This project is being done by Scott Eckert, a teacher, mentor, and friend of mine from the PIT. Also, if you ever have an opportunity to see him perform improv, that is an opportunity of which you should avail yourself.

It. Was. Amazing.

Even though the theater is brand new, between open jams and auditions I’d been on the stage plenty of times by now. But when the house is full, as it was Wednesday, the energy is just entirely different. The stage was electric. The laughter fell over us like an intoxicating tidal wave. It was a feeling I haven’t felt since… well… the last time I had a major role in a show before a huge, full house. (Rocky Horror? We didn’t quite sell that out. Ragtime? My part was comparatively minor.)

There were certainly some rough patches. We’re still kind of feeling each other out, finding our group mind. We’d never even rehearsed before, for goodness sake! But based on the positive response we got on our first time out, I’ve got a feeling we’ve got a lot of amazing performances ahead of us.

* I find myself experiencing a strange hierarchy of “publishing thoughts on the Internet.” I’ll start on Twitter, where I will try and lovingly trim my thoughts down to 140 characters. If I absolutely can’t trim it that far, it goes to Facebook. Then, when I finally feel the need for paragraphs and permanence, it ends up here.

For many years, improv was my life.

In the beginning, there was Comics Anonymous. Sure, it was rough troup* to be a part of at times, but I’ve got to acknowledge the company that gave me my start. Frank, the director, put me on stage and let me cut my teeth in front of real audiences. Sometimes, the audiences even outnumbered the cast! Occasionally, we rocked the upstairs cabaret at Jan McArt’s Royal Palm Dinner Theater in Boca Raton.

Then, I auditioned for ComedySportz, Ft. Lauderdale. That place was amazing. We took over The Comic Strip, a former comedy club on Federal Highway that had seen A-list headliners before it shut down. I’ve got to give credit to the director, Pat “The Vampire” Battistini. After practicing with the group a while, I said “Put me in coach, I’m ready to play.” (Being ComedySportz, we were big on the sports metaphors.) He did, and I got the opportunity to perform in front of huge, full houses on Saturday nights. (It’s odd the memories you hold from ephemeral improv shows, years after they’re gone. I still cherish “Song Styles” in which I sang a Disco song about the FDIC.)

Then I went back to college, and joined the No Parking Players. Since I had experience with ComedySportz, I ended up directing them for a while. It was probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and more importantly, I made some of the best friends I would ever have — people I’m honored to count among my friends to this day.

Then, a talk at CMU by Conan O’Brien sidekick Andy Richter (of all things!) inspired me to move to New York City. When I arrived, I searched for a new improv home. I naturally gravitated to ComedySportz New York, who wouldn’t give me the time of day. I was one of many to pass through the meat grinder of Grownup’s Playground (which I will not dignify with a link). The only good to come of that was that I met Keith, who became my roommate and one of my very best friends in the world. I also met my wife at an audition for them, but I didn’t know that at the time.**

Then, I found the Upright Citizens Brigade. They taught me the joy of long form. I had the privilege of learning from some of the best of the best. Armando Diaz, before he founded his own theater. Ian Roberts. Amy Poehler, before she became (more) famous. And Ali Farahnakian, before he founded his own theater… but more about that in a moment.

After going through the levels at UCB, I was cast on a Harold team. I was ecstatic. I was on my way. We called ourselves “Pole Position” and I even created an opening theme with the “Prepare to Qualify” music from the game. We got to perform in their new theater (which is now the old theater). We performed at the very first Del Close marathon (at something like 6 in the morning, but we did perform.)

We… struggled. I didn’t feel like we were clicking as a team. I was getting edgy. I felt the need to come in big and “save” every scene. I talked to Armando about how I was struggling. He felt it, too. The axe came down shortly thereafter. Several people from my team were reassigned to other new teams. I was not.

I was devastated. People whose opinions I valued… nay, people I practically worshipped… essentially said I was no good at the art form to which I dedicated pretty much my entire life. I left improv, and started doing more scripted theater. I didn’t come back to improv for almost a decade.

Not to say that the decade was wasted. I did a lot of incredible theater. I met and married my wife, and we had a beautiful son. And I performed at the Jekyll and Hyde Club, which was not an improv show per se, but certainly exercised those muscles.

I thought I was content. But then my friend Alex did her Level 1 class show at UCB. It awakened something deep inside me that lay dormant lo these many years. I knew, right then and there, that I had to get back into the game.

It’s odd the little things that end up being so consequential. The only reason I signed up at the People’s Improv Theater was because there weren’t any Level 1 classes available at UCB. I went to my first Level 1 class cocky as can be. (Well, cocky as I can be, at any rate.) I was thinking, “Yes, I’m experienced, but I’ll go in with the ‘beginner’s mind’ as the Zen people say.” Well, it turns out that, while I wasn’t a rank beginner, my improv muscles had atrophied sufficiently that the workout shocked me to my senses. I steeled my resolve to become better, every class, every day.

I worked my way through the classes. I hooked up with some amazing performers to start the team that you know as Vorpal. I worked those muscles, and developed a few new ones along the way. And I always had my sights set on the weekend of January 22, 2011. This weekend. House team auditions.

The story today:

After an audition process that was a strange mixture of fun and grueling, I got cast! I’m on a house team at the PIT! It took me nigh on a decade, but I’m back in the game! My journey doesn’t stop here, but gosh darn it, I have an improv home again. And to make the victory even sweeter, the PIT just opened a brand new, gorgeous theater. I get the same, “You’re at the start of something big, kid!” feeling that I got when I was at the first meeting in the “new” UCB space when it was still being remodeled from a strip club.

Except this time, I’m not going to throw it all away at the first setback. I’m here to stay, improv, so you damned well better be ready for me…

* It’s easy to misspell the word “troupe.” However, Frank neglected to use spell check before he had the word printed on our company tee shirts.

*** Wow, research for this piece has made me open up some damn nostalgic browser tabs! But why are you reading this? The three-asterisk footnote is not referenced in the post.

Kelly Nichols is going to be one of our opening acts!

I’m seriously super-psyched about this. Kelly is so charming, brilliant, and hysterical. She doesn’t just warm up the crowd, she bakes them in a cozy oven at 350 degrees for twenty minutes until the whole theater smells like pumpkin pie. With her getting things started, the hilarity is ours to lose.

And now, the important, but not personal, info:

This is it folks! The big show! This Monday! 9:30 PM! At the PIT! $5!

For one frakked up night, members of Vorpal emerge from their parents’ basement to bring you the geekiest nerd-fest since Stephen Hawking and Gary Gygax discovered the universe was encapsulated entirely within an enormous twenty sided die. By the power of Grayskull, WE ARE VORPAL! Up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-Select-START!

VORPAL is Kathryn Dunn, Colin Longstaff, Jason Specland, Than Bryan, Daniel Operman, and Mary Guiteras.

With Extraordinarily Special Guests:

Erin Lennox, stand-up comedian, freelance writer, and freelance judger of others, featured in the PIT’s “Smart Women.”

Kelly Nichols, stand-up comedian, writer, and star of the musical romp about lack-of-romping “Ten Reasons I Won’t Go Home With You.”

BAY-SIDE, The deliciously dynamic improv duo of AJ Ortiz and Patrick Cucuta.

Together we will rock you so hard that geologists will have to recalibrate the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness to account for this new hard rocking! We will raise the roof so high that architects and civil engineers in the audience may become concerned for the structural integrity of the building! Be there! Please?

Tickets can be reserved here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124605

We started with an opening called “The Conversation” which is pretty much what it is. We get a suggestion from the audience, and proceed to have a five-minute group conversation about it. I was wary of this, because who wants to watch people sit around and talk for five minutes, but it worked surprisingly well. It was entertaining and generated a boatload of specific information and themes. And since the players aren’t worried about participating in some sort of theatrical game, it’s much easier to process that information. Also, as I mentioned before, having a talented group of folks you trust all on the same page makes a world of difference.

As far as my own scenework goes, I was a tad disappointed. In my main scene, I played a Rabbi who was marking all kinds of wildly inappropriate food as Kosher. My partner and I played the “what funny things can we make kosher” game for a few minutes, but it wasn’t as much about the relationship as I’d like and so it required excessive invention and didn’t have legs beyond that initial scene.

We were told in advance that we’d get 20 minutes, and we kind of built our form around that time, but we were cut off around 10-15 minutes into our set. That’s disappointing, not because we crave more stage time, but because our form didn’t have the opportunity to wrap up and make the connections that make longform improv so satisfying.

Major thanks to Don and Alex for coming to our show, and unbelievably major thanks go to Chris, who has come to just about every improv show I’ve ever done.

We are Jabberwocky, and we are part of the Dream NYC show.

Jabberwocky is:

Kathryn Dunn
Daniel Operman
Mary Guiteras
Colin Longstaff
Nathaniel Bryan
Shayne Newton Grier
Jason Specland

We are performing at:

The People’s Improv Theater
154 W 29th St.
NYC

Doors open at 9:20, Show starts at 9:30!!

$5 (Free for any improv student with a student ID from any improv-teaching institution!)

Be there, or get eaten.

“The things that make good theater make good improv.” This is a phrase I’ve uttered from the moment I first directed a troupe, but I never really examined it in more than a cursory way. When I say that, I’m usually referring to mundane things like physically cheating out or taking your character seriously even in the face of extreme weirdness.

But what else makes good theater?

A well-scripted plot makes good theater, but trying to plot in your head while performing improv is surely a trap. Effective props, sets, and costumes are part of theatricality, but are totally absent in improv. Direction and blocking are also vital ingredients in theater, but not to be found on the improv stage beyond instinctual movements.

So what does that leave us? People. If you have one person, you have character. But if you have more than one person, you have relationships. Improv is about relationships.

Improv is about relationships because theater is about relationships.

I often fall into the trap of forgetting that improv is about relationships, and thinking that improv is about saying funny stuff on the spur of the moment. I’m doubly “handicapped” because, for better or for worse, I have the uncanny ability to say funny stuff at the spur of the moment. Or, barring funny stuff, I can at least drop references smart enough for people to laugh at their own satisfaction of getting it.

For example: In last night’s show, we started a group game where we just found each other catching one another in a series of trust falls. This lasted for a few seconds, until I felt the urge to name it. I said:

“This meeting of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is going nowhere! We can’t rebuild confidence in the American dollar just by doing trust falls!”

Funny? Meh. But you try coming up with better on the spur of the moment. Was it the best move given the circumstances? Perhaps. Was it about dropping a smart and funny reference, or building relationships? Welcome to “Hey! Look how smart I am!” theater.

The problem with smart-funny-reference theater is the question, “Where does my partner go from there?” And the related question, “Where do I go from there?” Maybe, if my scene partners could drop enough references to the Fed, we could pull a minute or two out of this. But, the only way we even could get more than a few seconds of jokiness out of this scene would be if I’d made it about a relationship.

From now on, I will try and make my mantra, “It’s about the relationship.” I normally do okay with that in situations where I trust my fellow players to support me and give scenes a little while to breathe. But in situations with unfamiliar players, I tend to fall back to, “MUST… GET… JOKE… OUT… QUICKLY!” Thus it was at the Creek last week, and thus it was last night.

I must serenely accept that I will make my scenes about relationships no matter what. I will trust my fellow players, no matter if I’ve never met them, or even if I know them to indulge in joke-telling over substance. And if I am pimped into being a giant sentient marshmallow, I will still know in my heart that I did my best. I will embue my giant sentient marshmallow with human emotion, and make the scene about my marshmallowy relationship.

Scott (our teacher) gave notes and hung out with us afterwards. I asked him about my ritual post-show self-flagellation. His reply: “First, don’t. Second… don’t.” So perhaps I shouldn’t. Or perhaps he was drunk. Or perhaps both.

If you missed the Sunday show, you can still see our final class show next Thursday. Specifically:
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 7:00 PM

The PIT
154 W. 29th St. (between 6th and 7th Ave.)

And it will set you back:
$5.

My teacher for this level, Scott Eckert, deserves special mention. I must admit that I’ve had a man-crush on him from class one. Not only is he a spectacular performer (as all the PIT teachers have been) but he is wonderfully enthusiastic about teaching, and shares a lot of my philosophy. I’ve always said, “The things that make good theater make good improv.” It’s delightfully satisfying to have a teacher who not only understands that, but is passionate about it. He gave me another pithy insight that I’ll file away into my box of performance truisms: “Comedy is the failure of drama.”

Please come and see us so we don’t perform to a room full of empty, soulless, unlaughing chairs.

Performance dates and times:
Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 7:00 PM

As always, the performances are at:
The PIT
154 W. 29th St. (between 6th and 7th Ave.)

And they cost:
$5.