Carry on, Wayward Son

Well, I did it.

I did the 15 Hour Project (which actually is not 15 hours, but I'm just being persnickety).

 

I got to the Strawdog Theatre at a little bit before 9:30 am, Saturday morning. First person I see is my old friend Jeff at the sign-in table. My first thought was (and the first words out of my mouth as I recall) "Holy shit!" Some level of comfort was coming over me. Then I see Tony and Hector. This project is Tony's baby. As much shit as I give him, Tony has moments when he displays a good head on his shoulders. The moment he came up with this project was one of them (even though I think he was high when he thought it up).

More folks start to trickle in and I don't recognize any of 'em for a while, which does scare me a little, but Hector and I are cut-ups when we hang out so it was cool. I make a remark about fist-bumps without realizing there are two Turks sitting right behind me. Hector calls me on it. Yeah, it was going to be a good day.

Even more folks (it's a flood now) come in and I do recognize them, which makes me feel good, but really weird because they know what my skills were when I left the improv scene. The last thing I wanted to hear was "Wow, he should've stayed out." At least no one I hated was there, and my friend Jess gave me a hug when I saw her, and my friend Scott and I were finally going to get a chance do some work together. Normally, when Scott and I run into each other, it's at a festival and we're going to go see other people go to work.

Craig was there by then as well. Craig is another WiPer that was there when I was (along with Jeff and Tony, and yes Tony, I said "WiPer"). Then the guru himself, Don Hall shows up. We have the manly handshake hug and catch up a little bit. By then, we have little time before the day is really about to start.

Tony will more than likely have better details as to what went on in the morning. All I can do, is give my take on it. We start with some warm ups, some done in the big group of about 30 that we're now in, and some in smaller groups of about 10 or so. Then we get to a montage of scenes, before which Don tells us to count backwards from 25 in our heads before we step out to play (awesome advice, gets you to slow the fuck down and relax). I step out and get into some Red Rover scene that really goes nowhere. Boo. Great way to start, right? Somehow, though, the worry I had was very short-lived. Montage over, Don gives us a reminder that if you warm-up like a shithead, you're going to act like a shithead (my words, not his, but he'd probably say something like that).

Now we get to the part where the forms we're going to try working on are worked on. Out of the 30 or so suggestions, "Fake it 'til you make it," "Corporate Training Video," and "Aphorisms" are the chosen ones (I was going to say 'ones chosen' but c'mon, that's just lame).

"Fake it" became what I'm going to call a group split scene. Split scenes are two or more scenes going on at the same time and they're generally in the same environment. The scenes take turns with being the focus. Requires lots of listening and all around attention paying, which is why the first 1,000 times an actor tries them, a train wreck ensues. What made this one different was the form wound up calling for 4 seperate scenes going on. The premise of the whole thing was that people are generally wearing masks depending on what situation they're in, and what it takes to get 'em to take the masks off.

"Corporate" was inspired by those insipid, repetetive, torture devices that we're subjected to right after we're hired. Don's caveat was that this would NOT be a parody of the training video. But it would entail some video type narrative that would inspire the scenework to follow. (Lisa, Scott and I had a cool little scene when we worked this one)

"Aphorisms" was based on those bullshit, "horse to water" phrases the your grampa loved to dish out when he felt wisdom was needed. A scene would be wrapped around something that sounded like one of those, but you wouldn't know what it was until you got to it. Then, in a la ronde style, another scene would pick up with one of the first characters and a new character, take the aphorism, use it and be informed by it for the next scene and get to another aphorism. This would go on for as long as you can sustain it and keep building.

So, now we had the framework for each one. Then we had to choose which one each of us wanted to do. Don's advice: either go for the one that you think is right up your alley (in my case "Corporate"), or go for the one that scares you to death ("Fake it"). Guess which one I picked?

 

HAH! WRONG!

I picked the scary one.

We split into our teams and break for lunch for an hour.

 

3PM, and it's time to get to work. Hard work. HARD work (say that one like a pirate).

Angie McMahon was our coach. She said she begged for this one when the coaches were discussing which forms would be the final 3. The Strawdog is a neat little space on the north side of Chicago (Sheridan & Broadway). You go through the front door and go upstairs to the lobby, which became a rehearsal space in the afternoon. Go right from the stairs and through a door and you get to the HUGE studio we used in the morning. Go through the other door in the lobby and you get to the stage. A nice, 3/4 stage that suited our purposes niceley (we were gonna need some room to move, which actually became sort of a moot point later on, but I digress).

We warm up with a sound machine (one person makes a repeatable noise, everyone else starts joining in. make musical magic) which turned out to be a good idea (requires listening and attention paying). So we start working on this thing, and I'm not exactly sure of details at this point, so bear with me. We did some talking exercises which taught me that I cannot talk to people next to me and listen to another conversation without straining something. This will be a theme for the day for me. We then get into scene work with split scenes being the focus. multiple, simultaneous, split scenes. Again, straining. And it was hitting all of us to some degree, but each time we did it, it got a little easier to pick up on some things going on outside of your world. I should say now that the theater was FUCKING HOT!!! We were getting sweaty and stinky. Trust me, theatre's better when it's been properly chilled. So, we take a break right about the time light rain shower rolls in. Perfect! God wants us to continue! I felt sorry for the "Aphorisms" group, because they were working in the lobby, which is right in our way to the back stairs. Loaded with guilt and embarrassment for the interruption, we sneak across their playing area twice in 5 minutes.

We come back and start to work out more details; the big ones being a climactic moment and "popcorn" dialogue which means "quick switches of focus from all of the scenes". Angie had decided that 4 scenes going at the same time would be what we're going to do. Felt right. We had 9 people, so 3 two person scenes and one three person scene. Oh yeah, we also worked on characters mixing it up and going into other scenes, which really brought the attention paying into play, because not only did you need to know your own shit, you had to know at least something about your new scene partner. I am having all kinds of problem all afternoon. I had virtually no comedy in the tank all day. All I had was emotion, and it was some dark stuff. In one of our earlier scenes, I went on vacation with my buddies so they could bear witness to my suicide. In another, I was an overbearing father who pushed his son waaaay too hard in a public library (Kanann went along with it awesomely). In that one, I blew my proverbial load way too early and gave us a big loud moment way before it was needed. My pooch completely screwed, I was reduced to sprouting advice on parenting for the rest of that one. The popcorning was a bit of a mess because it was really difficult NOT to talk over people, and taking focus in general was a problem for us. It was ugliness, but unfortunately, it was needed ugliness. Becuase we did get through it, and it showed us when we needed stuff to happen and where and how. We worked on it some more and then left the Strawdog to do whatever we needed to do to get ready for Mullen's.

 

I go home and shower and get some clean clothes on because I smelled really, really, REALLY (say that one like Michael Buffer) bad.

 

Now we're at Mullen's, a bar that LOVES improv. They have an upstairs lounge with a stage area which turned out to be tinier than we were prepared for, at least initially, but Angie had confidence that we could make it work. We go out to the patio to warm up because we're going on first (Thanks, Tony, like I needed a reason to loathe you :)  ). It got a little weird when patrons came outside from downstairs to have a drink, but it was cool. We had even less room out there than we did on the stage, so I think we were ready for that.

 

What I wasn't ready for was being friggin' awesome. I don't remember too many details of our material. All I remember is, the scene was my father's funeral who was a skydiving escape artist who died in the very coffin he was being buried in, and my brother may or may not have killed him. I had, at the start, unresolved approval issues with my father and phobias of everything involved with his professions And there were biscuits. What I do remember best was that, although I still had an aura of darkness around me, it worked because everyone else was bringing their comedy game. Even my game was pretty good because I remember getting some audible "oohs" when I hinted at my own demise near the end of our set. The popcorning part was fucking awesome. I couldn't make out what was going on in the other scenes, but I know we were giving each one the proper space and focus and taking it back at the right time, with the right pace. Our set ends, we get a good pop from the crowd, and as we're coming off stage, Don tells us we did and awesome job. Don telling you you did an awesome job is like President Bush telling you you did a heckuva job, only the compliment is coming from someone much more intelligent and who actually watched the job that you did. It's also like that when it comes from your coach that has worked with you all day.

 

I just wanted to enjoy the other two shows, which is exactly what I did, so my critic was turned off. Therefore, I'll let Tony talk about them in his blog.