Meow House Theatre

Thursday, August 2

After yesterday’s break, we were back to class today. In the morning we worked more on scenes, characterization, inspiration, and really defining the “who/what/where” that is probably the most important element of starting any scene. It sets the whole rest of the conversation between the players if there is a clear, strong offer and it’s obvious who these characters are, what they are to each other, and where they are located. Then you can go in a million directions from that focused starting point.

In the afternoon, we started preparing for our graduation performance by practicing monologues and bopping scenes off the monologue. The monologues are supposed to be first-person experiences, true ones, from the speaker’s own life. Not necessarily funny; just something that happened to them or something they observed, and whatever the effect of that incident was. First we just practiced straight monologues, so everyone could get the feel for how long the intro is, how long the body, and how long the conclusion is. Then we started going up into groups and based on a suggestion from the audience, someone in the group would go out and do a monologue; then that person would step back and the whole group would do four scenes based on it. Not directly based on it; if it was a monologue about someone getting into a car accident with your boss, who subsequently fired you, nobody was supposed to go out and do a scene about getting into a car accident, or about getting fired. You could do a scene about being made the department manager at work; or finding a new job; or working at an auto-parts store; or watching the Challenger explosion. The monologues are supposed to inspire you, not dictate the plot of your scene. Sometimes people would go out and, despite Ari’s instructions, riff exactly off the monologue and they would get stopped and told to rephrase and rethink. (Later on, instead of being able to restart, they’d be “dinged”–similar to what would happen, and did happen, during the actual show when someone took an idea directly off the monologue: he got one sentence in and had the lights dimmed, which signaled the end of the scene. That in itself was funny; not that he did it wrong, but that it was a 3-second scene. Those can be very effective, actually, and tell a lot even in that short a time period.)

Anyhoo, I think every monologue I told during my turns was about my life as a hideous child: I was incredibly pasty white, I had glasses, an eye patch, a 1″ overbite (thank god for orthodontia), fever blisters all over my mouth all the time, I was extremely shy, very small for my age, very smart and terrible at sports (which means I practically had UNPOPULAR FREAK tattooed on my forehead) and wore unfashionable clothes due to being too poor to afford the cool stores. The whole class was always a little depressed, I think, after my stories. (Don’t worry, I’ve gotten over most of the pain by now. )

We had heard that on Thursday night, Dan Bakkedahl (from The Daily Show) as well as several other performers I really wanted to see were going to be in a show at UCB called “Gravid Water.” This is a show where the cast is half improvisers and half regular actors. The regular actors have a part in a scripted play memorized, and they play that character the whole time, never deviating from the script, while the improvisers entirely improvise their own parts. Further, the improvisers have no idea what the play is that they’re going to “be in” ahead of time, and so have no time to practice or think how they might try to turn the scene.

I was not expecting that this would be all that good–I mainly wanted to see Dan and Peter Gwinn (a writer on The Colbert Report and regular UCB performer)–and I was stunned at how amazing it was. An incredible display of talent on both sides: the scripted actors might have even had it more difficult since they did not alter their own parts at all and had to react logically to the improvisers’ lines. And when I say the scripted actors didn’t deviate at all, I mean they did not at all: in one scene, the scripted actor was supposed to eat a sandwich, but a fly had landed on it (a real fly), and Peter Gwinn told her this several times as part of “his” part, but goddammit the script said to eat that sandwich and so she ate it. She didn’t give one iota of indication that just because he had said a fly was on it that she’d deviate from her scripted part. I was dying, having been sitting in the front row and seen the fly having a nice leisurely walk all over her edible prop.

Peter did another nice scene from Evita, where the person playing Evita (Kate Tellers) sang the entire part and he mostly talked back although he did get a couple of sung lines in there too. It was really amazing. Dan had a long scene from The One-Armed Man, by Horton Foote, which is a play about a mill worker (Ptolemy Slocum) who lost his arm in a workplace accident and who returns to his old job but his boss is unsympathetic to his problems, and eventually the “man” kills him. Dan was really good. He’s not used enough on The Daily Show.

He came out after and signed Sharilyn’s TDS Emmy DVD (this is a “for your consideration” DVD sent out to voting members before nominations are due) and he didn’t even know what it was. This seems to be a common occurrence with these DVDs; Rob Riggle had no clue what it was either when he saw one a few weeks ago. He looked pretty tired and probably wanted to get out of there (he has a newborn) so I didn’t ask him to sign anything for me; I didn’t have anything special like the DVD anyway so I didn’t want to keep him.

Christina Gausas also did a nice scene (with Peter Gwinn and Stephen Ruddy, who also directed) from The Mall by William Inge. I’ve seen Christina several times before in Let’s Have A Ball and highly recommend catching her shows if you can. She’s a longtime UCB performer and very talented.

After Gravid Water, we headed over to the Magnet Theater on W. 29th to see John Oliver do standup. We got seats in the front row, yay. The whole show was good (there were several comics who performed before John did), and John was great. I didn’t know he did standup at all and he was really funny. I must report that I and my big mouth interjected ourselves into the show (sitting in the front didn’t hurt, obviously). At one point, John was talking about the differences between the U.S. and the U.K. (he’s English, for those who don’t know) and we had this conversation:

John: So what do you do in America if someone breaks into your house?
Audience: (silence)
Me: Shoot him!
John: So you have a gun?
Me: No, but I could get one easily.
John: Well see, that’s the difference between the U.S. and Britain!

My claim to participatory standup fame.

When the show was over, we stayed to talk to him (Sharilyn had met him before and talked with him about doing open mic at the Comedy Cellar) and as soon as he saw her, he clearly remembered her and said, “So did you do it?!” And she showed him the pictures on her phone of her standing up there, at the mic, in front of that famous wall, and he got a big smile on his face and exclaimed “No way!!!” He looked really happy for her. We talked to him for about 15 minutes and he was a very nice guy. Seems totally unaware that he’s famous; I guess by New York standards he’s not, but among TDS watchers he’s quite well known. He gave me a funny autograph that said: “To Maryelle, Good luck finding a gun! -John Oliver” So much nicer than the standard impersonal scribble a lot of actors give. (Picture below; unfortunately I spilled something in my suitcase on the return flight and it got a little wet, hence the bleeding ink.)

All in all, a very good day! I have a picture of me and John that I’ll put up later, when I remove my demon redeye from it. John looks great just as he is.

Edit: here’s the picture. Why am I so blotchy?

###

NOTE: when leaving comments, be sure to do the simple math question (which is there to prevent spammers): if you don’t, and hit “submit,” your post will be rejected and you cannot use the back button to retrieve your text and you’ll have to type it all over again!