his daughter (Susan) and was studying meditation. It was a fun juxtaposition and made for some entertaining lines. (My character inspiration was Scruffy from Futurama.) I got a lot of compliments after the show. A couple improvisors who had been in the audience commented that I have a knack for coming in with a character that fills a whole that was somehow missing and grounding things. Awesome.

I sang a little bit, mostly in a short song where Trish, Dave, and I all sang together. I also danced. Susan and I did a romantic backup dance that seemed vaguely inappropriate given we were playing father and daughter, but we just ran with it.

Then, near the end of the show, we did a Bollywood number! Trish had never even attempted Bollywood before, but after a few quick pointers at intermission, she blended in seamlessly. It wasn’t the best improvised Bollywood number ever done on stage, but it was definitely in the top three. And the audience sure seemed to enjoy it.

Rehearsal #9: Final Dress

Ok, it wasn’t technically a dress rehearsal, as we didn’t dress, and we didn’t do a whole show, we did two mini shows, but it was the last rehearsal before opening, so we’ll call it final dress.

It went… let’s just say that’s why you have a final dress. I was in the second of the two mini shows we did. Somehow, I forgot how to improvise. I went out to start the second scene with the intention of being a doctor performing surgery. Two chairs were left onstage from the previous scene (LESSON #1: if you bring charis out for your scene, bring them back at the end) which I set up into an operating table position and started miming a scalpel. But then realized I was alone on stage and therefore couldn’t be doing surgery. (I should have pulled someone out with me and whispered to them “performing surgery”.)

Then I thought, ok I’m doing an autopsy on the guy who died in the first scene (atypically for this show, someone died in the first scene; ideally no one should die in this show), but somehow that didn’t work in my mind because Dave A, who died in the first scene, wasn’t lying in front of me. So then I just randomly called over my shoulder for Carol to come in, not having a clear hit as to who Carol was.

Molly came in as Carol. Did I mention Molly and I had played two patients at a small-town doctor’s office in the first scene and that her character had no name in the first scene? Well, she came on as that character. OK, great. We’re those characters. One mystery solved. But what the hell was I doing miming a scalpel?

So I made the blindest of blindest offers, keeping in mind that Molly couldn’t really see what I was doing from back stage. I said “Carol, could you …” and motioned towards what I was doing. She said “ok,” and took the mysterious space-object scalpel like object out of my hand and began cutting in about the same spot I was, and asked “in strips and cubes?”. A-ha! We’re in the steakhouse. (As we left the first scene, I had said “let’s go get a steak” referencing the steakhouse mentioned by David Norfleet when he told us about is town. We were doing Marshfield, WI, where he grew up.) Eating at some sort of counter type thing... and for some reason Carol was in the next room.

Did I mention my name was Stan in the first scene? Well it was. Bryce comes in as a doctor. A doctor in the steakhouse? Ok. Keep in mind we haven’t actually mentioned the word steak or named where the hell we are. Bryce comes in as a Doctor saying “Don’t worry, Stan’s going to be just fine.” He is, of course, attempting to name the dead guy from the first scene Stan and bring him back to life. But I’m already Stan. So Molly and I react like, of course I’m going to be fine.

Then Bryce makes the offer that Dr. Marcie (Tara) from the first scene isn’t really a doctor yet, she’s just a student. Well, he wasn’t really making that offer, he was reiterating what he thought was an offer Tara had made in her song from the previous scene where she sang that she still felt like a student. (IMPORTANT LESSON: not only should one never make plot offers in songs, one should never infer plot offers from songs.)

Then Tara arrives and precipitates a classic improv moment. Realizing that we have yet