Fringe-for-all 2009 in Review

Your 2 minutes at the Fringe-for-all is the worst 2 minutes of the Fringe–it’s the biggest chattiest audience, the worst cavernous venue, and the most critic-filled. (The worst critic is me, hee hee) So it’s great to see when some people knock their chance out of the park.

2 standouts for me were As Duas: two women in their underwear (natch) tossing each other around rather artfully, athletically, and uh, let’s face it, erotically; and Terminal: a guy in a suit dancing to a pleasant Lou Reed song while slitting his wrists.

There were also many many terrible terrible acts which I will not name. My 2-minute bit was probably first or second quintile just by virtue of the fact that I used a microphone. (High praise, I know.) Seriously, people, you can’t out-yell the chatty McChattersons at the Cafe Campus. Anything talky does not work.

Thanks to the Fringe staff for seeking out people in the audience to call me because the show was running 30 minutes fast due to last-second drop-outs. I had to hightail my heinie over there and was almost immediately thrown onstage.

So here was my bit for Awkward Centaur. Since it’s hard to convey the essence of our improvised play about a centaur in 2 minutes, I wrote and performed a song about centaurs. It was filmed from the balcony with all the Chatcats and Talkybots. To my relief, sometimes the laughter from the lower deck rises above the chatter. Oh, the last note gets cut off cause the battery ran out of juice:

EDITED TO ADD: Ah, the Fringe has a much better version:

Advice for future fringers:

• Use dance, music, physicality or video for the Fringe-for-all
• If you’re talking, always use a microphone. Walk around with hand-held mics if you insist on doing a scene. Do not speak without amplification. You can’t yell louder than 300 people chatting about how they can’t hear you above the chatter.
• Try to avoid complicated props, sound or video cues if possible
• Don’t pretend like you’re going to get naked, and then not. That’s lame.

Imagine it’s Chicago

Our show at the Nest tonight was a warm-up for what we plan to do at the Chicago Improv Festival, that is, a condensed version of last year’s Fringe show Argument With a Dolphin. The audience clapped when I said we were going to Chicago, and right then I knew it was a very giving audience.

Our transitions between the story in Dolphin and the non-canonical scenes were awkward, the music cues rough, and the story was a story none of us particularly wanted to tell, but overall I felt like it worked. The funniness was there in spades and that usually takes care of the rest. There were a lot of nice playful moments, like the French waitresses who couldn’t really speak French and the supermarket chase scenes, the 2 shower scenes, etc. Our Serenade went over gangbusters with the chorus “Ashley, you’re all the rage. I’m not quite sure, but I think you’re underage.” This exercise helped make clear what we need to work on, but it was also just a ton of fun because the room was filled with all our new best friends.

But we commited a cardinal sin. When your high-school drama teacher says “no homosexuality“, she means that she doesn’t trust you with homosexuality. She means you won’t make it through the story without cheap and offensive jokes played for laughs. I think as a troupe we have prided ourselves in avoiding tired stereotypes and demeaning jokes, but we fell well short tonight. And my ending to the story was neither supposed to be an ending nor what it looked like. On its own, it might have been viewed as playful, but given what came before, it probably looked intentionally crude. In my mind, it is still pure–one person falling into another person’s lap, in a wheelchair, in love, at last. I like that ending.

We finished our set with some Apres Fools pranks. Unlike last time, no one came close to dying Each of us came up with a prank to play on the others. Pranks? Sure. Just things to humiliate or hurt each other. We had the obligatory manipulation that ends with a pie in the face, two players saran wrapped together and my favourite–a “Helen Keller” scene where one player is blindfolded and is made to listen to deafening music while a scene goes on around/through/with him. There was also a scene where players had to hold an orange under their chin and pass it from neck to neck in order to talk, a bucket game and a final hat game with mouse traps. Go gag or go home. It was a lot of fun–accessible and just silly.

Thanks for coming out!

Slowpoke

Variety in an improv show is important. Playing the same type of scene repeatedly can exhaust an audience. This is why dramas have comic relief and why comedies have stretches of set-up. Hitting the same note over and over again has rapidly diminishing returns.

I played the WA show last Friday. I was feeling a little rusty and was looking for a chance to play since I’ve been mostly teaching for the last little while. And rusty I was. The show itself went fairly well. It was one of those shows where the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves throughout but there weren’t any OMG moments that went off any charts.

For me, my main note-to-self would be to speed up. I’ve been in long-form mode and teaching students to slow down for long enough that my ability to do a short and snappy scene has wilted. I need to get into that mind-frame again. I slow-rolled the start of just about every scene I was in even when I was aware that change of pace was called for. There was some part of my brain that just forced me to draw out the start of a scene.

In any case, it was good for me to loosen the improv joints and I had fun playing around onstage, something I don’t get to do very much these days. Already looking forward to the next opportunity to goof around!

Obamawa

Thanks to Ottawa’s Insensitivity Training for inviting us over for a show last night! It was a great, fun night, and they were terrific hosts. I was treated to a Jägerbomb, a shot of Jägermeister in a glass of red bull and the closest thing I’ve ever had to hard drugs. Also they drew our logo on the sandwhich board in front of the venue.. classy!

I think I.T. have found the perfect competitive format: 2 teams issue each other and respond to different challenges and the audience votes once at the end of night. You get to promote it as a competition, give the audience the power to decide the winner, yet defang the whole process so that it feels like more of a love-in than anything competitive.

I.T. sent some interesting challenges our way. My favourite scene came from the challenge “bring an audience member onstage and keep eye contact throughout.” Heidi, Nikki, Sean and I played grotesque but lovable creatures trying to win our audience member’s favour by trying to get as close to her as possible, by singing to her, etc. Throughout, we all kept eye contact with her, throwing ourselves around whenever her gaze wandered. It was bizarre and wonderful. Our audience member was embarassed, sure, but was also made to look pretty awesome. She said 3 words all scene, and as you might guess, all were quite important! She chose Nikki.

I.T. also challenged us to a silent scene, carried out with subtlety by Nikki and Sean. Later, I ate a peanut and had (faked?) an orgasm. Not so subtle. The audience pleaser was a Sounds Like a Song scene in which we all got involved.

What I liked most about our set was the way we were able to bring a long-form sensibility to a lot of our scenes. We played most of our scenes straight and kept a nice pace.

The hardest challenge that we issued to I.T. was to do a scene in French. Obama, having just visited Ottawa, was on everyone’s minds. The French Obama says “Oui, on peut”! This is funny to me in a nerdy way. I would translate “Yes, We Can” as “Oui, nous le pouvons”, because “On exclut la personne qui parle” (i.e. “On” is plural, but excludes the person speaking). Obama saying “Oui, on peut” would be a freudian slip: you all can, I’ll just talk about it. Overcoming the challenge got them major cred from the audience.

Anothe highlight was their scene about a depressed guy burying himself with a kid’s shovel. Now that’s depressing!

I will re-read this the next time we do a bad show and remember that Yes We Can!

Salut

Friday’s show was a delight! We had our biggest turnout in recent memory and delivered what was a lively, quirky and funambulous set of scenes based on monologues about swimming lessons, a road trip to PEI, and going to the gym.

After doing my very best attempt at a PEI accent during the show, I met two audience members from PEI after the show. (What are the odds?) Their accents were luscious gardens and made me second-homesick. They were Habs fans to boot!

Dan made the wonderful onstage discovery that our prop feather fan propels feathers into the air when agitated. This turned into a game of Sean chasing feathers and Dan sending more feathers into the air. One of my favourite things in improv is playfulness and that was a great example.

Dan and Sean combined later for a simple yet beautiful 15-second scene that riffed off the monologue idea of trying to get noticed at the gym. After lifting weights in an exaggerated fashion, they turned to each other in tandem and gave each other a testosterone-drenched “salut”.

And to top off our night, our post-show hangout joint had been pimped out with new leather sofas.

Thanks for coming out!

ImFest Day 4 (late show)

The teams from StoryBox (Chicago), Rapid Fire (Edmonton) joined members of Without Annette and On The Spot for a best-of-the-fest-at-the-nest.

The audience was sitting a bit far from the stage with the notable exception of 2 drunk girls sitting in front of the stage. One was quiet, one was loud–obnoxiously loud.

In the middle of our second or third game, the loud, drunken woman started singing really loud. John from Chicago did a nice job of yelling at the “neighbour” to shut up, then yelling at the “neighbour” that she had a drinking problem and finaly stopping the scene to ask her to stop interrupting. At this point, as host, I should have gone onstage and relieved John, a guest, from having to do this. But I didn’t. Part of me thought maybe she’ll finally shut up; part of me thought John seemed to be better at this than me; and part of me just didn’t know what to do next. The players on stage resumed the scene, she kept interrupting, and they finally finished what was a total energy-killer of a scene. Everyone was feeling rotten, and I was really feeling like I had dropped the ball. At least I had time to plan my next move.

From what I know of heckling, the next step in escalation is to show the heckler that it’s not heckler vs. players, it’s heckler vs. everybody, so I had the entire room yell (1-2-3) “Shut the fuck up, Daphne!” in unison. It was pretty glorious. She tried to brush it off, but under that layer of drunkeness, I could tell that her ego had been wounded. I wasn’t sure if she’d stop though; she still seemed very belligerent (and drunk). Thankfully, she did a little more arm waving, but gave up, went to the bar, got a verbal lashing from the staff, and left.

The show soared. The players seemed to have fun and the audience went home with a belly fully full of laughs. We abandoned the idea of long-form, but the short-form was great.

But what if she hadn’t stopped? What is the next level of escalation? Is it to ask the staff to eject her?

After the show, some of us closed out a bar with the folks from Chicago. It was really interesting hearing about the classes they teach at Second City and the projects they are involved in. I was left with plenty to think about. They were as nice as they were talented.

That was the end of the fest for me, seeing as I couldn’t participate in the final day. I say kudos to Terence for organizing a great festival. And big ups to everyone who performed and came out to watch. Except Daphne. Shut the fuck up, Daphne.

ImFest Day 4 (early show)

The early show was fantastic and consistently so. TSC, StoryBox Theatre (Chicago) and Uncalled For each used their 20 minutes in different ways.

TSC crammed the most story into their 20 minutes, with a documentary about a kid going to jail for overreacting to a breakup. Their loose structure allowed for some very smooth storytelling and a very easy rapport with the audience. It was also freakin’ funny.

StoryBox retold the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel, using a much stricter structure. (They have a 45-page glossary of terms!) Within their structure, though, there is a lot of room for players to narrate, play music, or jump into the action themselves. The most important aspect of their philosophy is for the main characters to experience a change. I quite liked their stylized opening and closing.

Interestingly, the main characters in TSC’s story changed much more subtly than the coming-of-age change of Hansel and Gretel, and yet it was just as satisfying. I think a fairytale does require a more obvious change, but the comparison was interesing.

Uncalled For did a long-form where where it was more about the journey than the destination. Each sentence was inspected and prodded for funniness with great success.

Montreal may have a small improv scene, but I am convinced that our top performers can play with the best of them. Tonight, they certainly did.

ImFest Day 3

ImFest switched venues to MainLine theatre for day 3. It was my first time performing there. It’s a gigantic stage compared to the comedy clubs and TSC. Note for big stage = you have the space, use the space.

First up was Rapid Fire Theatre from Edmonton. They did a no-games short-form set, using a white sheet as a multi-purpose prop. I’ve seen newspaper used in the same capacity. I think a white sheet works well because it’s versatile yet unobtrusive in scenes where it isn’t used as much. Homework: what other props can be used in this way? Joe and Kirsten had good chemistry, particularly evident in the diary scene.

Marc and I followed with a 2-person Uno, our first such attempt. We have workshopped the 2-person Uno a few times recently, so it was a chance for us to put it into practice. We were both very happy with the results. I did a monologue about how exceptional gifted students can use their exceptional gifts to defeat bullies. We followed up with a scene about 2 kids testing GlowOn, a farmer losing a cow, a scary pastor and a high-school with very high-security.

On The Spot followed up with some short-form games which went over well. The rest of us joined in for some more games in a show-ending jam and that was all he wrote.

ImFest Day 1

ImFest opened tonight at ComedyWorks with a mixture of short- and long-form.

I really dug what Dan and Brent from TSC did, which was a 2-player, multi-character story with lots of loose energy, some scene-painting and much off-stage scene-setting and direction. The deliberate choice of being unpolished in terms of intra-scene bits worked really well. The story was going along really well, but they kind of ran out of time to tie up all the loose ends properly. Whatever. The characters and attention to detail were great.

Our Uno went pretty well, I thought. I over-described the format at the top of the set because we’ve been getting feedback that some of our audience members feel lost. I think that some of the magic is lost by describing it, but maybe it’s worth it. Even though I told the audience that most of the scenes wouldn’t be related, our two story lines converged right at the end. So, so much for that!

Terence will be blogging the festival over here.

ImFest continues tomorrow at the ComedyWorks with a show at 8:30. Our next performance is at MainLine Theatre on Thursday at 8:30.

There and Back Again

LtoR: Gil, Nick, Vinny, Sean, Marc

Made it home from Toronto safe and sound. Other than giving the rental car a few accidental love taps, the trip was a fantastic voyage through improv.

We had a second show added to the Fest, this time at the Bad Dog Theatre and it went even better than the first. Everyone brought their ‘A’ game and we all had a ton of fun (always a good recipe). I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to at the Fest but I did manage to catch quite a few shows. I want to highlight three shows that really stood out to me:

1) Zach Ward from North Carolina and Rene Duquesnoy from Chicago put on an excellent two-person show that was playful and whimsical while featuring great timing, knowing when to end a scene and strong character work.

2) I had heard a lot about Epione’s tragic improv from Gil for a while now and I finally got a chance to see it in Toronto. It’s some of the most intense improv I’ve seen– no, it is THE most intense improv I’ve seen. These guys and gals commit to their characters as their characters commit terrible acts against one another. It’s improv that puts some very damaged people on display with no punches pulled.

3) Another stunning two-person show was ¡ATTENÇION!. Jason and Micah from Chicago put on a clinic on how to listen to your partner and finding the heart of their scenes. These guys chased every game to a satisfying end and didn’t stop pulling surprises out of their pockets from start to finish.

Toronto Improv Festival

Our show last night was the first of the evening. Marc, Sean, Nick and I got the evening under way at 9pm at the newly renovated Comedy Bar.

Aside: It’s still not complete but you can see it’s going to be a nice place to play. One of the Sketchersons owns it and it’ll be their new home.

We started pretty slowly with an admittedly sloppy few scenes. But by the second half everyone had found their groove and we finished pretty well culminating with a slapping scene. Those clown classes we took may have gone to our heads.

We saw a few other troupes but I’ll save that for another post. So far we’re having a good time and enjoying the improv party.

Excitement

Whoa. Environment Canada has asked people to look out for tornadoes in Montreal until 8pm tonight.

1) Be careful, people.
2) Please, no trailer park jokes.

[Edit: Ooooooh!]

From the CBC