LaughAtlantis

Yay! My improv troupe's new website is online, thanks to Jason and rOD.

We're in Boston. We do improv. We're Comedie du Jour. It's all about Boston improv, yay!

Strange people. Great improv. Tired blogger. G'night.

Here I come!

I'm off to NY for the weekend to do a workshop for directing improv. I'm very excited. Very last minute. I feel so spontaneous and free and shit... which is sort of funny when you consider that I am going to a workshop, not jet-setting off to Paris or some such thing.

This weekend I went to New York, very much as a last-minute thing, to do a workshop on directing for improv. The workshop itself was a revelation in many ways - I've been schooled primarily in one approach to directing improv, and there was SO MUCH that was new to me in there that I felt at times like I'd never improv'd before. Sad, in that I've been doing this for years.

Saturday began with a bang. Rod had set the alarm for 5:00, which was necessary in order for me to catch the 6:30 train. I figured I'd need to leave by five before six at the latest to catch it. I wound up waking up at 4:48, having to pee desperately. I returned to bed, thinking "Yay, ten more minutes of sleep." The alarm went off at 5:00 - Rod, thinking I was up, turned it off. I was completely asleep by that point and never even heard the thing.

When I woke up again, it was 5:51. You know things are bad when the first word out of your mouth in the morning is "Fuck!!!"

In a mere eighteen minutes, I managed to shower, pack and get downstairs. Rod called a cab. I hopped in. Astoundingly, I was at the bus station at 6:24. I got in line at the Peter Pan counter and when I finally got up to the head of the line I was informed that the next bus was lat 7. Okay. That would still get me in to NY by 11:30 and I'd get to the workshop by its starting time of noon. So I wandered out to the gates and, because they told me that the next bus was at 7, I simply ignored the bus at the next gate that read "NEW YORK EXPRESS" figuring that was the 7:00 at it wasn't loading yet. Wrong. It was the 6:30 and left about three minutes later. I wanted to smack myself in the forehead.

Got on the next bus, fell asleep, got to NY, took a cab to the workshop, spent four hours learning an obscene amount of new things that made me wonder why I ever thought I could direct and if I had ever actually done anything remotely approximating decent improv. It was revealing, to say the least. I used muscles that I had forgotten I had. Believe it or not, I strained myself in a scene in which I was pushing an imaginary backpack. Don't ask.

After the workshop I went out with some folks that I had only previously known from an online message board. It's always slightlly odd to make the leap from the internet to reality particularly in the case of people you know from a message board, in that they might remember posts you made that you have no recollection of and vice versa. But Sal and Hugh (I was frankly surprised to know that they even had real names) were really cool. We all went out to eat a a comfort food restaurant called the Chat N' Chew. With a name like that, you'd think that I was served by an old woman named Etta Mae who was wearing a housecoat. Nope. Outta-work-actor-boy. The food was good though - best cole slaw I've had in years. We talked shop and then went shopping. I bought a couple Christmas presents and a towel - since I'd forgotten to bring one with me. Then Sal and I raced off to see his girlfriend in a staged reading of Henry V. It was a cross-gendered production and was really well done. While watching it I learned that a Welsh accent sounds much like a bad Pakistani accent. Go figure.

After the show I headed for the youth hostel where I was to hang my hat for the evening. Calling it a "youth hostel" is a misnomer. I'm 29 and I think I was the youngest person in my room. I got in the latest though; I'm sorta proud of that.

Woke up the next morning and took a quick shower, then headed downtown. Right by the workshop site was the New York Chocolate Show. I had to physically stop myself from buying a ticket and skipping the workshop entirely. Instead, I went to the Hollywood Diner for a lovely Belgian waffle and then went to Barnes & Noble for general milling about. I do so love bookstores.

Then off to the workshop for hours of intensive directing madness. Again, I learned tons. Workshop ended and I headed to Port Authority to go home. I wanted to take the 5:00 bus back to Boston, to no avail. That bus filled two people ahead of me in the line, so I had to get on the 5:30 bus. Sadly, the 5:30 bus had no air conditioning and instead pumped out heat. So we had to stop the bus in Harlem and we waited an HOUR for the replacement bus. So instead of getting into Boston at 9:30, I got home at 11:00 at night. I was exhausted when I got to South Station. I called Rod and he ordered me some pasta. I went over to his place, had Chicken alla Pignoli, we talked improv, and then I fell happily asleep.

Yup, that was one eventful weekend.

Right now, I am in the process of organizing rehearsals for the upcoming improv show that I'm doing. It's a great show, and I'm really excited, but I haven't directed in an age, and the last time I did, it was in college.

Things were different then.

Now I am dealing with people who have real lives and other commitments and a need to sleep more than three hours a night. I have to find compatible schedules for people rather than just setting a time and hoping that some people can make it.

Damn it, being a real grown-up sucks.

It's 3 in the morning and I am being to seriously lose steam. But just now iTunes brought up 'My Sharona.' You can't listen to that song without moving around a bit - it's the law. And now I am slightly inspired.

When I graduated from my improv training at Boston's Improv Asylum, we had a grad show (as does everyoutgoing class, obviously.) Our grad show was meant to be about one-third sketch, one-third short form games, and one-third long form improv. The sketches went off beautifully; the short form stuff was pretty good, and then we got to the long form. In this case we were getting one input. We had our weakest player ask for the title of any eighties song. People shouted out some great suggestions that we be able to have a lot of fun with - Tainted Love, Freeze Frame, Livin' on a Prayer, Hungry Like the Wolf - I think those were all among the ones tossed out. Cool stuff, ripe with possibilities. But what doe he pick? My Freakin' Sharona. Not particularly inspiring as far as an item to build fifteen minutes of scenes about. And you know what? It's from 1979. Not even an 80s song!

Schmuck.

I know what you're thinking. "Joy, that's not even a word! The 24 hours of writing has turned your mind to jelly! What the hell is pornospactology supposed to be?" Well, there are answers there. No, it's not a real word. Yes, my brain is officially jelly.

But the question of what pornospactology is - that's an interesting one. For the past six years or so, I have been doing improv comedy. I've worked with a handful of troupes and found myself in front of a huge number of different audiences. And inevitably, when asked for an input, someone in any given audience will call for porn, a proctologist, or a spatula.

Now, I understand the porn and the proctology suggestions. That's the audience member attempting to be funny. (For what it's worth, they should realize that they have just paid us to be funny. They themselves are not required to attempt it themselves.)

But a spatula... what is so funny about a spatula? Why, when an improviser asks for a suggestion of a household object or something smaller than a breadbox or just a random word that starts with an S - why does the mind go right to a spatula?

And so we have the concept of pornospactology. Obviously il's not a real science; it's just a brilliant amalgamation of three supposedly amusing inputs. If it were actually science, I guess it would be the study of why people think things are funny. And I bet that no amount of study would come up with an answer for that question because really... spatulas?