Just got back from a gig. I’m so very tired. Quite drained! Consider pros like…I dunno…Donny and Marie Osmond. They put on shows every night (so it seems). How the heck do they keep their stamina up? It’s mind boggling.
So very tired.
Tag Archive: improv
Doing it on our own terms
Oh man, yesterday was just amazing. We, as an improv troupe, were fortunate enough to find a small theatre space out in the heart of trendy Leslieville. In fact, we really only came upon it sort of by accident. One member of our troupe lives in the area was and was just passing by and saw that a storefront was being set up as a theatre space of sorts. We quickly decided to try to get in on the ground floor and decided to book a show in that space. That was about a month or two ago. We’ve been hunting for viable spaces to put on a show. Ever since our improv home lost its location we really had to make our own luck. Upon booking the place, we asked our former improv instructor if he was interested in playing after us with his own group. He agreed, and with that we had our night’s line up.
So, if I think about it last night wasn’t even what I’d consider our first show. No. We’ve done three gigs as a troupe in the past. Last night though was the first time that we were charing people. People who were coming to the show were paying to come and see us. Crazy! The inside is really just a box of sorts. We had set up a heck of a lot of seats. We weren’t sure how many of those we’d fill, but we were certainly hoping for a lot. We had all advertised among our friends and family just hoping for a good turn out on our “first” night. There was a riser set up which would act as our stage area. There were multiple hot spotlights available with a lighting board. We were set to go! Minutes prior to the show the seats were certainly starting to fill up. Soon every seat was taken.
I know that my nerves were kicking in. This all just felt big. Sure, the theatre space is small and it’s not necessarily something big time, but something about this night felt special. We were doing this on our own terms. Yeah! As much as I was nervous, I figured that I’d be fine. My cast mates reassured me as well. I mean, we’ve practiced weekly for so long, and we’ve all been together since September of last year. We were ready.
And then the music stopped.
And then we played.
Overall, the audience was certainly appreciative. They were cheering for us and were entirely supportive. Of course, the audience was stacked with sympathetic people, but all the same I wouldn’t expect them to butter us up undeservedly. There were certainly a lot of people who were curious and came off the street. I’m not sure how many of them stuck around and put money in the hat at the end, but there was at least there was a lot of interest. For game play we were all keyed in. For my part, I think I made a couple of honest holy shit mistakes. The big one I can think of is when we were playing a game of 3-way dubbing. In this game none of us used our own voices; we all provided voices for someone else on the team. For me, the person providing my voice used a Scottish accent. Somewhere along the way the scene was getting slightly heated. In a quick moment I lost my head and replied back in my own Scottish accent “Oh I bet you like trimming her hedges!” At that moment I was like “oh shit!” and put up my arms like I’d fucked up. It was an honest mistake but it got the audience laughing really hard. My teammate who was providing my voice was game and used the exact same line. Funny incident, really. When people say there’s gold in the mistakes, they were right.
Yes, it was a good night. When everyone was filing out I didn’t see anyone who looked disappointed. They were all thankful and heaped praise on us. Talk about a high, eh? I was able to rest well last night. I was just wiped out. We were all pleased. We did this. We did it on our own terms. It’s incentive to keep working hard to hone our craft. We will keep pushing. That’s the only way to go.
Promotion of self
Maybe you know.
Maybe you don’t.
My improv troupe is doing a gig down on Queen St E this coming Friday in a new arts hub space. It’s not our first show, but it feels like the first one where we really have something to prove. This is one where we’re asking people to pay money. Man.
I haven’t really pushed it out there. There’s a part of me that’s a little bit bashful about advertising and self-promoting. I kind of don’t want to blow all good will on this first big show we’re doing. I don’t want to annoy people. God knows there are enough people out there that continually self-promote. Do people pay attention? Don’t know. Surely I would want to do what I can to stack the odds in our favour and put more sympathetic people in the audience, but even the slightest idea of rejection is making me gag. All the same, this is all part of this hobby, isn’t it? We’re putting ourselves out into the public eye. I can’t be that shy.
Am I nervous? You bet your ass I’m nervous. We’re good at what we do, but this is sort of a new arena. Will we be well received? And for that matter, will people want to come back? Will I put on my A-game? What about my peers?
Worry worry worry.
Still have time. Enough time to fret, but also enough time to feel good about what I’m going to be doing.
Beer and improvising
Beer makes me a less-sharp improviser.
No talking my way out of that one. Wit just turns sluggish, and I don’t connect as well.
Interesting to experiment with it now in practice, but in a live show? Swearing off it.
So noted.
Making our own luck
I think the idiom that I tend to like to use in terms of the improv-related things I’ve been doing is “having fingers in many pies.” As it is, some of the seeds I and others I’ve worked with have planted and watered over the past few months are starting to bear fruit. In particular, the short improv group I’m with are starting to book gigs. We’ve been in the process of developing a show format over the past few months, and it looks like we’ve got a good working model. We were able to put it to the test a few weeks ago by playing the format out to a non-improv audience. They really enjoyed it. It shows us that we’re on the right track.
At this point, we’ve got a 15 minute slot at an improv jam tomorrow evening. There’s no way we can get our full format into that small window, but it will give us some exposure. After that, we have two dates booked at a theatre in Leslieville as well as a date at a festival up north in Newmarket. Sure, these are all small gigs, but we need to keep the momentum going. The more exposure and real-time practice we get the stronger we’ll become. The theatre company we took lessons with is in a transitional phase at the moment so they haven’t been able to give us much support. We’ve really had to make our own luck. No lie, we’re all working hard to make it work. I’m appreciative that I’m around like-minded people that want to see the group succeed. Definitely, I’ve come a heck of a long way from January 2010. More than just a hobby, eh?
Showman’s night
I had two shows scheduled yesterday. The first was the end-of-class showcase for one of my classes. The second was a show featuring the short form improv group that I work with. It was our first gig using the show format we’ve been working on, and we were set to perform it at a birthday party. Hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere, eh? I had to leave home for work early in order to leave early enough to make it to all events. If effect was out for 16 hours. Bah!
Just like the last time I took this class we all knew our characters and how each would behave. Unlike the last time though, we didn’t know how each scene would play out. We knew that it would be a mafia themed show, and how the first scene would be structured. Apart from that, we also knew that we had to do three scenes for sure: a betrayal scene, a falling in love scene, and a death scene. That’s all we had to go on, and we had to fit it all into a 45 minute show. Crazy.
My character was a butcher named Christian. He wasn’t part of the mafia, but he was well aware of that was going on in the community. People trusted him with info and for him to take care of their meat needs. He did his best to stay out of trouble, but it seemed like trouble had a way of finding him. When I developed this guy I made him married and with five kids which forced him to work long hours in the shop just to support them. Eventually we had to drop those details though. This guy just became the honest butcher. Being that he was a butcher, the day before the show I went to the grocery store an bought some pepperoni sticks. For the show I stuffed it in my apron. Whenever I ended up on stage with a certain character I offered him a sausage, and he ate it. That was a running gag for me. In terms of a costume, I bought an apron from Wal-Mart. I brought it into practice and the teacher liked it. He told me to consider not wearing a shirt but a tank top instead. Prior to, the thought did cross my mind but I felt uncomfortable with it. In the end, I decided to just do it. No time to have fear. In terms of the knife, earlier in the week a classmate called me up. He said that he was in a costume shop and saw a big cleaver that he thought would be perfect for my character. He asked if I wanted it, and I told him yes. The cleaver was definitely a nice touch. Lastly, I topped off the look with a big cross necklace. Figured it was appropriate for this guy.
Not going to go into many details about the show itself. There were some good jokes that came out of it though, like a running gag about shock over Michael Jackson being dead. And there was the thing about the sausage. And then a lot of malfunctioning cap guns. Overall, it was awesome and I’m so glad to have had the chance to be in this class. Once the video comes out on YouTube I’ll be sure to post it here.
After a bit of socializing I took the subway cross town to meet my other group. I didn’t sense that we were nervous at all. I was a bit leery that we were playing for an audience that wasn’t too familiar with improv. Would they really appreciate what we were doing? In terms of format and gameplay, we’ve practiced this stuff so much that it wasn’t much of a concern. Overall, the games we played were excellent. The audience was surprisingly warm. Once we were a few games in, they were really cheering pretty loudly. I wouldn’t normally say this, but we were on fire. I think it’s one of those things where our minds knew that we were performing for an audience so we cranked up the enthusiasm. One game that sticks out for me is a game of one voice I played with a team member. In this game, two people form one expert. The two members must speak in sync while a third member interviews the expert. Based on the suggestions given by the audience we were an expert on zebras that make futons. We cranked the energy up. There were moments where our minds were in sync and thoughts came out fluidly. Other times we were sort of trampling over each other’s words, unsure of who would take control. Sometimes nonsense would come out, like the fact that we were searching Craigslist for goreable people. At the end the host threw us a challenge saying that we had written a jingle for the futon store. We responded dryly: “I would loooove to.” I don’t remember the exact words, but we melodically sort of started with “If you want your futon right…” then in some weird mind meld we sung in unison: “better make sure it’s black and white.” The audience roared with approval. Love! It was an amazing moment. There might be video of it sometime soon. If it comes out I’ll post it.
Overall the reception was ridiculously warm. People were coming up to us afterwards telling us how much they enjoyed it. This is what it’s all about isn’t it? It’s all about making people happy, and entertaining them. This is why I do what I do. Such an awesome feeling. We’ve got some other gigs lined up in the near future. We’ll continue working hard to get ourselves out there. We’re on the right track!
That’s a big cleaver
Really long day. Basically passed out on the couch. Right after work had to rush crosstown to an improv show, then over to the Danforth for another show. I’ll write more about what happened later. Meanwhile, here’s a shot I took in the green room .
Tickle trunk
A few days ago in class, my improv teacher asked if I still had the cap gun I bought for the class show that happened in March. I told him that I didn’t. I had thrown it out a few weeks ago thinking that I would not have any use for a cap gun in the foreseeable future. How wrong I was, eh? The teacher suggested that now that I’m doing this kind of showbiz-ish type stuff I need to have what he called a tickle trunk. I kind of agree with him. Of course, idea of a tickle trunk is, for me, associated with Mr. Dressup. When I was growing up that TV show had a steady presence on the CBC. In it, Mr. Dressup had a trunk with all sorts of costumes stored inside. These costumes were used in various make-believe games that he played on the show. Yeah, that trunk was pretty cool if you ask me. And it makes sense that I start collecting stuff and forming my own trunk of costumes and props. If I choose to continue heading down this path, I do need to keep this kind of stuff on hand. Who knows when something needs to make a repeat appearance?
Recent Comments