Improvaganza
Last week I was sick as a dog, sleeping poorly and starting to stress out a bit about this thing that I can theoretically call an improv career...resulting in some way jacked-up dreams. Even though the actual memories of the dreams have faded, the feelings of unease they gave me still remain.Ugh. Stupid subconscious. You suck. Big time.
Big Yellow Bus has had some light audiences and a cancelled show recently. I'm not too worried as September is one of those transition months--people are starting school, watching TV premieres and sliding into their autumnal/winter patterns. We're putting together a little marketing push for October that highlights BYB's 2-year anniversary in November. Not only that, the BYB crew convinced the president of the Playground Theater to let us have FREE shows on Thursday for November and December. Hopefully, a new Thursday night tradition for performers and audiences alike will come out of this as well as a permanent free night on the PG schedule. My big hope is that Thursday night will pull nice size crowds who then become interested in seeing other shows at the theater. Here's hoping.
Chrysalis Clark has jumped back into rehearsals. A little rust and clunkiness after our brief layoff, but nothing a few weeks of work won't polish off. We're gonna tweak some things and polish others, using what we learned from our run at IO earlier this summer. We're hoping to land another run at IO in January as well as start hitting the festival circuit. Starting up another improv rehearsal process, then adding some new things while working on the old things and still keeping the work solid and fresh is definitely a new experience to me as a director. I want to keep forging ahead and evolving but not at the cost of forgetting the basics of what we do. It's fun and scary all wrapped into one.
Speaking of scary, I should be sitting down with Beth Kligerman at Second City hopefully next week to discuss some SC stuff. I want to meet with her and discuss TourCo, SC Detroit, my interest in working for SC in some capacity (performer, director, etc), specifically where I stand now and what I need to do to progress towards any of those goals. It's a bit stressful simply because, hey, I'm gonna go in and lay it on the line and who knows if I'll take a humbling hit or two during the discussion. Couple that with the fact it's the same week as the huge SC TourCo audition call in and it only highlights I'm one of hundreds of folks who want to work at SC and what the fuck do I think I can do better than, or at least as well as, so many other talented people.
I've got a couple of other pick-up directing gigs potentially swinging my way in the next couple of weeks as well as a pair of longer-term gigs starting up in the next couple of months, one is an Incubator and one is an ensemble of my own creation. Sadly, other than BYB, my performance schedule is sadly lacking. I honestly do think my stage chops are dulling from lack of weekly rehearsals with a director. I just don't know if I have the energy in me to wrangle up performers and forge a new ensemble...not a fuck around ensemble just to get stage time, but an honest-to-goodness "let's work hard and do something great" ensemble. I've flirted with the idea with hitting Mick Napier's, Rich Sohn's or Mark Sutton's Annoyance classes for a brush up, but if I'm gonna go back to class, why not take a session or two of ComedySportz classes, brush up my short form, and qualify for their yearly audition to boot? Either way, it'll take money, something that will be in short supply as I wind down at my job in the upcoming weeks...
posted by Sammy @ 10:43 AM
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