Theater Around The Bay: The Great Blog Recap of 2015 Part III

Our final round of recaps from our core blogging team brings you top five lists from Alandra Hileman, Allison Page, and Marissa Skudlarek. Enjoy! And join us for our last blog of the year with The Stueys tomorrow.

Five Underwhelming Behind-the-Scenes Job that Deserve Awards for Surviving 2015 by Alandra Hileman

As someone who regularly gets paid to be as invisible as possible in theatre, I wanted to shine a little light on a few of the unsung heroes of 2015 theatre, both local and global.

1) The Ushers
Look, being an usher is such a massively underrated job that, below a certain operating budget, most places either use community volunteers or ask technicians/theatre staff to double-up on their other duties to do it. And true, usually it’s an incredibly boring task of helping patrons remember the alphabet. But sometimes you get weird situations like the infamous incident at Broadway’s Hand to God in July where a patron climbed on stage to attempt to charge a cell phone in the fake scenic outlet. And that is when the ushers, like true theatre-ninjas, swoop in en masse to preserve the sanctity of the show. Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. I salute you, ushers!

2) The Prompters
I think very few of my fellow stage managers will disagree when I say being on book for actors in that weird nebulous time between “first day with no script in hand” and “opening night” is one of the worst parts of the job. Line notes are tediously painful. But, it’s a necessary part of the process…or at least it was until this year, when apparently everyone just gave up trying and just wore earpieces so they could be prompted when they went up. Guys, what happened? I get that this happens sometimes in previews; I’ve been on book during previews of local shows, but the entire run, folks? Well, regardless on me feelings about the overall practice, my hat is off to the invisible voices on the other end of the earpiece who are, apparently, just as responsible for keeping the show going as the big-name star who graces the marquee.

3) The Managers
Has Rob Ready slept this year? When was the last time Natalie Ashodian saw her house? How long has Stuart Bousel been working his way through Great Expectations? There are hundreds more folks in the SF Bay Area, and all over the country, who I could shout out for taking on the very unsexy titles of administrator, coordinator, production manager, program director, and other boring-sounding things that have to do with Excel spreadsheets and web design and mountains of paperwork, and all so that beautiful, fascinating, innovative art can blossom in spite of everything working against theatre right now, and in so doing have paved the way for the upward swing

4) The Techblr Community
Did you know that there’s a huge community of stage managers, designers, and technicians on Tumblr? While it’s not a “job” per se, one of the things that is the most amazing about the folks who use this tag is how willing they are to dive in and help each other out. Possibly the coolest coming together of the tech theater community I’ve ever seen have been instances where a frantic high school student makes a post begging for help with how to rig a prop, or run a certain kind of light board, and dozens of professional theatre worked have joined forces to offer help and advice.

5) The Bloggers
My 5th award was always going to be to “the guy who films so many of the #Ham4Ham shows,” because those tiny snippets of silliness are full of joy and talent and delight, and the fact that somebody is filming them and putting them on YouTube fills my West Coast grounded heart with warm fuzzies. But then, as I was scrolling mindlessly through Twitter, I happened to discover that one of the primary sources of these delightful Broadway nuggets is actually none other than Howard Sherman, currently director of the new Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama, Senior Strategy Director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts in New York, and one of the most influential theatre advocates in the country, who is very well known for his blog. And I realized that the theatre bloggers of the world do deserve a shout-out, because most of us will never be as famous as Mr. Sherman, but we do it anyway, just so we can share out thoughts, insights, advice, opinions and love of this crazy world of the stage. Sometimes only one person may read a post…but sometimes our post is the only review a show gets, or serves as a reminder to that one read why they love theatre. And I think that’s pretty cool.

5 Things I Can See From My Couch That Remind Me Of This Year In Theater by Allison Page

It’s the end of the year, and most theaters wrapped something up around Christmas, and will start something new up in January. It’s a time to sit on your couch and think about the past year. And if you’re me, and who says you aren’t, you might be parked in your apartment, looking around at the things you haven’t taken care of. In honor of the theatrical downtime at the end of 2015, here are 5 things I can see from my couch that remind me of my year in theater:

1) A BOTTLE OF SRIRACHA MY BOYFRIEND LEFT ON THE COFFEE TABLE
Sriracha is a hot sauce many people are pretty dedicated to. It goes well on/with a number of things: tacos, pad thai, soup, dips, sandwiches, or if you’re my boyfriend, just slathered on some bread. What does this errant bottle of Sriracha remind me of? Easy. Megan Cohen’s THE HORSE’S ASS & FRIENDS, which I saw just a couple of weeks ago. Actually, it might even remind me of Megan’s work in general: always a good idea, no matter the vehicle.

2) A DIRTY PLATE WHICH USED TO INCLUDE FRENCH TOAST
2015 was, by far, the craziest, busiest year of my theatrical life. I counted myself as a produced playwright for the first time, in March. By the end of the year, I was involved in some way or another with 19 different productions, as producer, director, actor, writer, artistic director, or some combination of those titles. So there have literally been a lot of dirty plates in my apartment, because I didn’t have time to clean them. Worth it.

3) THREE BOTTLES OF CONTACT SOLUTION ON MY TV STAND
I’ve seen a lot of stuff this year. A LOT of stuff. Having been an adjudicator for the TBA awards allowed/forced me to see stuff I would never have seen otherwise. I went to a kids’ show. I went to some theatres for the first time EVER. I saw comedies, dramas, shows with expensive sets, shows without any sets, period pieces, modern tales, and it was an eye opening experience because it reminded me of the variety the Bay Area actually has. I think we forget that sometimes. It was a good reminder.

4) A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS TREE
Simple. Humble. Has a button you can push to play Charlie Brown Christmas music. Not big and showy. Not overcomplicated. Flashy though, in its way. Gloriously brilliant when the timing is just right. Gets to the point: HERE IS A SMALL TREE. YOU WILL LOVE THIS SMALL TREE. It does what it does and it does it well. That’s how I feel about the parts of the theater community that sometimes aren’t considered theater, ya know, by idiots. The Bay Area has a steadily growing community of improv and sketch performers and companies. We (yeah, I’m saying we) perform in traditional and non-traditional spaces alike. Great, big, beautiful theaters and teeny tiny stages meant for one person with a guitar. From Endgames to The Mess to BATS to Killing My Lobster (had to) to every small group of people who took one class together and then created their own thing in a basement, there has been significant growth in the last several years, and with the opening of PianoFight, there are more stages to occupy than ever. Here’s to the scrappy people with stick-on mustaches and open hearts, sometimes performing well after everyone’s gone to bed. Keep pushing that button.

5) A STACK OF BIOGRAPHIES ABOUT FAMOUS WOMEN
Ingrid Bergman. Lillian Hellman. Sophie Tucker. Gloria Swanson. Pola Negri. Carole Lombard. Elizabeth Taylor. (Okay, yes, I have a lot of old timey lady biographies) There were a lot of bright moments for women in theater this year. An obvious one is the outcry of theater artists everywhere that we just need MORE WOMEN IN THEATER. It can be hard, sometimes, to not just focus on that problem, instead of taking a minute for game to recognize game and point out people, places, companies, organizations that are doin’ it right. Here are some moments from 2015 that had me pumpin’ my fists in joy for women in theater, some of them shamelessly to do with my own stuff, some more broad: Mina Morita became Artistic Director of Crowded Fire, I saw Phillipa Soo in Hamilton and cried REAL HARD, Marissa Skudlarek produced SF Theater Pub’s Pint Sized Plays to PACKED, PACKED, PACKED houses, all the women in SF Playhouse’s Stage Kiss killed it: Carrie Paff, Millie DeBenedet, Taylor Jones (it’s still playing, you can see it!) Lauren Yee’s Hookman at Z Space, Heather Orth’s portrayal of Little Edie in Custom Made’s Grey Gardens: The Musical, Jessica Roux was the best stage manager in the entire world for multiple Killing My Lobster shows, Geneva Carr and Sarah Stiles being absolutely fearless in Hand to God on Broadway, Kaeli Quick became Artistic Director of Endgames Improv, Linda Huang once again stage managed the SF Olympians Festival at the EXIT dealing with just a HUGE quanitity of people and needs, Beth Cockrell’s beautiful lighting of gross things for Hilarity, Shanice Williams in The Wiz Live…I could go on and on but I’ll go way over the character limit.

Top 5 Surprising Performances of 2015 by Marissa Skudlarek
2015 marked my return to the stage after a long absence, in a role that I never expected to play (dizzy blonde secretary), so I’ve been thinking a lot about typecasting versus, shall we say, counter-intuitive casting. Moreover, I’m not always comfortable opining on what’s the absolute “best” acting I saw in a given year, but I do like writing about performances I admire. So here are five skillful performances that each involved something a bit out-of-the-ordinary. They are in chronological order according to when I saw each play.

1) Madeline H.D. Brown as the Stage Manager in Our Town at Shotgun Players

It was a bit of a surprise to hear that Shotgun Players had cast a woman in her 30s as a character that’s typically played by a middle-aged or elderly man, but it’s not at all surprising that Madeline triumphed in the role. She is deeply attuned to the spiritual cycles and undercurrents that run beneath our daily existence (check out her new tarot-reading business, You Are Magick) and she brought this intuition to her role of Our Town‘s narrator and guide. This was the Stage Manager not as folksy patriarch, but as androgynous angel of death: infinitely full of wisdom, with an unearthly tenderness that tempered the harsh truths she revealed to Emily, and to us.

2) Adam Magill as Con in Stupid Fucking Bird at San Francisco Playhouse

I’d hung out with Adam several times at Theater Pub and other events before I ever saw him onstage, which is always a little weird: what would I do if I liked him as a person but didn’t like his acting? Fortunately, I liked him a lot in the role of Con, the Constantine analogue in this postmodern riff on The Seagull. And in the surprising moment where Con breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience what he can do to get Nina to love him again, Adam employed his natural charisma and humor to make friends with the whole audience. The night I saw it, some wiseacre in the balcony shouted “Why don’t you kill a bird and lay it at her feet?” Without missing a beat, Adam retorted, “You know, some people here haven’t seen The Seagull, and you had to go and ruin it for them.” I was amazed at Adam’s ability to think on his feet, creating a moment that can only exist in live performance.

3) Heather Orth as Big Edie and Little Edie in Grey Gardens at Custom Made Theatre Co.

Heather Orth has made a career of playing musical-theater leading ladies who are several decades older than she actually is. The complex and emotionally demanding role of Big Edie/Little Edie in Grey Gardens is written for a woman of about fifty: in Act One, she plays a demanding socialite mother whose world is shattered; in Act Two, an eccentric daughter still dealing with the fallout from that shatter. Both women are indomitable yet fragile; they must register as separate individuals and also as mirror images. I was a bit surprised that someone as young as Heather would be cast in this role (and the fifty-year-old musical-theater actresses of the Bay Area must be gnashing their teeth that the role went to her) but as she hit every note with her clarion voice, paraded around in Brooke Jennings’ increasingly outlandish costumes, and embodied the two halves of this toxic mother–daughter dyad that has entered into American mythology, her calendar age became totally irrelevant.

4) Thomas Gorrebeeck as Posthumus and Cloten in Cymbeline at Marin Shakespeare

I was intrigued by Marin Shakespeare’s decision to stage the rarely-seen Cymbeline and further intrigued by their choice to have Thomas Gorrebeeck double as noble hero Posthumus and his silly rival Cloten. It didn’t seem to be for economic reasons – they had a big cast with plenty of extras. Instead, the doubling highlights how these characters are foils to one another – and also provides an opportunity for an acting tour de force. (Later, I learned that this is a rather common practice when staging Cymbeline: this year’s Central Park production had Hamish Linklater double as Posthumus and Cloten, and Tom Hiddleston won an Olivier for playing this dual role in London in 2007.) As Posthumus, Gorrebeeck was sincere and anguished; he also made the smart choice to play Posthumus as extremely drunk when he agrees to a wager on his wife’s fidelity — perhaps the only way that a modern audience will accept that plot point. As Cloten, he was a sublimely ridiculous, strutting, preening fool in a silly blond wig. It’s a cliché to praise an actor in a dual role by saying “the audience didn’t realize it was the same guy.” But in this case it would also be true.

As an aside, if any young men out there are interested in playing one of these roles in 2016, I hear Theater of Others is quite desperate for a Posthumus for their upcoming Cymbeline production. Write to sffct@yahoo.com for more info.

5) Siobhan Doherty as Florinda in The Rover at Shotgun Players

Florinda is a tricky role because, especially for modern audiences, she can come across as too nicey-nice and boring when compared with the other female leads of The Rover. Hellena is bold, witty, and sexually forward; Angellica Bianca is an elegant and passionate courtesan; but Florinda is a virginal young lady who wants to marry her true love. With a generic ingénue in the role of Florinda, she’d be a forgettable or even an annoying character, but Siobhan is a quirky ingénue. She played Florinda without overdoing the sweetness and sighs, concentrating on the truth of her situation and the actions she takes to get the man she loves. She was brave and spunky and a heroine in her own right.

Alandra Hileman, Allison Page, and Marissa Skudlarek are San Francisco Theater Pub bloggers who each wear many many other hats and look good in all of them.

Everything Is Already Something Week 47: Method To The Madness, Putting Together A Holiday Sketch Show

Allison Page gets into the Christmas spirit.

“We have too much Santa!”

“There isn’t enough Hanukkah!”

“Nothing about Boxing Day? Where’s all the love for Boxing Day?”

In the middle of writers meetings for a holiday themed sketch comedy show, lots of stuff is shouted out, lots of things are written, and a whole big gaggle of factors come into play before the final lineup is chosen. Last night, Killing My Lobster had its final writers meeting for KMLZ Holidaze, a gigantic variety show we do as a collaboration with Z Space. There’s music, burlesque, drag, Santas whose laps you can sit on if you dare – and about 50 minutes worth of sketch comedy. It’s a condensed process that goes very quickly. All the writing is done in two weeks, and anyone in the show can submit anything, it’s not just limited to the writers. It can get crazy. But it’s always a hell of a great time.

We’ve done this before, and some patterns have definitely emerged. Here are some things you can count on:

First Meeting: All The Santa
Oh my god, so much Santa. The end of the first writers meeting always concludes with “Okay, guys, we’re done with Santa. We don’t need any more. THE POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED. MOVE ALONG. NOTHIN’ TO SEE HERE.” Which is partially because everyone KNOWS that they can’t get them in after the first meeting, so if they have a Santa idea, it better come runnin’ in at that first meeting. And eventually decisions have to be made about which Santa sketches can live, and which must die. No matter how good they are, there can only be a couple of them before the audience is like “Soooo, this is just a Santa thing now, errrr?” It’s like a Christmas Thunderdome…sorta.

The Deep Dark Abyss
Man, we are some dark minded humans. The doom and the gloom came out the first night, as well as the Santa stuff – sometimes in the same sketch. It’s easy, with comedy, to go for the negative. Often that’s an okay path. But with sketch, if you do that the entire time, it’ll be the darkest, most upsetting evening of entertainment you can have. Maybe that impulse is aided by the fact that the holidays often bring out the worst in us, even if just for a moment. You’re surrounded by your family. They’re asking you questions about your job (or lack of job), your personal life (WHEN ARE YOU GONNA HAVE KIDS, PATTY?!?!), your fashion choices, your dietary choices – just about everything. My grandpa used to make fun of me for wearing red nail polish. Like…what? That’s not even interesting. Then there’s the hypocrisy of the meaning people may or may not assign to the holidays, combined with the commercialism that tends to overpower that stuff. There’s a lot to be Scrooged about. That stuff needs to be tempered with some positivity so the audience doesn’t run out into traffic and throw themselves into the street. Last year I submitted a sketch I wrote about a boy who meets two snowflakes who proceed to tell him that they’re not special, neither is he, he’ll probably just be a barista until he dies, and he might as well start taking anti-depressants now. When the boy says “But I’m not depressed!” the snowflakes respond with “Don’t worry – you will be!” Uh, it didn’t get in.

Songs, Songs, Lots Of Songs
Anybody can rewrite a Christmas carol to make it about global warming, three-ways, snack foods, or your spouse cheating on you. I’m saying anybody, because a ton of people do that. (Me included…today I mourn the rejection of “The Office Non-Denominational Holiday Party” which was set to the tune of White Christmas”, but seriously it was pretty stupid.) Original songs tend to go over better, but that takes a lot more work, obviously. This year there’s a great rap song that’s a play on The Night Before Christmas, which I think is a total show-stopper (written by Ken Grobe, who has a history of writing awesome songs like “Acid-Face Hanley’s Christmas” and “Luwanda Buckley and The Sex Robot”…or something like that. It was definitely about a sex robot and a country singer.)

Acid-Face Hanley sings to the kids, KMLZ 2011

We can’t fill a whole show with covers of carols. I mean, we could, but I feel like a few audience members would start to lose their minds and develop a serious bloodlust, causing mass chaos and zombification.

Feedback and Rewrites
The cool thing about KMLZ is that there are tons of people involved. Which also means that when a sketch is read out loud around the table, everyone has an opinion. Sometimes the opinions are all “THAT WAS HILARIOUS!”. Sometimes it’s clear there’s a problem with the sketch and 12 different opinions about what the problem might be, or how you could fix it if you rewrote it this way or that way. Everybody says their piece, and then the writer is left to decide what to do. They edit it in whatever way, and bring it back after the rewrite to see if it’s better. Sometimes it’s fixed and awesome. Sometimes it’s on the right track but not totally there. And sometimes it’s worse because possibly the premise wasn’t strong enough or clear enough from the beginning. It happens to everybody. (I’ll miss you, “Infinity Scarves For Infinity”, I just couldn’t make you happen.)

The Resubmission Shuffle
Sometimes a sketch doesn’t get into a show, and the writer loves it, and brings it back. Sometimes multiple times because it just keeps not being chosen. Sometimes that means shoehorning it into a new category. In the instance of this year, there’s a sketch that doesn’t really have anything to do with the holidays, but the opening line was changed to include “…at tonight’s Hanukkah party I am going to tell Morgan I’m divorcing her!” The rest of the sketch could not have less to do with the holidays, but is super funny, and has now finally made it into rehearsal. (I want to say this sketch is maybe two years old and that this is the first time it’s made it into rehearsal. It’s called “Slapping And Drinking” and was written by The Bardi Twins.)

It’s hard to answer the phone in a snowsuit when you have weird low tables.

It’s in! Oh…It’s Out.
So your sketch made it into rehearsal! Congratulations! Wow, you really beat the odds! 13 writers and your sketch survived, that’s a hell of a thing! But that doesn’t mean it’s going to actually be onstage. About 40 sketches were submitted in two weeks. We’re going into rehearsal with about 18 of them, knowing we can’t fit them all in. In the end, I suspect it’ll be 13-15ish. It’s even possible that something will get all the way to tech and be cut. That always burns a little. So close, and yet so far. Ya can’t win ‘em all. But fear not, friend. If your dog is worth a damn, it’ll have its day…um, maybe. Hopefully. Them’s the breaks. But that’s also the exciting thing about doing this – stuff changes really quickly and you’re flying by the seat of your pants with a bunch of other people who are doing the same. There are a lot of flying pants going on.

You can see KMLZ: Holidaze at Z Space December 12th at 8pm, and December 13th at 7pm and 10pm.

Everything Is Already Something Week 18: Five Sketches I Wish We’d Stop Writing

Recently I was helping out at a sketch comedy writing class, reading sketches and giving notes and feedback, and I was reminded how many of the same things we all do in the beginning. Well, maybe not all, but certainly a lot. Tons. A noticeable amount. When you first start writing sketches either in a class, for a show, or just huddled in your closet like a weirdo – it’s easy to get really excited because OMG THIS IS JUST LIKE SNL YOU GUYS, and then suddenly feel the crushing weight of “Oh God, I suddenly have no idea what’s funny anymore! What’s happening?! Where am I?! What year is it?!” but as any writer will tell you, the most important thing is just to write, and if it is the suckiest thing in the world, just toss it in the digital trash. At least you wrote something. But it’s also common to fall into something that’s too easy and come in with something that everyone has heard before, and isn’t likely to make it in to rehearsal. Particularly if you work in a large writers room where everyone’s churning out tons of sketches and only the best can survive. Here are some things I’ve seen a hundred times and don’t really need to see again:

THE ONE WHERE EVERYONE’S GAY – This little gem of a sketch usually has a weak premise and then at the end you either find out one character has been gay all along, or that – oh dear – EVERYONE’S GAY! Why people write it: Because it’s got surprise in it. Unexpected turns of event are big in comedy, so let’s lead everything to think the sketch is about something else…and then they’re all gay! That’s surprising! Why I hate it: It feels lazy. It feels like a cop-out. That, and it’s just sort of stupidly offensive. If it were written in 1952 I’m sure it would feel fresh to someone, but now it just seems like you haven’t been living in society, and you’re tossing pointless barbs at an entire group of people. (Particularly if you’re living in San Francisco, that sketch isn’t exactly going to get you a standing ovation, unless they’re also carrying pitchforks.)

THE ONE WHERE EVERYONE’S SITTING AT A DINNER TABLE – This isn’t to say that you can’t write something super awesome with a family sitting around a table, it definitely happens. But a big roadblock for a lot of beginners is that their characters aren’t doing anything. They’re just talking. Which is great for, I don’t know, a podcast, but if this is a live show we’re talking about – people are looking at the actors. Help create an engaging show by having some movement. Why people write it: family conflict is funny! They’re tossing barbs at each other! Why I hate it: I will say I don’t always hate this, but often enough it bores me to tears. It’s not Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? So unless the characters are actually tossing barbs at each other, like physical barbs – it might not make for the best comedic situation. Again, it CAN, but it often doesn’t, especially if you’re new to the game. Give yourself a break and don’t try to be the Fyodor Dostoyevsky of comedy – at least not right away. People want to be entertained. Entertain them. You only have a few minutes, make them count.

They’re so happy and I’m so bored.

THE ONE AT THE PEARLY GATES – Oh, look, it’s St. Peter! I guess we’re all dead and it’s hilarious Sketch at the Pearly Gates Time! Everybody wants to know what happens when we die, right? Well I’ve got the answer RIGHT HERE! Why people write it: Because it has the potential to be kooky and the afterlife is mysterious to everyone. Why I hate it: I’ve seen one of these that I actually loved, and easily a dozen that I loathed. It’s a tale as old as time, so making it feel fresh can be really difficult. There has to be something very unexpected in there to keep us all on our toes. If it doesn’t feel extremely original, it’s not likely to make the cut. (See also: the sketch taking place in hell. Same thing.)

I’m here to save you…from this tired old sketch.

THE ONE WHERE ALL THE WOMEN ARE PLAYED BY MEN – Look at this fancy dinner party full of sophisticated women – BUT WAIT – those aren’t women, those are women played by MEN! Look at their flowery blouses and silly wigs! Why people write it: Easy, almost guaranteed laughs. Why I hate it: Hey, Allison, if it gets laughs almost every time, why wouldn’t you like it? It’s just way too easy. It’s not based on anything you’ve written actually being funny, it’s just based on the fact that the actor on stage has a hairy chest and looks funny in a dress. Then there’s the secondary matter of it taking parts away from actual women, who are often underrepresented in sketch comedy already, if they’re not playing straight wives and mothers. I do think a well placed man-in-a-dress can be a funny addition to something, but it’s a one-note joke and if your sketch isn’t funny without that? Then it sounds like you may not have written a very good sketch. I believe Tina Fey touches on this topic in her book, Bossypants.

Just go read it, already

THE ONE WHERE EVERYONE IS PLAYING A LITTLE KID – Look at all these little kids at a slumber party! They’re so silly! Waaaiiiit a minute, those aren’t kids, those are kids played by adult actors! Why people write it: Because it’s silly and fun. Why I hate it: This one’s a little sticky for me. It has similarities to the “women played by men” sketch, in that it can be funny for everyone to be a little kid, but you can’t just rely on the actor wearing footie pjs to be so adorable that it carries the whole thing. You’ve still got to have some structure in there. There has to be something funny in it apart from the jammies and pig tails. What’s actually happening to make this a real sketch and not just people being cute? Is there an interesting juxtaposition there? This one can be done well, it just often times isn’t.

None of these sketches have 100% failure rates (Except maybe that first one. Blech.) they can be funny, but only if they’re original first. Comedy is subjective and this is only my opinion, but it’s based on being in the room with these sketches being read aloud, or performing them in front of lots of people. Or watching them get cut. There has to be something new about what you’re creating. Something exciting and different. Clearly people have been writing sketches for a long time, and it can definitely be a struggle to be original. At some point you’ll come up with something brilliant only to find it has absolutely already been done before. I had an idea for something last week, which someone immediately informed me had already been on South Park. It’s okay, that happens, but throwing out some of these more obvious premises might give way to something new and awesome, and is certainly more likely to get something you’ve written onto that damn stage.

Speaking of sketch comedy, Allison is toiling away in the Killing My Lobster writers’ room preparing for KML’s Winter Follies show, performing December 12^th – 15^th. Details at killingmylobster.com where you can also find out about our writing and acting classes.

Everything Is Already Something Week 10: Sorry I Didn’t Go To College

Allison Page is here to blow your mind and it won’t cost you 25K a year.  

In my mind, if you’re reading this it’s because you’re horrified beyond belief that I didn’t go to college. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who’s gravely disappointed.

It’s been a few months since this happened so I feel fine talking about it… It all started one magical day when someone proposed that we change the spelling of “actor” to “acter.”  The internet conversation had turned to whether or not you call yourself an “actress” or an “actor.” As in, if you say “actress” clearly that denotes that you are covered in estrogen, and if you say “actor” you’re sort of going against that… ya follow me, here? I sincerely doubt it’s a topic that anyone outside of the theatrical world knows or cares about. Anyway, it’s one of those threads that is primarily a harmless list of people’s one-word responses to that inquiry. I add mine, which is that I say “actor.” My reasoning for that being less about “TAKE THE GENDER OUT OF THIS, NOW,” and more about the fact that I don’t like the actual sounds of that word “actress.” It’s like “panties”, or “moist” or “girth” for some people. I just don’t like the mouth sound. And it does sort of sound like I’m parading around in a ball gown carrying a teacup poodle, assisted by two strong men who are… god, that doesn’t sound so bad… anyway, I say “actor.” That’s just what I say. And a lot of us do so, actually. “Actress” sounds much too glamorous for what goes on in my life. I don’t think actresses should eat as many cheeseburgers as I do. An actress shouldn’t drink this much Guinness or swear like a sailor who got kicked in the dick. So – I’m an actor. Many other people add their two cents, and naturally I get a cute little notification every time that happens: “Slamalamadingdong also commented on blahblah.”  So I take a gander at the responses. Many of them are the same as mine. Some are different. And then – UH OH – someone has jumped the shark, kids. I see an “acter”.

Wait, what?

Let’s call this shark I’m jumpin’ over a SHAARK. With 2 A’s!

Basically, she’s proposing we start spelling the word “actor” with an E, like “acter.”

Well, here’s the first problem: it’s not a word. And here’s the second problem: if you say “acter” to someone out loud… IT’S THE SAME. IT SOUNDS EXACTLY THE SAME. IT’S ONLY DIFFERENT IN YOUR MIND. Now, how many times has someone asked you what you do, and you’ve written it down on a flashcard and shown it to them? Would it be fair to say zero times? Never times? Not one times? None of the times? Because that’s how many times I’ve done that. I said that it seemed a little nonsensical to me, and that if someone wrote down that they were an “acter,” it would be hard for me not to laugh – which is fucking true. Now, did I have to say that? Did I have to say anything at all? No, I didn’t. I could have just sat there – probably eating cookies – and that would have been fine. It’s just that sometimes, especially the place where this particular conversation was happening, I get frustrated with the all-inclusive “Let’s support everything no matter what it is because that’s us being an encouraging group of women – never questioning each other’s ideas in any capacity. THAT’S how we grow,” mentality. And I guess, on this day, I just decided I didn’t want to watch one more shark-jump and I said something. Well, she wasn’t happy about it. And she definitely wasn’t happy that more than one person disagreed with her. Her response was that we’d made her “very tired”… okay… and that (and this part was directed specifically at me): “I’m a friggin’ Harvard Law grad and Mensa member… the end of that sentence leads to an insult, so instead, I’m off this string.”

All of the records screeched just now, in case you couldn’t hear that.

What’s the end of her brilliant sentence? How does she know I’M not a Harvard Law grad? How does she know I’m not the Mensa-iest Mensa Member this side of the Mississippi? Is she gleaning what information she can from the “about” section of my Facebook profile? Did she call Mensa to make sure I didn’t sneak in when she wasn’t looking? Facebook was likely her only source of information.

The thing is – yeah – I’m not a Harvard Law grad. (And if I were, I would say “graduate” because “grad” sounds stupid – like “Cali” and “totes.”)

It’s true. My only “higher education” is in the form of a year and a half of cosmetology school at Northland Community and Technical College in my teensy hometown of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. And guess what – I didn’t even graduate!

Allison on a good night.

I realize I’m disappointing you right now, person-who-is-reading-this, and I’m sorry. I wish I had gone to college. It’s one of the big regrets of my life. The thing is, I didn’t come from a family of people who said things like “Strive for excellence! You can be anything you want to be! Get good grades and go to a stellar college! ACHIEVE!” That just wasn’t my reality. So many people never leave my hometown. They work at the same snowmobile factory their parents worked at their entire adult lives. My mother has, for the most part, been a housewife since she married my dad at 19. That’s what she wanted for me. Get married, make babies, live within blocks of my parents’ property, shut up, ride a horse once in a while, grow old, and die. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic… but it’s not too far off course.

So for the first chunk of my “adult” life, I tried to live her way. I got engaged at 19 (PARALLELS, Y’ALL) to a very nice boy who had been the captain of a neighboring town’s football team. I was going to cosmetology school because she knew I was just independent enough to need to get an actual job and thought that would satisfy me, and was trying to be happy with that. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy at all. The only happiness I could find was in the theater company that I had started at 18. I worked tirelessly at producing shows for a community of people who really only wanted to go to the local community theater to see a production of Oklahoma because it had a shitload of kids in it. I gave them something different and developed a following, which was surprising and great, but it just made me want to do more. Each show was more ambitious and took more of my time because I hated reality to an absurd extent. I didn’t give a shit about giving my grandma a perm. I did the bare minimum at school because it was the last thing I wanted to waste my energy on. Pretty soon I was spending less and less time with my fiancé, and when I did see him, I tried desperately to engage him in deeper conversations – but he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t have opinions about anything I had opinions about – or really anything else, either.

My mother had instilled in me an intense fear of living. She had done it to protect me, and she didn’t understand how it could be a bad thing. She loves me, she’s my mom, she doesn’t want bad things to happen to me. But it was a bad tactic, because I didn’t know how to live. I always knew that I was different from her, but I was afraid to assert it in real ways because I hadn’t dealt with the fear of the unknown. What if I diverged from the path and just fucking DIED IMMEDIATELY? Even so, I started to change things for myself. I called off the wedding, left my fiancé, threw myself even more into my theater company, started working as a radio announcer, started writing scripts, started… STARTED… I was finally fucking starting my life. And by this time, I was done with cosmetology school. I hadn’t graduated because I didn’t care nearly enough for that, but I was licensed which is all I needed to get a job, which I did. I used the money I made trimming mullets at Walmart (not joking) to build a bigger and better stage, more intricate sets, get more elaborate costumes, pay higher royalties for shows I really wanted to do, and to give myself a cushion in case nobody came to see whatever weird show I chose next.

Then I went to Thailand, while I was there my best friend died, I came back home to Minnesota and then… that was it. I was done. I couldn’t live that life anymore. I moved to San Francisco with one bag and $500 I got from a medical study testing the side effects of muscle relaxers and here I was.

And then everything was really fucking hard. For 4-and-a-half years I was almost homeless. I slept on floors the majority of that time. I moved 10 times. I once lived in a 2-bedroom with 6 people in it. 3 people slept in my room. I was on the floor with a pillow and a blanket. That lasted for months. I once lived in a closet. I shared a futon in an efficiency studio with another girl and two cats for 6 months. I stayed on my friend’s father’s couch and ate Hormel chili every night because it’s what I found in his cupboard. I lost 40 lbs from lack of food and walking everywhere. I lived on 300 calories a day for a while. I worked as a man’s assistant – he did not treat me well, but every once in a while he would buy me a sandwich. I worked 5 hours a day for minimum wage 4 days a week, because that’s the job I could get. A coworker found me crying doing laundry in the back room and gave me $40 and I have never, EVER forgotten that she did that for me. I was lonely a lot. I was cold a lot. My shoes were full of holes. Sometimes I couldn’t afford toothpaste and deodorant and I would sneakily use someone else’s. I dated a man who turned out to be an alcoholic whose life was even more in shambles than my own. My mother tried to convince me to come home at every possible opportunity but I just wouldn’t. I did my best to hide the reality of my daily life from her.

Then I started doing standup. Then I started doing sketch. And improv. And then teaching it. And then booking shows. And then I got an agent. And then I wrote some commercials. And then I acted in some stupid, stupid Japanese TV show that meant I could finally BUY A BED. I had a bed. When I bought it, I cried in front of the woman who sold it to me. I didn’t have sheets for about a month, so it was just a mattress for a while, but I didn’t care. I had a bed. I got a job at an amazing bookstore. I didn’t make much money but I was extremely happy there. Robin Williams told me I was funny…and then it took me 2 hours to get home because I couldn’t afford anything but the bus and I didn’t have the money to go out with anyone for a celebratory drink. Then an opportunity popped up at a giant gaming company. For a writer. They wanted someone who could write comedy, make things short and punchy, be creative… man, I could do that! I did a million and two writing tests… the guy wanted to hire me!… and then he quit. Devastation. Depression. Still living in a house full of clowns with nut allergies. Then another opportunity pops up… same company. I did a million and three writing tests… AND I GOT THE JOB! They didn’t ask for my educational background until I had already been hired, just to put it in their files. I was able to afford my own apartment downtown. My own apartment. I started getting cast in things I really wanted to be cast in. I honed my skills. I practiced. I molded. I created. I wrote – and not just dialogue for games, but other things too. I wrote screenplays, short plays, play plays. I worked. I worked really hard. I still do.

Not going to college has been a big, ugly chip on my shoulder. I’m sad about it sometimes because I wish I had that experience. I didn’t have the resources to go – or I certainly didn’t feel I did at the time – and I didn’t quite have the gumption I have now. I was still in the gumption-development phase of my life. And Mensa has never come a-callin’. There are several opportunities I couldn’t take because I don’t have a degree. And that’s always going to be the case. There’s always going to be something I can’t do because of that damned piece of paper that doesn’t exist in my life. I hate to be cliché, but I’m about to be, so prepare yourself for it…

That does not define me.

My lack of college education does not define me and it never will.

Maybe I’ll go to college some day. I’d like to do that. I’d feel good about that. But for now, the 4-and-a-half years I spent on the brink of disaster is going to have to suffice, and I’m okay with that.

Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion. You can have yours, and I can have mine – but when you start throwing your education around like it’s an excuse for everything you’ve ever said to be taken with a heavier weight than someone else’s words? Well, I think they’d even frown upon that in kindergarten, and I totally graduated from that.

Also, Harvard says “acter” isn’t a word. Double also, Mensa says you’re a doodoo head.

Hey, Mensa’s words, not mine.

No Mensas were harmed in the making of this blog. You can find Allison eating a sandwich at work or on twitter @allisonlynnpage. And thanks to Cathy, who will probably never see this, for the $40 in 2009 – it was a really big deal.