Two Oceans Twelve

I’ll forgo an apology for this being my first post in months. It’s not worth it.

First of all, I’d like to discuss the glory that is Raygun Reagan, my One Group Mind improv team. I am in awe that I haven’t written anything about them yet, but it’s probably because I’ve been too busy being obsessed with them. I auditioned for One Group Mind in August, and only eight people from said audition were placed on established One Group Mind teams. Yours truly was one of them. I was honestly surprised, but I had felt good about my audition. In all unbiased honesty, Raygun Reagan had been my favorite One Group Mind team when I saw them perform before I was a member. I guess it makes sense that, because their sense of humor lined up with mine, we were destined to be together. I liked them so much that I mentioned enjoying their first show to a team member, Nick, before I knew him or was on the team (I saw him at the Filmspotting Late Live Show I mentioned in my last post! It all feels so full of kismet sometimes).

Starting out on the team I was extremely intimidated. Through no fault of my teammates or coach, Mike, I felt under experienced especially compared to my Second City and iO graduate cohorts. Before Raygun Reagan, I had never even participated in a full, long-form improv set. My first couple shows I was mostly just a ball of nerves without too much to contribute to the pieces. My friends were attending, and my teammates were supportive. I just couldn’t shake crippling anxiety at that point in my improvisational path. Despite this frustration, from September to December I found myself getting closer and closer to my teammates. We make each other laugh until we cry in practices, we share meals and drinks and tales from relationships and dates and jobs, we go to each other’s non-Ray Rea shows, we send mass emails that range in content from homemade fake motivational posters to sheer and unadulterated praise of one another, and we revel in how much we love improvising together. All of this bonding and progress finally paid off in performance at a One Group Mind holiday show. We were the last team to perform out of 12 teams, and it was a 10 PM Sunday slot. The odds were against us having a killer set as the audience was probably tired of watching improv at that point. Eric led us onstage with large amounts of energy, and the rest just feels like a beautiful, effortless blur.

We ranged from loud, high-energy group scenes to almost silent two-person scenes seamlessly. Eric created a flat pattern with me (the same line or dialog or action repeated over and over with very little variation) that had the audience in stitches, and just as the laughter would begin to die down, Ryan would come into the scene for one ludicrous line to punch it back up. Jessie mentioned making a dress out of an American flag in an early scene, and 10 minutes later the idea came back as a forum in which it was argued when a flag became a flag (a la the abortion debate). Liz unknowingly turned Joe holding mistletoe into a statue of Hitler, and 20 minutes later she was appraising the statue at an estate sale. Jen wanted to bring gators to the White House, Nick refused to allow it, and Mike came on a few scenes later as a kid who had been to the egg hunt on the White House lawn and now only had one leg. Becca then became the soccer coach of a team full of amputees. It’s impossible to put into words, but the whole experience was transcendent. Multiple members of my team who have done improv for years longer than I have declared it was the best or most fun show they have ever been a part of. My dear Furman friend Andy saw us for the first time that night and sang the praises of the show for days after. He told me it was the best improv show he’s seen in Chicago including trips to Second City and iO. He said it was probably the first time he had been able to consider improv more than just a lot of fun to watch; that it had a definite art form and structure and proper execution. I hope this doesn’t all seem like hyperbole and gibberish, but it was incredible.

In other news, interning at Annoyance continues to be a great experience. I recently started doing tech (running lights and sound) for a show called A Woman’s Path. The first preview went quite smoothly, and the cast and crew of the show were very complimentary. They’re hilarious and have already been a lot of fun to work with. I’ve done everything at Annoyance from working the box office to making programs to editing show pages on the website to making the curtain speech to washing the windows. I’ve made some good friends in other interns and the bartenders who work when I do, and I’ve even bit hit on while working the box office. (That was a fun night, and the gentleman continues to be a nice… um… acquaintance. This is me attempting to be coy.) I’m taking classes from Susan Effing Messing right now, and she inspires me to be the best improviser in the world! She has a warm, welcoming presence with an allergy for BS. She forces you out of your comfort zone as a person and as a performer. I’m halfway through her class, and I’ll be quite forlorn to finish it. Next term I’m hoping to take a musical improv class as Mick Napier, the founder of the Annoyance, isn’t teaching his advanced improv class until later this year. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay involved in fun good things at Annoyance even after I’ve completed a lot of the classes there.

I still have the same job. Thus I still have the same commute. I’d still like to not have said commute, but job searching takes time I just don’t really have right now. I usually use the commute to catch up on the sleep I don’t get at night. I’m currently buckling down for the Chicago winter. We’ll see how that goes.

I Love Chicago

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here goes:

I loved when my parents came to visit the week of the Fourth of July. I loved showing them everything that I relish in this city, and I love that they totally got it. I loved taking them to a few things I’d never been to like a show by the amazing Improvised Shakespeare Company and a concert in Millennium Park (GLEN HANSARD!!!). I loved sharing some of my old favorite shows with them like the mainstage show at Second City, Southside of Heaven, and Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the Neofuturist Theatre. I loved that they were as crazy about my favorite haunts (Kuma’s Corner, The Map Room, Hopleaf, Smoque, and Art of Pizza et al) and my favorite people as I am. I absolutely loved how much glee my dad experienced as we watched the Cubs defeat Lincecum and the Giants from the bleachers behind the ivy at Wrigley Field. I loved that they learned to navigate the CTA like champions. That week was one of my favorite times since I moved up here because it means so very much to me that they more fully understand my life in the City of Big Shoulders. It was a priceless experience.

I loved when my dear dear college roommate Jacqui came to visit soon after my parents did. I love her so much and miss living with her pretty much every day of my life. I love that she was yet another example of a friend coming to visit me who totally clicked with my new Chicago buddies. I love that this time around, a couple of my friends in Chicago even decided that I surround myself with very interesting and interested people then realized this included them, too. I loved taking Jacqui to a couple of comedy shows of varying “exposure” (one small show of of two independent sketch groups, The Nerdologues and Carl’s Backyard, and one called Tiny Fascists at the Annoyance Theatre full of established Chicago improvers), and her loving both of them. I loved having an excuse to go to Art of Pizza and Kuma’s Corner for the second time in as many weeks. I loved hitting up yet another Cubs game, this time getting to watch the Cubs take down Jacqui’s beloved Halladay and his band of Phucking Philles. I loved that we went to Cubby Bear because it’s not usually somewhere I’d frequent without someone like Jacqui by my side. I loved the band that played that night (Rod Tuffcurls & The Bench Press. They played “Dayman” from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The Confrontation” from Les Misérables to the tune of “Dream On” by Aerosmith, “Fuck Her Gently” by Tenacious D, “America, Fuck Yeah” from Team America: World Police, “Dracula’s Lament” from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and “Billy Madison’s Victory Song” (do you have any more gum?) from the end of Billy Madison… It was unspeakably incredible). I love that we met 5 guys from New Jersey who were actually really cool despite all that was stacked against them (they were Phillies fans… from New Jersey). I loved hanging out with them until the wee hours of the morning. I love that I think our fates for the rest of the night were sealed when I had a sing-off with one of the guys during “Fuck Her Gently,” and he actually totally held his own while I impressed them greatly. It was the best possible way I could have sent off Jacqui on her last night in a city that I watched her fall in love with.

I love that in late May I met a guy at a party who loved my Andy Richter t-shirt, had recently graduated from iO, and could carry on a lengthy conversation about the WTF podcast with Marc Maron along with many other comedy nerd topics. I love that during the Chicago Just for Laughs festival we saw Bobcat Goldthwait do stand-up at the Mayne Stage and Scott Adsit & John Lutz from 30 Rock do a long-form improv set at iO in the same night. I love that a few nights later we saw TJ Jagodowski (a Chicago improv demigod) & Michael Patrick O’Brien (a current SNL writer who got his start in Chicago) do a long form improv set followed by a sketch show by SNL featured player Paul Brittain & one of the funniest performers I’ve seen in Chicago, Jet Eveleth. I love that he put up with how much I FREAKED THE EFF OUT when I got to see the U2 360 Tour at Soldier Field. I think that was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. Not a joke or hyperbole or anything of that sort. I couldn’t deal with the awe I was experiencing that it was actually happening. That I was watching U2 put on the best stadium concert I’ve ever seen. I was at a loss for words to describe the experience, and I’m still reeling at the thought that I actually had it at all. I love that he also puts up with how passionate (read: inordinately pissed off) I get about baseball. I don’t think he knew what he was getting himself into when he invited me over to watch the All Star Game (of all useless, ridiculous things), and I kept yelling every time Bruce Bochy put in a pitcher that wasn’t one of the Braves. I love that for the past 2 months we’ve been spending all kinds of time together and can’t seem to run out of things to talk about and laugh about and share with one another. Ben is a wonderful human being. Thanks Chicago.

I love my improv class at the Annoyance Theatre. I love that now that I’m in level three, some of us have been in classes together since January. I love that I’ve helped workshop a script one of my classmates is writing. I love that another classmate whom I find absolutely hilarious recently suggested we start a two woman troupe together because she also finds me really talented. I love that because a lot of us have been improving together and hanging out outside of class for a few months, we’re starting to pick up on and play into one another’s strengths in scenes. I love that my level two teacher, Megan, found me so responsible and sane that she recommended me to the managing director of the Annoyance, Tyler, to be an intern. I love that Tyler told me I was so highly recommended that he found a time in my schedule that I could help. I love interning at the theatre. I love meeting the bartenders, performers, techies, and patrons of the theatre. I love that Tyler has been so impressed that he continues to mention that he is impressed by me every time I work. I love that he thinks it’s cool that I have a chemistry degree and work at a pharmaceutical company and thus mentions this to most people he introduces me to. I love that these classes and interning and the people I’m meeting through them make me feel like I’m becoming a part of a creative community in Chicago. I’ve been waiting for and working towards this feeling since I moved here, so it’s made me so very happy.

I loved last Saturday night. I love that it all started with me sending a tweet to one of the hosts of my first podcast love, Filmspotting. I love that the host, Adam, also loves WTF with Marc Maron and tweeted this fact. I love that when I told him that Marc was coming to the Mayne Stage in Chicago, he suggested we have a Filmspotting meet-up for the event. I love that he enlisted my help to find a good bar to head to between Marc’s show and The Late Live Show at Second City that the hosts of Filmspotting were guests on that night. I love that in return for securing a suitable bar, he gave me a free ticket to both shows. I loved passing Marc Maron outside the Mayne Stage and giving him my best wishes for a great show. I loved that he thanked me for coming and that he had an incredible, personal, and engaging set. I loved hanging out with other Marc Maron and Filmspotting enthusiasts before seeing the Late Live Show for the first time and that some Chicago comics have put together their very own late night talk show. I loved that after the show, the hosts of Filmspotting and many of their fans returned to the bar for a few more drinks at which point I got to talk to Adam from Filmspotting and his wife (who is a chemist!) at length. I love that Adam confessed that while I have a nice name he absolutely loves my Twitter handle (The Token Ginger) and had been referring to me in emails and to his wife as such. I love that I got to talk to the other host, Matty, for long enough that he tossed a free Filmspotting t-shirt my way. This is the kind of night that I relish in Chicago. This is what I love about my city. This couldn’t happen in this way anywhere else.

I think that’s it. I hope the redundancy didn’t make you want to hurt yourself, but I guess if you’ve made it this far it wasn’t so bad. I think I’ve gotten my feelings and goings on in the city across sufficiently. Here’s to more frequent updating in the future…

Sweet Home Chicago

I've been a college graduate for a touch over a year.

I've lived in Chicago, IL, for a touch over 8 months.

I've worked at Baxter Healthcare in Round Lake, IL, for a touch over 6 months.

Here's a recap:

Job- I don't mind it. I've been going through complaints filed against a home peritoneal dialysis machine and other varied renal products to find what should and shouldn't be reportable to the FDA. Most of the others I work with are also recent college grads, and I've befriended 3 or 4 of them quite closely. I think we all bonded over a similar level of enjoyment in film, but the friendships have flourished from there. With them I've discovered many new favorite beers,restaurants, and burger joints (and if you ever go to Kuma's, you'll understand why it gets a separate mention as the best burger joint in the city of big shoulders...), but I've also learned that it's easier to do something you don't really enjoy doing if you're doing it with people you enjoy the company of. The toughest part of the last 6 months (aside from the GD weather in January and February that would drive ANYONE into depression) was a 4 week period during which I worked an average of 60 hours a week. It was pretty soul-crushing, but I made a great deal of money that will come in handy when I am inevitably a starving artist. The first project we were brought on for has come to a close, but another 6-10 month temporary project has been offered to most of us. I've chosen to take the 2nd position despite the continuing annoyance of the lengthy commute.

Improv- I started taking an 8-week beginner improv course at The Annoyance in March. The other students in the class had such varied backgrounds in improv that it made the scene work a challenge... which I actually liked. I got to learn a lot of new techniques, games, and concepts that I'd never thought about before (I've never really been schooled in improv before... I've only improved with people with more experience than I). I also got an opportunity to review a lot of simple ideas that I've worked with for years. Most of the people in the class (including myself, Jacob, and most of the people I enjoyed working with in the beginner class) have now signed up and taken 2 classes of the 2nd level at Annoyance. The more experienced members of the class have invited classmates to shows they've been a part of, and I've gone to a few. I'm excited to feel as though I am building a new community of artists. When I went to a night of stand-up by a group of all female comedians called The Kates, the member of my class that invited all of us to the show as she performs with them on occasion was SO excited that I (was the only one who) came. She also invited me to join a group of a few of The Kates called The Writer Girls. TWG meet every other week to share stories, bits, and insecurities to improve their comedy together. I went to my first meeting a few days ago, and I look forward to learning about writing for comedy in the same way I learned about improv. I went to an open mic with them... stand-up comedy makes me want to barf at how difficult it seems, but I'm willing to try it.

Fun Things- I've seen many plays, comedy shows, and sporting events in the last few months. I've attended 3 shows at The Second City, 2 at The Annoyance, 2 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and 1 each at The Lookingglass Theatre, The Goodman, and Steppenwolf among a few others. They were all JUST incredible. The Lookingglass production of Peter Pan made me feel like a child in a wonderfully whimsical and incredibly creative way. Seeing The Second City's mainstage revue Southside of Heaven during its previews was a thrilling and laugh-filled experience. Seeing a touring production from Ireland by one of my favorite playwrights is something that I could do in very few cities... Chicago is one of them, and The Cripple of Inishmaan was remarkable. Martin McDonagh forever! The Goodman and Steppenwolf live up the their reputations, and I hope to see many more productions at both cites. On a less creative note, I've been to 2 games at Wrigley Field...... WRIGLEY FIELD. I sat 4 rows behind home plate at one game! I also went to an Atlanta Braves game at Miller Park in Milwaukee. The team I wanted to win lost all 3 times... BUT! I love baseball! And I had a great time at every game! And I've been trying to follow the Braves as well as I can outside the South. They're doing pretty well thus far. Especially Brian McCann. He's incredible.

That's pretty much my life right now. I can't believe how long I've been a college graduate. I can't believe how long I've lived here. But I'm ok with the progress I've made thus far, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

PS- Here are some things I'm obsessed with right now:

Marc Maron's WTFpod - interviews with comedians by a comedian. They talk about all of the great and horrible things about being comedians which are a lot of the same great and horrible things about life. Ken Jeong, Mike DeStefano, and Stephen Tobolowsky have had the most remarkable stories thus far, but my favorites Aziz Ansari, Conan O'Brien, and Patton Oswalt have (of course) been fun to listen to. Ladies are also fairly well represented in Kathleen Madigan and Maria Bamford.

Tina Fey's Bossypants - Don't ask questions. Read the damn book.

NBC's Parks and Recreation - Everything about it. The writing, the cast, the heart, the laughs... everything. Adam Scott.

The Hunger Games - I haven't finished the 3rd book in the trilogy yet because I stopped to read Bossypants. I'm following the movie-making progress, too. Thus far Jennifer Lawrence and Woody Harrelson are the best casting choices, but we'll see about the rest.

Bridesmaids, The United States of Tara, and The State also get honorable mentions. Seek out and watch all of them.

Another opening, another show...

I've done what I always fear I'll do: not keep up with something that I set out to. I've not updated at all regarding the journey of The Miser: Improvised. There were a couple of extenuating circumstances that occurred outside of the rehearsal process that became time consumers. I worked for the Furman chem department for 2 weeks which was nice as it's always good to actually have monetary income. I also managed to contract mononucleosis which was not nice as I felt at one point that I'd never be well again (& that was 4 days before the show opened. Boy... do I have great timing...) Even though I gave poor Murdock a director's nightmare, I managed to fight off mono with lots of sleep, off-brand Extra-strength Tylenol, and season 4 of The Wire all without missing a rehearsal (though I was admittedly a bit worthless during parts of a couple). With all of that aside, I hope I can catch everyone up to speed a bit on the course of the show.

Murdock did actually "cast" the show with each character in the show only being played by one person (with a couple of minor exceptions that happen because it's improv and we can do that kind of thing). Most members of the company are playing 1 or 2 characters. Because of the distribution of supporting characters throughout the show, I've been saddled with playing 3. Most of us are also playing bumbling servants with names we spontaneously made up (mine is Gobi and for some reason most of the rest of the cast really likes Gobi). The closest thing I can think of to compare the servant characters to is Pokemon because the only speech they use is their own names.

The bulk rehearsal process was a lot like that of a typical play. We put a lot of focus on developing the characters we were playing, but we also had to work each scene enough times to ensure that we were hitting all of the necessary plot points with the right pacing and rough blocking. The plot thing is a bit easier to manage in a scripted play, but with all of the dialog being improvised the scenes had to be tailored to include important information to the course of the show without letting the scenes drag on too long. With the exception of a few early additions, we incorporated most of the improvisational elements that include audience suggestions in the last week of rehearsal. The most prevalent elements are blind lines (random lines of dialog written on slips of paper by audience members before that show starts) and hesitations (by snapping his or her fingers any character can get a word from the audience to work into a line of dialog), but there are also impromptu songs, genres, stimuli and responses, accidents, and miming thrown in.

Last night was opening night. I was really excited to see how everything would come together. The suggestions were pretty solid across the board despite a little bit of hesitation in volunteering them, and a lot of new things happened. I felt good about a lot of what I did as my most significant character, Frosine. Laura-Ann was especially hysterical as her schizophrenic Master Jacques character. We played to a small but receptive house, and everyone I talked to seemed to really enjoy it. The people who'd seen plenty of Improv!able Cause short-form shows before really appreciated this new way of seeing a production with some old familiar ways of getting suggestions and such. While there are some very silly aspects of the show, I think most of the best comedy comes from the earnest characters that have been developed. I'd really like to see more people at performances for the rest of the run, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing, all cool

So the summer has finally brought me something creative to work on. For the past 4 days I’ve been rehearsing in Greenville with a company that has been dubbed by its director, Murdock, The Molière Improv Project. That makes us sound really awesome… and with good reason. The company is comprised of past and present members of Improv!able Cause that span from the class of 2006 (Jeb) to the class of 2013 (Caroline). All of us signed on to this project without knowing exactly what to expect aside from the fact that we’re reworking Molière’s The Miser and that we’d be working with some great improvers (some of whom have improved together before and some of whom didn’t officially meet until the first day of rehearsal). The official title of the show is The Miser: Improvised. Word.

Thus far the rehearsals have been fairly focused on character development. Through a character circle exercise, we’ve taken 4 Miser characters from brainstormed traits to physical neutral stance to default gestures indicating things like surprise, love, and the formulation of an idea. One funny occurrence presented itself after we had created the character Harpagon. The members of the company were in a line standing in Harpagon’s neutral stance and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with each member saying a few words at a time to get used to how he would speak. When we tried to think of something else we all knew to recite that wasn’t super repetitive (i.e. Row, Row, Row Your Boat or Mary Had a Little Lamb) or religious (i.e. The Lord’s Prayer or The Apostle’s Creed), we were pretty stumped. That is, until someone suggested the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Belair. Sure enough, we all knew the words. However, it was pretty difficult to be a 60+-year-old man with a hunched back, gnarled hands, and slightly bowed legs while saying the phrase “shooting some b-ball.” I just thought it was an interesting comment on our personalities and society that the only things we could come up with that we all knew were nursery rhymes, prayers, and Fresh Prince.

Last night we put the first scene on its feet. The idea is that we know the outline of what occurs in the established scene and the traits of the characters in it, but the dialog is fairly improvised. We started with one pair of performers, Caroline and Jacob, playing the young lovers Valère and Élise. They first did the scene in gibberish then replayed the scene with improvised lines. The result was very funny. There were some rough patches and things that didn’t get covered that will need to for the sake of the plot, but overall that first scene was very solid. It was very reassuring to see the idea for the project actually take shape and work well. Following the first pair, two other pairs did the same exercise, first Laura-Ann and I then Bryson and Brian. Every time the scene was played, new things were discovered, old bits were reworked, and everyone got big laughs from the rest of the company. After rehearsal, Murdock mentioned to Jacob and I that he was very impressed at everyone’s abilities to play each character especially regardless of gender and may keep each character interchangeable with some way of knowing who is playing which character at any given time.

At any rate, this new and different way of combining performing a play and improvising is beginning to take definite shape. I’m excited to see where it goes from here.