Comedy Ha Ha

So, I've been doing this little sketch comedy show on Friday nights.  It's called 'Lo-Carb Comedy' and the material is all based around health and fitness and alternative lifestyles; a rich vein from which to draw comedy blood.  This has been an interesting and in some ways challenging experience.  Anyone who is familiar with Baggage Productions knows the quality of script, sharpness of performance and attention to detail of our shows.  Our budgets have always been tiny, but that matters less when you are working with great scripts and wonderful, talented, dedicated people.  We put a lot of work in, typically devoting several months to writing, development and rehearsal. 

Lo-Carb Comedy is a different beast because this is a bunch of people I haven't worked with before and we threw it together in two weeks.  Nothing is slick in two weeks, but I suppose there is a sort of knockabout energy to the show which is appealing.  Given the very short lead time, I dug up some old Baggage sketches that fitted thematically, and Will (who is a comedian and the driving force behind the show) contributed some stand-up.  Two other young women - JJ and Julian - plus JJ's hubby, John (that's a lot of J's) round out the cast.  JJ and Will wrote some other sketch material and John does an on-target Christopher Walken impersonation.  The best thing about the show is that it has got me writing again.  After hearing about the range of insane extreme diets that Julian has personally sampled (and continues to seek out), I wrote a sketch about the topic.  Since the show has been up on its feet, I've been working on another sketch; the juices are flowing. 

We've performed the last three Friday nights at the Next Stage Theatre, a pokey little place in a strip mall in the heart of seedy Hollywood.  It's a busy venue, with multiple shows each running one night a week.  Lo-Carb Comedy is on right after The Vampire Chronicles; we're sharing a dressing room with an assortment of nubile young things in bustiers (some are vampires, some are victims).  The low hum of muted chit-chat in the dressing room is punctuated by blood-curdling screams on-stage and dramatic music. 

Outside in the parking lot one encounters hipsters heading to The Woods - a bar which, typical of LA, looks utterly nondescript (even daggy, being in a strip mall) on the outside but is actually pretty cool and jam-packed on the inside (you could be anywhere from New York to Berlin) - or families stopping in at Mashti Malone's for some ice-cream, or a homeless man selling a rabbit (as a pet or a meal, your choice).

Still beating; my heart, my drum

Mea culpa, huge apologies for being a lazy blogger.  OK, so my last post was boasting about how well the opening week of Beaten Hearts went.  The second week went equally well - although, alas, we failed to break even.  Great houses, lots of warm and wonderful feedback, goodwill all round and a rave review in the local paper, the Burbank Leader.  I've been splashing this link around liberally, but in case you haven't seen it yet...

http://www.burbankleader.com/articles/2010/05/10/entertainment/blr-hearts050810.txt

Please note, however, that direction was incorrectly credited to me.  Beaten Hearts was (brilliantly) directed by Cynthia Kania (pictured below at the cast party).

I couldn't have hoped for more from this show; from the ease with which the cast and crew came together, to how well everyone clicked, their passion and talent, to the audience response, right down to being reviewed (no guarantee, especially with a short two-week run - the Melbourne show wasn't reviewed) and reviewed so glowingly; I have much to be proud of and thankful for.  We are now seriously looking at options to extend/revive the season, and even investigating the possibilities of touring it to New York where Alex has some contacts.  When and how this might happen will depend on the availability of the cast, recruitment of understudies and whether or not the show continues to attract an audience.  However, I think it is definitely worth trying; there is more life in this show yet and the possibilities are tantalising.

L to R: Morgan (lighting designer and operator extraordinaire), Suzanne (in Madonna circa 1986 mode), CC

We video recorded the final night performance (sadly the camera battery gave up the ghost about 25 minutes from the end) and the dress rehearsal.  Neither are really for public consumption - the show is designed to be seen live - but they serve as a record, something of interest to the cast and certain people in Australia.  We had a merry two weeks at the Sidewalk Studio Theatre; most of us went out for a drink after each performance, lots of friends saw the show and it was bags (or Baggages) of fun.  My favourite bit of indirect feedback over the last week came from someone who was overheard in the theatre foyer after the show criticising my bad British accent (what they actually heard was my natural Aussie accent).  I take that as a compliment once again to my American accent and must assume that they had not read the program notes!

Love Song in Black (L to R): Alex, Max, Suzanne, James.  CC prostrate.

A new roommate has successfully been found to replace Gina who will be moving out by the end of the month.  The search took longer than anticipated - we advertised for about a month - but finally we have someone.  Shannon seems like a nice girl and will just be staying short term - two or three months - which may just work nicely.

Alex and I finished up our four week on-camera technique course with John Swanbeck.  We got a lot out of it, a few new tools for our actor kits, a different way to use our imaginations in our work to focus, create and fascinate.  This morning I audited a Masterclass at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.  An Aussie colleague, Jasper, has recently arrived in LA and is taking this series of workshops in which the actors prepare a fairly lengthy scene to the best of their ability and present it for the group (today Jasper presented a juicy scene from Kiss of the Spiderwoman).  What follows is a detailed discussion and critique by the director/teacher on the challenges faced by the actors when working on the scene, how they met those challenges, how they felt about it and what they could do to improve their work "in the first take".  Like Vinny, and to some extent John, the teacher in this masterclass spoke about finding the behaviour of the characters; in other words, DOING is more important than FEELING, in the sense that it doesn't matter how much the actor might feel authentic or moved or 'in the moment' if it's all on the inside and the audience doesn't see it.  And what was illustrated - as I have seen and experienced time and again in Vinny's class - is that sometimes doing a certain action can help create the feeling the actor is looking for.  Working from the outside in.