Okay, it has been a couple of days and I can start thinking straight again. My car not starting after leaving the bar Saturday night weakened my excitement just a tad though. As it is being worked on this very moment, I can take this time to reflect on the best of the three shows so far.
My main thought on the whole night is that I would have loved to see that very same show with a completely neutral audience. I believe it would have been the tightest and toughest voting decision of everyone that saw it. Each team had a clear case for themselves. That being said, I think the winner deserved to win. But still, everyone did such a great job, I can't help but think of what a crowd of neutrals would have thought.
Okay, now the teams.
The three ladies of Spite (Trish Berrong, Nikki DuPont & Megan Mercer) started the night off with a bang. To be an all women team AND go first in this event is a tough challenge. I thought that, but I know the ladies didn't. Great scene work, great characters, great relationships, great sense of play, great everything. If there was anything critical I could say about it, it would be that their scene edits, which were simply starting the next scene with the last line of the previous scene, were often drowned out by laughter from the audience and therefore kinda hard to tell if a new scene had started or not. Also, one of the ladies seemed to do most of the editing. But those were so small that it didn't effect the performance at all. I just notice those things.
Then came the three men of TBA (Pete Calderone, Micheal Montague Jr & Josh Steinmetz) delivering the ballsiest set of the night, a rock/opera piece entitled "Soundtrack of your Life" complete with instruments. After what was a week of behind the scene drama dealing with the men of TBA and the ladies of Spite (Put the two together and you have the troupe Tantrum that performed at 7 before Thunderdome), that can only be described as an Andy Kaufman-esque all-team rehearsal that was orchestrated by TBA, I was worried about their performance. Come show time though, they delivered. First with a guitar, then with a keyboard, and finally with a violin??? Yep. Their all-male musical love triangle was awesome, and well executed. It ended with a nice all-instrument, all-singing, light-fading ending number. TBA was the only piece that had multiple applause after scenes. If there was anything critical I could say about it, it's tough to do an all-male show without there being a little gayness, it's tough. TBA fell down that trap, i believe. But nonetheless, out of all the sets, this one I would love to see again.
Finally Makeshift Militia (Magie Hogan, Ryan Meharry, Grant Prewitt & James Nelson) exploded on stage with a great song, a great chant, and just pure young college energy. Yes, they had brought the most audience. Yes, that audience probably knew who they were going to vote for before the show even started. But still, if Makeshift would have come out and presented something awful and still won, they would have not been respected by the improv community. It's a good thing that didn't happen. Their story line piece that revolved around a father and son, 2 government officials, and a robot was very entertaining. Their relationships were strong and emotional. This set probably involved the most realistic emotional choices of the whole night. If there was anything critical I could say about it, the piece itself was very similar and formulaic to a piece that a team presented the previous month. But after seeing what they did at rehearsal, I know this was clearly a coincidence.
In the end, after a night of three very solid performances that each had a clear shot at getting anybody's vote, the team that brought the most people won. But still, everyone did such a great job, I can't help but think of what a crowd of neutrals would have thought.
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4 comments:
Thank you Jared. I am hoping that we can do this set again in the near future. I plan on speaking with the remaining TBA'ers about it - it was the most fun I've had on stage in a long time. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot fun in Tantrum, there was just something different about this set. Perhaps it was the fact that I was actually nervous going into this set that made it so exhilarating - risk/reward.
Think you could clarify your one critical statement for me? How do you play an all male love triangle without it coming off as gay? Or were you just saying that you'd prefer not to see that type of scene? Email or IM me.
Here's what I think is interesting.
Jared mentions that "it's tough to do an all-male show without there being a little gayness." There's no mention of there being a similar issue with all female shows...
Why do you think that is? Is it about the difficulting of making authentic emotional connections on stage?
It feels to me like there are enough rich, platonic, same gender relationships in our everyday lives that going gay in same gender troupes is an option—not a given.
Pete- The way I would have avoided an all male love triangle would be by introducing a female character that you never see. Yes, a big rule of improv is to not talk about someone that's not there, but i say "Fuck the rules!!!" That would have been fun to play with. Not to say to gayness brought the piece down at all, but I gave a critique for each set. With yours, if I had to pick one, it was the gayness.
Trish- Well, up until lately, all female shows have been extinct here. So there is no comparison to the subject. But since relationships are so important to females on and off stage, it's like second nature to not go towards lesbianism on stage. Men are from Mars.
I’m not much for the male vs. female argument, and I totally disagree that women are more emotionally connected on stage. Our Thunderdome set went gay because of one offer/choice that was made about a minute in. The two times we ran through it the night before there was no gayness, and I would bet that the vast majority of the time there wouldn’t be any. It just happened. There was no “trap”, there was no “women would have done this instead” angle to it. The fact is that romantic relationships can provide a universal touchstone and emotional fuel for a scene. I’m proud of the fact that we played the scene truthfully as people in a love triangle…we all just happened to be men. I agree that we have plenty of platonic relationships in our lives, but I don’t agree that many of them are rich with emotional connection.
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