Everything Is Already Something: Farewell, Sweet Dick Joke

Allison Page, starting the new year with a note of goodbye.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here today to say goodbye to some good sketches. Sketches which were not long for this world. Sketches as clean and sparkling as any others. Game-focused, precise sketches, escalating alongside the best of them, breaking their game at just the right moment. And yet, here we are. Grieving and sobbing for the sketches we have lost because they needed to be cut…for time.

Ah, time, a fickle master to whom we are all servants. There are but 60 minutes in an hour. We may try to stretch it, challenge it, flout it, but the truth remains. Tick tock, fart jokes, tick tock.

Yes, we must say goodbye even to these fart jokes. These gut busting gas passers. These guttural emissions. These children of the night. For they, yes, even they, cannot escape the wrath of the cuckoo clock. Father time has come for our fart jokes, and we must let them fly home on the wind which we have broken, to that great fart joke depository in the sky.

Heh heh, depository.

As we wave a farewell to our monologues about puberty and screwing inanimate objects, let us not forget what they’ve meant to us. We, the ragged, scratched up, bruised adults. The former horny pre-teens who longed for understanding and Jordan Catalano from My So Called Life, who longed to eat Oreos all day and both wanted to grow up and to stay young and weird. We salute you. We salute ourselves.

Here, too, we mourn the loss of physical sketches which nearly killed us. Back-bending, cheer-leading, freak-dancing, climbing, jumping, cartwheeling sketches crafted for the enjoyment of 10s and 10s of people. Human pyramids and a kid doing the worm alike have been slaughtered. No sketch is ever really safe, is it?

You never think it will be yours, your bouncy baby dick joke. You think you’re immune to the cut of someone else’s jib. You are not. Sometimes you find yourself cutting your own sketches and retreating to a corner of the bar where you can sip your bourbon in silence while cursing the goddamn kids who wrote a better dick joke than you had ever dreamed possible, wiping your dick joke off the figurative map and literal set list.

Not only do we lose our childish, gross jokes, but we must also mourn our attempts at social commentary and blistering satire. Our chance to show the opposing political party that we mean business and are, always, right, sometimes passes away into the recycling bin, or the annals of time and Google Drive, where they wither and age like old digital fruit.

Not only do we say auf wiedersehen to these sketches today, we celebrate them. And we welcome to life those sketches which will make it to the final performance. Those great few. Those strong, hearty few. We hold and coddle them until they are ready to be put forth in front of half-drunk audiences of rabid joke-gobblers. And we hold no ill will for them, the champions. We raise them up and brush the long golden locks of their mullet wigs. We support them with our laughter and know that tomorrow is another day, another joke, another birth of fanciful mirth or jocular rage.

This is not a mourning, but a celebration of life.

*fart sound*

Thank you.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/director and Co-Artistic Director of Killing My Lobster. She wrote this as a farewell to the sketches she cut this morning while preparing for KML’s performance at SF Sketchfest Jan 19th at The Eureka Theatre.

Everything Is Already Something Week 51: What Collaboration Does For Me

Allison Page, collaborating.

I used to be a loner. Picture a grouchy old bearded man in a sweater, hunkered down in an armchair, scribbling away on a stack of paper, occasionally shaking his fist at the sky. Possibly at some point he throws half a glass of bourbon in the face of his wife. That was me, but not a man with a beard. You know, but bearded on the INSIDE. Often, I think people have this idea of what a writer is and immediately they think of Ernest Hemingway. And that’s how you’re supposed to be a good writer, isn’t it? All the geniuses and masters toil away in their own well-crafted solitary confinement – crouched down in their pillow forts where all the pillows are barbed wire, and we tell ourselves that’s how you get to be a writer. That’s how you get to be an artist. AN ARTISTE. That suffering makes your art better is a long held idea. I admit to buying into that at some point. I think we all have – especially when young and impressionable. Anyone who caught the bug of wanting to write books or plays or poems (DEFINITELY POEMS) or to act or dance or paint or sculpt or…I don’t know, whatever you guys are doing – puppetry? Anyone who had that impulse at a young age probably started identifying their artistic heroes and began to define what they wanted to be by taking note of what created the artists they connected to most. That was a hell of a sentence.

Misery worked pretty well for Alanis. Teenage girls of the 90s, can ya feel me?

Let’s take young, pink-haired, angry Allison for example.

I’ve known I wanted to be an actor since I was probably 5 years old. At that age I was mostly inspired by cartoon characters – let’s be real, cartoons are fucking great. Actually, I remained inspired by cartoons for a while. Actually actually, I still am. I was the only little girl I knew who wanted to be The Genie from Aladdin instead of Jasmine. Animaniacs was a big deal in my life. I mean, it still is. It holds up. (Garfield and Friends does not. Don’t bother.) Once we start getting into the real people I looked up to, though, it doesn’t take long to start finding the darkness. (If we’re being honest The Genie isn’t actually that happy a character, he just deflects his sorrow with jokes. So I guess the darkness crept in even earlier than I thought.)

By the time I was 14, I was already very into old movies. Yes, I was very cool and popular (lies). It was at that age that I first watched a little movie called Der Blaue Engel, or The Blue Angel. It’s a little German tragicomedy about a teacher who falls in love with a cabaret performer. IT DOESN’T GO WELL. It ends with Emil Jannings dying while regretfully clutching the desk from which he used to teach before the succubus Marlene Dietrich ruined his life because he loved her so much that it turned him into a literal sad clown. SO FUN. And that’s the actual movie that made me want to be an actor. Isn’t that wild? Sorry, spoilers in case you haven’t had time to catch this movie since it came out in 1930. But really, it’s beautiful and cruel, you should see it. That was sort of a sidebar because I’m really talking about writers, but I was an actor first so there ya go. When I was 16 I decided I finally had a favorite play. It’s still my favorite play. What is it?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Yikes.

Quite a choice for a teenage mind. But just because something is dark, does that necessarily mean it came from a person who is feeling dark? When you look at comedies, they certainly don’t necessarily come from people who are feeling fun and light. I’m meandering a little on the topic at hand. Let’s get back to it.

Here’s a sampling of some writerly heroes of mine:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dawn Powell
Dorothy Parker
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett
Clare Booth Luce
Robert Benchley

Go ahead and google how many of them were lonely writers and avid drinkers. Just as a sample group. Get ready to be sad!

Robert Benchley: absolutely hilarious and definitely died slowly of cirrhosis of the liver because he loved sad/alone drinking. YAYYYY.

I’m not saying I’m as gloomy as any of those people or that they were alcoholics because they were writers, but I think writing can breed loneliness or at least nudge it along. You so often do it alone. I mean, in the end you have to do it alone, right? You can’t have 20 fingers typing on your keyboard or writing with your pencil. Well, you could, but it would take forever. As much as I am alone when I write, I try to spend an equal amount of time either writing WITH other people – like, actually collaborating on something, or writing NEAR other people. I think if you’re in the business of writing about people, that it’s good to maintain connections to people as opposed to doing the opposite of that.

When I write sketch comedy, I do that in a super fun writers room scenario. There are something like 10 – 15 of us (some writers, some actors) throwing out ideas, talking about possibilities, and laughing really hard. It is AMAZING. It feels like magic should feel. So much so, that when I’m executing all those ideas, it still feels collaborative even when I’m alone. Weird, right?

Clearly that’s kind of specific to sketch. When you’re writing a novel, or a play, or whatever else you’re writing, you’re not always looking for that level of collaboration. But that doesn’t mean you have to stew alone all the time. I like to be alone together. I can sit and work on what I’m working on, and a friend can sit across from me or next to me at the table to my left, and we work in silence sipping coffee as long as we can, then turn to each other when we kind of can’t bear it for a minute. We’ll gossip about something, or talk about the trouble we’re having with a particular section, or even *gasp* read a bit we’re particularly proud of to the other person. Or if we’re really struggling, just talk about the coffee we’re drinking. Sometimes if I’m working on something particularly draining, chatter about coffee might be the most I’m able to think about. It’s been good for me, this process.

I want to be a good writer. I think I’m an okay one. I want to be good, but not at the expense of my grip on reality and connections to other people. I don’t need to be Fitzgerald or Parker or Powell, I just want to be the best writer I can be while not falling into the gloom. If that means I don’t go down in history, I’m okay with that. Since allowing myself the possibility of collaborating or writing alone together, everything seems like a little bit less of a struggle. I mean, geez, writing is already not so easy. If you can find a way to make it a little bit easier, I don’t see how that can be bad. I still have my grouchy-old-man-in-a-cardigan moments, but I have fewer of them. And there’s a nice space of happiness in between: the comfort of knowing that the person next to you is dealing with the same thing you are. Or, if you’re competitive, the knowledge that you may be kicking their ass in the number-of-pages-typed-in-a-day department.

I’m not going to say collaboration will kick your depression. What am I, a doctor? No. I’m not a doctor. Don’t ever let me tell you otherwise. But what I am saying is that while hell may be other people, it is also probably a lack of other people. We need each other a little bit. Maybe even just for an occasional reality check.

There isn’t one way to be a successful/good/happy writer. Just like there isn’t one way to be nearly anything. Don’t try to fit yourself into a dangerous mould. Make your own mould. Hell, BE the mould.

Me? I get by with a little help from my friends.

Not actually Allison’s friends, but let’s pretend.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/comedian. Her new play HILARITY, about a comedian struggling with alcoholism and jokes, is being produced by DIVAfest and has its world premiere at The EXIT Theatre in San Francisco. Previews start March 5th. Tickets at hilarity.bpt.me

Everything Is Already Something Week 49: When Women Aren’t Even Writing For Women

This morning I went through the numbers at the company for which I am one of two Creative Directors. Not finances – it’s a major LOL if you think I have anything to do with that. But the breakdown of who we work with. (We’ll come back around to why I was looking at this in a minute.)

Actors:
17 Women, 9 Men

Writers:
19 Women, 11 Men

Some of these people do double duty, so figuring that in we have:
31 Women, 18 Men

We have one director who isn’t from either of those groups:
1 Man

And two stage managers:
1 Man, 1 Woman

For an actual total of:
32 Women, 20 Men

That’s pretty great, if you’re looking at it from a “BUT ARE THERE AS MANY WOMEN AS MEN?!” perspective. Though we weren’t out in search of having a female dominated sketch comedy company. That’s just what happened. Those are just the people who passed through our doors, whom we liked a lot and thought were funny and fun to work with and displayed the varied set of skills which make someone good at this crap. In the five years I’ve been with this crazy group of humans, there have always been really amazingly talented women – both performers and writers. But sadly, that doesn’t always equal the varied types of roles for women that you might think it would. It does SOMETIMES. We’re not that shitty. But it seems as though it gets away from us. I say us because I am just as guilty of immediately writing a role for a man as my cohorts (regardless of their gender).

Be the Lisa Loopner you wish to see in the world.

Right now, I’m directing our set for SF Sketchfest – admittedly one of my favorite shows of the year, every year. And as I was putting together the sketches to use for that show, a sad-pants theme started to arise: almost all of the crazy, kooky, wacky character parts were for men. I’ve been doing some cross gender casting out of necessity, which is fine. I’m happy to do that. But my real wish is that we would write more over the top characters who are PURPOSELY women – as opposed to having a woman play a part written for a man (regardless of whether they choose to play the part as a woman or as a man). We tend to have six person casts – three men and three women, but sometimes having enough juicy stuff for the women to dig into without cross gender casting can be next to impossible.

Yes, women can be Vice Presidents too.

In some sort of strategy to combat something or other – I started writing some characters with no gender at all. Actually, I wrote a whole sketch with only non-gendered characters in it, and it’s one of the best I’ve ever written. I doubt that means anything, but it is interesting. (They ended up being played by 3 men and 3 women, I think.) And the idea of casting someone purely out of their fit for the role, and not due to their male or female identity is a good one, to me. It leaves a bunch of things open for interpretation, and I like that.

Our company is about to have possibly the craziest year we’ve ever had, with a brand new production happening every month. And, as my preamble for the kickoff meeting for our inaugural show in that schedule (actually called SEX BATTLE…so that’s pretty funny) states: This is a year of risk-taking for us. For all of us. Not just in the quantity of our content, but in the quality, style, and variety of our content. I’m challenging myself to be better at these things this year, and I’m going to pose that challenge to the rest of my cohorts as well.

Cookie Fleck knows what’s up.

We have all these magnificently talented, energetic, creative women going to bat for us, and if we don’t give them the material they deserve, it’s no one’s fault but our own. We haven’t been total failures at it, but we’re not where we should be. And thankfully, with all these shows happening, we have 12 chances to try to get it right.

SEX BATTLE actually cannot have this problem – we’re dividing up writers and actors into two teams (chicks and dudes) and each team will create the same amount of sketches on the same topics (Politics, Love, an Impressions Speed Round and many others) so the only way they can fail at parity in my eyes is if somehow the ladies only write sketches where the other ladies have to play men. But I don’t think that’ll happen.

I anticipate at least one Hillary Clinton impression.

Allison Page is an actor/writer/creative director at Killing My Lobster. You can catch the Sketchfest show she’s directing January 27th at the Eureka Theater.

Cowan Palace: My Nightmare Audition

Ashley and her friends sit around the Theater Pub campfire and tell tales of horror…ible auditions.

Comedy Month continues here with the Theater Pub gang where we’re all about laughing at our errors! And since I love dishing out tales of my own awkward struggles in this theatrical world (remember when I wrote this blog?) I thought it’d be fun to dedicate this week’s entry to nightmare auditions!

Thanks to some Facebook pals, I managed to get a few great tales. But if you too have an audition horror story, please feel free to leave it in the comments section! Let this be a time to celebrate our mistakes and laugh about them together! Besides, when I used to try and sneak-read Cosmo in study hall, my favorite section was always the embarrassing stories. And some of these stories are sexy too – two of them involve boobs! But first, here’s mine:

I’ve had a lot of bad auditions. Luckily, I’ve had a few good ones too but eesh, some of the bad were just awful. The one that comes to mind first when I think of “nightmare audition” was my audition for URTA (University Resident Theatre Association) my senior year of college.

New England was experiencing a brutal winter that year and I was in tech week for my senior project, acting in The Fox, a play by Allan Miller based on D.H. Lawrence’s novella by the same name. I was getting ready to begin my final semester of college and I was absolutely freaking out. Beyond terrified. So I thought, hey, maybe I can hide in grad school for a few years while I figure things out! Genius! But, ugh, I don’t want to go into more debt, I’m gonna need a school to pay for me to go there. Cool! I’ll audition for URTA, where I’ll get seen by schools all over the country and then go wherever I get in, even if it’s in rural Alabama.

That was my big plan. So my cast mate, Dave and I boarded a train surrounded in four feet of snow to head to New York City for a few hours before having to rush back to Rhode Island to finish getting our play ready.

We arrived around 1am to our college budget friendly hotel and woke around 5am to prepare for our early call. I wore a cream colored sweater and a conventional black skirt because the URTA Suggestions Guide mentioned that auditioning actors looked good in light colored tops and dark bottoms.

We got to the fancy hotel where auditions were taking place to check in and I discovered the “headshot” I brought with me (which was just an enlarged passport picture I got the day before from Walgreens) had fallen into the snow and had been ruined beyond repair. I sucked it up though and was given my audition time. (My one proud moment of the day was being placed in the time slot with the auditioners with the highest GPAs – holla, theatre nerd alert!)

Finally, it was my turn. I faked some confidence and walked into the room with a smile, my plain skirt swishing behind! I started my Moliere monologue and then blanked. Like just the worst blank in the entire world. I even asked the panel of viewers what I should do and they were boggled. They looked pained for me. Finally, I just started in on my second monologue from The Rainmaker. I completed it. But it was nothing special. After that, in a daze, I walked out of the room feeling like the entire world was collapsing in on me. I had just ruined my future. I was lost in a cloud of despair when I passed Dave. He asked me how it went and I shook my head unable to even cry. “I need to go.” I told him and I wished him luck on his audition.

Then I walked out of the fancy hotel into foreign streets. I was unfamiliar with New York City and had only been there a handful of times on school trips as a kid. It was freezing and my shoes were soaked with snow. But I walked trying to put back the shattered pieces of my dreams until Dave called me.

“I lost it,” he said, “I just blanked.”

I hurried to meet him and within seconds of looking at each other like we wanted to cry, we were laughing. We were two idiot kids with no business being at that audition. We weren’t prepared, we just wanted the safety of a place to hide in a bit longer before having to try and make it in the real world.

We immediately sought to find solace in pizza. I didn’t yet know the type of magical healing powers found in New York pizza, but let me say, it can cure many woes. And while we sat shoveling feelings and slices into our faces, I caught the eye of a man outside. He entered the restaurant and sat down at a table near to us. He kept staring at me, which I assumed was probably thanks to my smart outfit, but after a few minutes he approached us. I was prepared to hear him ask us for money but he did not. Instead, he showed me something he had been working on while sitting in the corner. It was a drawing of a crowd. All different types of people standing tall and gazing out from the page. That’s when I saw it. I was there. He pointed to the sketched version of me and said in broken English, “I wanted to draw you too.”

Dave and me acting in The Fox. While we did not get a single callback for any of the URTA schools, we did get an A on our senior project!

Suddenly, through some very kind and thoughtful strokes (homegirl looked way prettier than the snow soaked Ashley looked that day), was a new me standing beside other New Yorkers. That’s the moment I knew I was going to move to NYC after I graduated. Perhaps I needed someone else to see me there, who knows, but that’s exactly what I did. The man quietly walked away and we finished our pizza. Simple movements that forever changed my life.

Dave and I moved to NYC together a few months later and ate a whole lot more pizza. And both of us auditioned for a play together right away… we got in it… only to learn it was an anti abortion play… ah, but I’ll save that story for another time. The lesson here is that nightmare auditions are going to happen to even the best of us but there’s always something to take away from them, even if it’s just being able to laugh at yourself for being an idiot. Who else would be stupid enough to put themselves through so much rejection and heartbreak? We need each other to commiserate with, to celebrate with, and to keep encouraging each other to laugh. So in honor of that idea, here are some tales of audition horror from some of my fellow actors and friends!

Dave Collins (the guy from my story!):

So, I’m not sure if this is my worst audition story or my worst audition story from LA but either way it was pretty awful.

I was called in for this Danica Patrick commercial and thought I was just going to be one of three or four guys basically drooling over this beautiful race-car driver. This is what I came in prepared to do, not a very big stretch. This was not the case. I get into the room in front of the casting director and she proceeds to tell me that the joke of this commercial is that they want to show three dudes watching a clip of this beautiful woman showering and then pan to a dude’s naked chest… that these idiots somehow mistake for hers… Then, the camera would slowly go back up to the dude’s face. What?!! So the casting director asks me to take my shirt off and squeeze my very masculine, hairy, breasts together to try and put one over on these unsuspecting dbags. It was weird, humiliating, and I did it. And I didn’t get the part. I guess my male breasts weren’t feminine enough. Gross. I need to go shower now.

Shay Wisniewski:

I moved to New York about 3 months ago and was ready to hit the ground running with auditions. So I went to a call for Peer Gynt by Ibson, it’s one of his lesser known plays. I headed to Brooklyn for one of my first auditions. I show up and start filling out my audition form. Pretty standard. They even asked how we felt about nudity on stage. At this point in my life, I felt I could show off my breast if needed for a show. No big deal. Also, I told myself I wouldn’t turn anything down since I’m new to the city. So in I went.

In the room was an older man. White hair and a pony tail, along with his daughter who was handling the music in the show. They had me sing, improvise some dancing, do a monologue. Things were going great. I even get a callback which was even better than the audition. Full of viewpoints and group movement work, Meisner technique. Everything was right up my alley. He sits us down at the end of the callback and says, “so, I want to clarify the nudity aspect of the show. I love women, I love sex and I think both are very important things in a man’s life. Mothers, lovers, sister and so on. So at the end of the play, I want the main guy, to be breastfed by all the women on stage.”

…

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not nudity, that’s porn.

And one of the guys in the audition group even went up to the director afterwards to let him know he was okay with the nudity in the show. Of course you are! You’d be getting a titty parade in your mouth! Sucking on multiple breasts is way better than having some strange adult man breast feed when you aren’t even dating.

I ended up getting cast. No, I didn’t take it. I couldn’t have something like that show up on YouTube one day when I’m famous. Whenever that is. Oh, and it paid zero dollars. So, no, you will not be seeing my breast feeding premiere this fall in New York.

Alex Harris:

You know what? When I saw your post on Facebook I immediately thought of a TERRIBLE one I had on Wednesday! Have you ever had an audition where, like, you read what they wanted, you knew what they wanted, and then when you go in there, you do absolutely everything you’re not supposed to? Well, that was me at this commercial audition, yikes bikes!! I walked in and the taping happens right in the audition waiting area so while you’re auditioning, you’re being watched by the other girls who are there (BIG HELP TO THE NERVES). And I just like had a lapse of where I was. I did exaggerated expressions like I was on stage or doing improv, instead of understated looks and reactions for simple commercial shots, oh it is awful Ashley. Awful.

Natalie Ashodian:

I once auditioned a woman for the very serious part of a Planned Parenthood nurse. A woman (in her 50’s or older, mind you!) showed up in a sexy nurse uniform. You know, Halloween costume 1940’s pin up style nurse. Needless to say, please don’t over-do character auditions. Unless the show is, you know, inherently campy.

Lea Gulino:

My last on-camera audition in LA – a 3rd callback for a Visa ad and the 3rd time I put everything I had into bleating like a goat…

Christi Chew:

He said, “Well now we know you can sing. Can you do it again, but crawl around like a cat?” It wasn’t CATS.

Do you have an audition horror story to share? Come join the party and leave it in the comments section!

Everything Is Already Something Week 37: Honesty Is The Best Policy

Allison Page= iron fist in iron glove.

We’ve all been there: you’re working on a show (any end of it) and you’re feeling disgruntled, dissatisfied, and generally like a big old grouch, but you don’t feel like you can say anything. It’s not your place. No one wants your opinion. They want to rule from the top of a mountain covered with statues of their own faces cast in gold. You’re not in charge. Who cares what you think? So then you wait until the show is over, or until you’ve left the company, to bad-mouth everybody responsible for what you see as the downfall of a production or organization.

Leadership positions in arts organizations are weird. Well, leadership positions in any situation have the potential to get weird. Of course, if you’re happy to have people not tell you the truth, then it’s fine. There are all kinds of places I’ve worked (both in theater and other places) where no one was truthful with the people in charge for fear of getting fired, never being cast again, or just having someone be angry at them. But generally speaking, honesty is the best policy, right? Especially if you actually give a shit if your co-conspirators are happy with what they’re doing.

Allison is…FEARLESS LEADER! But, like, with a couple of fears.

So, as someone who finds themselves in a position of authority in a company full of comedians, how do I get people to tell me truth – as that is something that I foolishly desire? How do I convince them that I really want to know what they feel is working and what is not, and that if they disagree with me I’m not going to tar and/or feather them, or throw them to the rabid dogs, or publicly mock them in a well-attended Comedy Central Roast that isn’t actually on Comedy Central but just happens in my studio apartment?

Jeff Ross will still make an appearance.

I’ve been just straight up asking people pointed questions, but it was posed to me that it’s possible that even though I’m doing that, someone may not feel like they can actually give me an honest real answer, and that I’m just looking to hear what I want to hear. Which, to me, seems ridiculous. But I guess people are ridiculous anyway.

So I made an anonymous survey for people to fill out, prompting them to be as honest as possible with no consequences. We’ll see how that goes. It’s interesting that going from being on an even playing field with everyone, to being in a position to make this call or that call, starts to change how other people see you. I feel the same as I always have. I have really strong opinions about what kind of art I want to make, and how I want to make it. But I want other people to have their strong opinions too, and then we can work together to figure out how best to achieve our goals. I guess it’ll take some time for everyone to get used to how our ship is being sailed, but ultimately I want them to know that they’re sailing just as much as I am. Because sometimes I’m only scrubbing the poop deck.

SAVE YOURSEEEEELVES! *sploosh*

I want to be the kind of leader that I would like to have lead me: passionate, deliberate, someone with a strong vision, but who will listen to the input of others. I don’t want to be the kind of leader with a high turnover rate. If your crew isn’t with you, sailing is going to be pretty hard. I’m not interested in having a mutiny on my hands – wow, it really sounds like I want to go sailing. Someone get me a boat and fill it with comedians.

Allison Page is the Co-Creative Director of Killing My Lobster. You can hear her talk about how she’s changing the way their shows are made at http://pianofight.com/bornready/born-ready-ep-5-being-a-derelict-w-allison-page/ You can also follow her on Twitter @allisonlynnpage

Everything Is Already Something Week 34: I Can’t Do It Without A Papier Mache Dragon

Allison Page, once again using her life to help you with yours.

I’m feelin’ scrappy lately. I’m not the big guy in the fight, I’m the little fast one, bobbin’ and weavin’. When it comes to live performance, what do you really need to make that happen? Some actors, some material, and an audience. That’s all. Those are the basics of having a show. Then you start getting into more details, working out things that you think will make your piece feel more alive or believable: sets, props, costumes, specific lighting, sound design, etc.

When it comes to sketch comedy, those extra things can get real ridiculous real fast. When gutting the costume room of Killing My Lobster (sketch comedy company which has been collecting piles of this stuff for 17 years) this last week, we found some pretty crazy shit. Giant iPod costume, giant pieces of fake poop (for the man who has everything), wigs made out of who-knows-what, glow-in-the-dark robot costumes, 5 football helmets, a severed mannequin head wearing a motorcycle helmet (and fashionable eyeshadow), a REAL SWORD, fake dynamite (I hope), owl boots (not even trying to explain that one), a giant poster which proclaimed “BIEBER/PALIN 2038”, and assortment of things shaped like penises, and about a million billion other oddities.

Anna the German astronomer. From the first KML show I ever performed in. Farewell, drawn-on mole and unibrow.

It got me thinking: why do we need all this stuff? When you’re in the business of producing complicated plays, yeah, you’re going to need a lot of costumes and a lot of props. That makes sense. It’s hard to create Victorian England without the right materials. But we’re making sketch comedy. We’re here to make people laugh. I know we can do that without all this shit.

(I’m going to miss this cape and mask Lucha Libre Santa costume. Ahhh memories.)

It can be really hard to change direction, especially when you’ve been going the same way for so long. It’s easy to say “But…but that’s the way we do it! We’ve always done it that way! Or at least I don’t remember doing it any other way…” but growth comes from change. Or so someone said one time on the internet or something. So, we’re changing. We need to be the scrappy guys, not the guys who stew over something for 3 months before it’s perfectly precious enough to bestow on an audience. I just want to be funny. And we can be funny without glow-in-the-dark robot costumes and without papier mache dragons. Write funny things, get funny people to perform them, and the audience won’t miss the humongous burrito costume. They might not even remember there ever was one.

Look at arguably the best, and certainly the most well-known, sketch creators in the world: Second City. (Yes, their roots are in improv, but they use that to create sketches) Overall, they keep it simple: a stage, some black chairs, and some people – oh, and also, they’re hilarious.

That’s how much they like the black chair, they use it in their marketing.

You can hide behind an over-sized sombrero all day, but it’s when you take it off that the audience gets to see what’s really going on…dick jokes in Spanish. (That sketch is not real and if it were someone would probably think it was offensive…though they’d have to speak Spanish to figure that out.)

I don’t want to use crutches as a crutch anymore. I don’t need the rubber chicken. The rubber chicken is within us all.

Don’t eat rubber chickens, they’re not for food.

Allison Page’s first experiment with this theory, Killing My Lobster Takes It All Off: no sets, no props, no costumes, just funny premiers at foolsFURY’s FURY Factory July 10th and 11th, and at CalShakes’ Grove July 18th.

Everything Is Already Something Week 33: Laying Down Banana Peels

Allison Page is a trap.

Someone or other has created a monster. I’m the monster. I might also be the creator though, so it’s like…I’m both Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Frankenstein himself…Dr. Monster.

In the three weeks since I became Co-Creative Director at Killing My Lobster (a 17 year old sketch comedy company never before headed up by a female Creative Director) I’ve really surprised myself. Mostly in the good way. I can be a pretty self-deprecating person. I mean, it’s comedy, that’s what we do. But I’m having this sudden disgusting burst of…of…oh god…pride? How awful.

As an actor, you only have to own your performance. That’s all you’ve got control of, and everything else – though noticeable to you – isn’t your job. As a writer, you write. But as a Creative Director? There’s a lot of shit going on there. A lot of moving parts. They have to be lined up and organized and figured out and manipulated into something that makes sense. It’s tough cookies.

Allison’s first blasphemous Killing My Lobster show

Ever since I was laid off from my job January 31st, I have been doing whatever I want. That’s not always as great as it sounds, but taking on serious responsibility? That sounds…like a lot of work. I mean, it IS a lot of work. A lot of work that other people will be paying attention to and very likely judging. Definitely judging. Harshly, harshly judging. Somehow, I’m doing it anyway. The judging part hasn’t started yet, but the work part has – and I’m LOVING IT. Maybe what I’ve needed all along is some real responsibility to someone or something other than myself.

At heart, I’m a dreadfully lazy person, which you know if you’ve ever tried to get me to go out on a Saturday night – good luck. But the difference here is that comedy is my passion. I eat and sleep it. I pour it on my mashed potatoes and form it into little snowmen. It’s often the only thing I care about (I mean, I also love my mom), so I guess that’s why I’m willing to crank it up a notch right now. This company comes with a lot of history and all I can do is try to make it the absolute best it could be.

Which means that right now – I gotta go. I have a giant audition to schedule, paint colors to choose, and banana peels to lay down on the road to laughter.

Slippery when wet.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/comedian/creative director. You can follow her on Twitter @allisonlynnpage

Theater Around The Bay: Tossing the Baby and Bathwater

Today’s guest blog is by Charles Lewis III, who returns with a record number of links in one article.

In olden times they had to make their own fun.

“So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.”

– Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (co-authored with Will Durant – 1965)

I didn’t attend the recent Theatre Bay Area convention (aka TBAcon14 or “T-bacon”), so you’ll forgive me if today’s topic well-worn territory for any attendee who might be reading. Still, though I was not present, there was a topic of discussion rattling around in my brain.

If you’re reading this, you likely have a connection to the theatre community – most likely that of the Bay Area. As such, in the past few months, I’m willing to bet you or your connections have seen this Brendan Kiley article floating around social media. It’s from 2008, but it’s reignited the same passion now that it did then. I’ll be honest, when I first thought of writing this piece, I didn’t want to link to the article at all; I thought I’d just refer to it as “that article” and everyone would know what I was talking about. But that would have made it sound like some anonymous internet comment that should be easily dismissed. Since the article – or rather, the topic it covers – being something about which we all feel so strongly, I offer you the chance to (re-)read it and decide for yourself on which side of the debate you fall.

Me? I have a major fucking problem with it article and it starts with the very first sentence: “1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already.” From the get-go he dismisses the greatest playwright in history as someone whose work is archaic and obsolete. Shakespeare’s work, he infers, has no place outside of high school – and he doesn’t want to see it there either. As such, if one wishes to “save” theatre from going the way of the 8-track tape, Rule 1 is to eschew the work of the very man from whose work nearly all modern drama draws its inspiration.

And he’s not the only one. Nary a week goes by when I don’t see some new article stating how all traditional forms of art – theatre, opera, poetry, painting, etc. – are just pageantry for the bourgeoisie and in need of the sort of upheaval more often seen in a coup d’état. But whilst these artistic “revolutionaries” argue over whose head to fit in the guillotine, I find myself equally disturbed and amused by their myopic thinking. Disturbed by the way they so easily wish to dismiss history; amused by the way they’re so blatantly repeating it. “Isn’t this something every young person says?” I think to myself. “Hell, isn’t it something I used to say?”

Thankfully I did no major damage in my youth before coming across the phrase “das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten”. If you’re German’s a li’l rusty, just look at the title of this article and the accompanying woodcarving.

Now let me start by saying I don’t think anyone’s heart is in the wrong place here. I get what everyone is going for: as we keep our ears peeled for the latest news relating to our most cherished art form, we’re easily disheartened by news that the forum for said art – be it theatre, gallery, or even bookstore – appears to be dwindling. You’re not ready to see it disappear and neither am I. So we’re kicking around a series of ideas to make it more appealing to this newly-discovered agoraphobe of the Digital Era: the one less likely to venture out into the real world (with its weather, traffic, and people) and more likely to huddle in a dark room with their digital device watching reruns of Say ‘Yes’ to the Dress.

Friends, I’m not here to slam you for trying out new ideas, I’m just here to give those ideas a little perspective. For instance…

1 – Yes, it’s okay to hate a classic.

Remember that South Park episode where all the kids (8 and 9 years old) are falsely diagnosed with ADHD because none of them can sit through a reading of The Great Gatsby in its entirety? That wasn’t the first or last sacred lamb to be skewered by their show: they’ve fired off on such beloved classics as Catcher in the Rye and A Charlie Brown Christmas. While one’s tastes are entirely subjective, the fact that something has been labeled a classic doesn’t make it invulnerable to criticism. Quite the contrary: being labeled a classic means a work must face even harder scrutiny because it represents the highest of standards.

My personal tastes are pretty eclectic: I get the same thrill from the cinematic majesty of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis that I do from the chuckle-inducing sight of Sting in a blue speedo in Dune. When recommending musicals, I’ll mention Jon Waters’ Cry-Baby with the same enthusiasm with which I’d mention West Side Story. I love the exploitation films of Larry Cohen just as much as the masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock.

But I fucking hate Vertigo.

I’m not kidding, I hate it. I find every character unlikable, I find every action unbelievable, and instead of appealing to my suspension of disbelief, I find the film an insult to my intelligence. I think the critics of its time were right in calling it Hitchcock’s failure. I think it’s bullshit that one list recently named it “Greatest Film of All Time”. I think the only good to come from the film was Brian De Palma ripping it off for Body Double. Seriously, fuck Vertigo.

And it’s perfectly all right to feel that way. Not every work is for everyone. It’s okay for someone to say they don’t like the work of Shakespeare, Euripedes, or Lorraine Hansberry. Each one of their works was composed a long time ago in places unfamiliar with characters and dialogue that don’t quite fit today. They’re old. They’re ancient. But being old doesn’t mean something is obsolete.

And it’s perfectly all right to feel that way. Not every work is for everyone. It’s okay for someone to say they don’t like the work of Shakespeare, Euripedes, or Lorraine Hansberry. Each one of their works was composed a long time ago in places unfamiliar with characters and dialogue that don’t quite fit today. They’re old. They’re ancient. But being old doesn’t mean something is obsolete.

You can argue that Shakespeare is taught in schools only because of outdated curricula; you can also argue that the reason Romeo & Juliet continues to resonate with youngsters is because it’s about two horny teens [/LINK] whose over-the-top emotions lead to disaster. You can say Raisin in the Sun is a quaint piece from the pre-Civil Rights Era; you can also say that in this time of racist headlines and record evictions, that it could have been written yesterday. TheaterPub’s own Stuart Bousel is currently directing a production of the quintessential “American high school play,” Arthur Miller’s The Crucible [/LINK]; a play that takes place in a time (1692 – Salem, Mass.) that was outmoded when it was written (the 1950s). Do you think of it as a heavy-handed – and sexist – anti-McCarthyist parable of Good vs. Evil? Would you believe me if I told you that it’s a complex meditation on three-dimensional characters not speaking up when they should? That the women are the strongest characters because they exercise the most control, whilst the men spend the entire playing trying (and failing) to catch up? That its themes of paranoia are even more powerful in this age of surveillance?

You don’t have to like a classic, but when you call for its removal from regular academia, you’d better prove its obsolescence. Nobody likes a cry-baby who whines “I don’t get it, so it must be worthless.”

They give new meaning to the phrase ‘What fools these mortals be’

2 – What’s really “new”?

This past February I got to see The SF Neo-Futurists’ weekly show, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Though I’d heard about from a good friend – troupe member and ‘Pub regular Megan Cohen – and from Will Leschber’s ‘Pub write-up of the Chicago branch, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Everyone kept describing it in such mythic terms (“A whole new form of theatre!”) that I wondered what frame of reference my mind would even have for what I was about to see. No sooner had the show begun when I immediately identified their type of performance: Sketch.

That’s not at all criticism of the work I saw (some pieces were brilliant), but it was still Sketch. Yeah, they “don’t do characters” and pieces can be dramatic, comedic, insightful, and everything in between – but it’s still Sketch. Hell, I went to the show as the +1 guest of a member of Killing My Lobster – one of the Bay Area’s best sketch groups (one of their Creative Directors is ‘Pub’s own Allison Page) – and y’know what? He was the one who kept insisting to me that it wasn’t sketch; that the Neos’ intense workshops are what distinguish it. Having never taken one of those workshops, I can’t speak on them. All I know is that what I saw that night was part of a long tradition that goes as far back as Vaudeville and is as recent as Key & Peele.

And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with acknowledging that you’re part of a long, great tradition? I know everybody wants to sell their products and services by saying “This isn’t your grandfather’s whatchamacallit!”, but our grandparents had some really cool shit. Sure, we have a more enlightened socio-economic perspective (or so we think), but they had things that were built to last – that’s why they still do.

And I can see the ancestry of classic formats in all of these “new” productions that have popped up recently: the much-lauded “interactive theatre” show Speakeasy, the popular Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding, and even the upcoming SF Dungeons Tours are part of a trend that extends back as far as the 1930s and ‘40s. Even the new so-called [LINK: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/top-5-participatory-opera-experiences/%5D “Participatory Opera Experiences” [/LINK] (including [LINK: http://www.operaontap.org%5D Opera on Tap [/LINK], which I’ve attended several times) owe their history to fourth-wall-breaking that took place long before any of us were born. Hell, I performed Sarah Kane’s Blasted in an actual hotel room with the audience mere inches away.

The only difference between the aforementioned productions and elementary school history tours is that the former allow – nay, encourage – heavy drinking. But that’s great because there’s just as much room for these experiments as there is for a traditional theatre setting; especially when they recreate history. It’s easy to laugh at Renaissance Faires and Civil War re-enactments, but they bring you face-to-face with a piece of history you otherwise wouldn’t experience. And history will always be necessary, even when it isn’t trendy. Remember the “Kissing Cousin” episode of Frasier, where Zooey Daschanel played Roz’s young cousin? Roz tries to keep up with the early-20s party gal, but soon realises she can’t. When said cousin gives her lip about Roz’s songs all being on the “Classic Rock” station, Roz replies “For your information, Classic Rock is both classic and it rocks!”

Kudos to you for experimenting. Just ask yourself this question from time to time: Are you performing in front of an audience? If you answered “yes”, then very little of what you’re doing is “new”. But that doesn’t mean you can’t distinguish yourself. Speaking of which…

3 – Innovation vs. Gimmick

Four or five years ago I got into a very heated on-line debate with the social media admin. (possibly the artistic director) of a highly-renowned SF theatre company. I was voicing my displeasure at their new implementation of “Tweet seats” – a trend where a certain section of audience members spend the entire show dividing their attention between the action on stage and commenting on said action via social media. The admin and a few supporters said it was somehow more immersive with the show, even if the actors don’t always have their undivided attention. As I said then: the action on stage should always have your undivided attention! What the fuck do you think all the lights, costumes, make-up, and who-knows-how-long rehearsal period was for? To be ignored? It’s one thing to zone out during boring show, it’s another to pay admission just to look at the glowing box in your hand.

Technology will always be a double-edged sword in the arts: on the one hand, it opens up a host of new possibilities for both the creation of work and the promotion/distribution of said work; on the other hand, it can become a crutch to distract from a creatively bankrupt production. Tweet seats remind me of someone going through a mid-life crisis: so desperate to maintain relevance that he or she will adopt the most ridiculous contemporary fad in an attempt follow the zeitgeist. The only thing missing is cheap hair dye, plastic surgery, and an expensive sports car. Tweet seats don’t compliment a performance, they contradict it.

Can those people up there be quiet? I’m trying to update my Pinterest board

But there are many great strides in the marriage of classic theatre and modern technology. From its inception, PBS has been bringing theatre and opera into the homes of millions. The rise of digital projection cinema has allowed this idea to flourish into full high definition presentations on giant screens. And now independent theatres are getting in on the game with live-streaming outlets, including HowlRound TV. As this trend grows, everyone will have to keep up-to-date with things like internet access, internet speed, and how to get cameras and microphones in key places to best capture the performance, yet not be noticed by the audience. None of which is impossible. None of which takes away from what the performers fought so hard to put together.

I’ve been a tech buff since I was four years old and the only one in the house who knew how to set the clock on the VCR. I’ve seen “the next big thing” come and go without so much as a blip on the national radar (does anyone even remember MiniDisc? CD-i? HD-DVD?). It’s near-impossible to predict which new technology will most influence the future, but as artists there is one thing we can do. When we come across some new tech – be it a new shade of blue to add to an illustrator’s palette, or the ability to project on the side of a skyscraper – we can ask ourselves “How will this make it easier for me to say what I want to say?” Hitchcock and Kubrick were always innovative in the technology used in their films, using bluescreen, matte paintings, etc. Do you honestly think they wouldn’t have used CGI, had they lived? Terence Malick uses it. To an artist, everything is a potential tool. Everything.

Similarly, right now you’re reading this on the internet. Chances are you came to this article by clicking over from a social networking site. I currently do part-time work for a company that handles the outsourced social media for corporations. A single headline can make or break a casual patron’s entire impression of a company. It has to short, to the point, and intriguing. We all hate Upworthy’s click-bait headlines, but those fuckers know how to dangle a worm somethin’ fierce, y’all. The impact of social media on the arts cannot be understated. When you work thrives by word-of-mouth, you have to keep track of the words about you that are instantly published and can be seen by thousands a day. Print reviews and postcard advertising are still a part of what we do, but few of those make the impact of someone taking to Facebook to say how much they loved/hated a show, how long the show playing, and where you can donate funds to the producers. These are things that all add to experience.

It shouldn’t be about keeping up with the Joneses, it should be about telling the story the best way possible. Something else to keep in mind…

4 – Scorched Earth

Before I go on, I think it prudent to issue a mild DISCLAIMER: I’m going to address a topic that is very sensitive and stirs up passions for those on both sides. I’d like to say that I’m not trying to throw fuel on the fire, just that I see an unmistakable parallel.

You still there? Okay then…

This idea of dispatching the old to make way for the new is not only a problem with theatre, but with the city of San Francisco in particular. I say that with many good friends in the tech industry. Said friends are good, hard-working people who actually would like to be part the unique culture for which this city is known. Unfortunately, they find themselves employed by companies who have torn down century-old building for the sake of erecting a new Starbucks in its place. When the art galleries on Geary Blvd. are evicted to make way for a new headquarters of a-company-that-might-not-be-around-in-two-years, then that’s a problem. The loss of an artistic outlet is a problem, in no short part because the identities – those of the artists and the town that welcomed them into their gallery – will be lost. History repeatedly tells us the cost of destroying something ancient just to make way the new invaders: something truly invaluable is always lost. And once the new owners of these buildings have no use for them, they’ll just leave the damaged remains behind.

On the plus side: I have a Mad Max fanfic for just this occasion.

But I’m not here to blame anyone. Really, I’m not. No good comes from misguided blame. In fact, you might find this hard to believe, but I’m actually pretty optimistic. I really am. I know what you’re thinking: how can I, an independent theatre artist, be remotely optimistic about the future of theatre when even Broadway and The Metropolitan Opera [/LINK] are tearing their hair out over how to save their “dying industries.” ?

I’m glad you asked, and the reason is…

5 – Conclusion: We’re all in this together.

The reason I don’t freak out about the future of theatre is that all of the ideas mentioned above, including the ones I don’t like, mean that there will be a future for theatre. You know what literature, television, painting, and film all have in common? They’re all dependent upon technology. Every one of those great artistic and entertainment format would be impossible without some great technological advancement to make them possible: the printing press, the cathode ray, the feathered brush, and the photochemical process – all of them an inextricably linked with the advanced that bore them. Theatre requires only two things: a performer and an audience. It’s been like that since the beginning of time.

As much as I abhor some of the ideas to “save” theatre, it comforts me to know that it still stirs that kind of passion within people. It’s okay to hate a classic, because it became a classic by being scrutinised over the years. Citizen Kane wasn’t called “Greatest Film of All Time” until the 1960s. Y’know which film held the title before that? Birth of a Nation. Seriously. Hate as many classics as you like. I happen to know of a local theatre company that “produces re-imagined classics and scripted original works, as well as creative and social events, preferably in a casual bar environment or other non-traditional venue, emphasizing collaboration and connection between new and established theater artists and audiences.” What was their name again?

As much as we worry over finding that audience of One , new innovations allow for a wider net to find that audience, no matter where they are. I was there the night my good friends at PianoFight Productions raised all the funds for their new Taylor Street headquarters. After having heard them talk about it for so long, it was amazing to actually walk through the space: multiple stages, a full restaurant & bar, a film/video studio, and a recording studio. There will be full plays, improv shows, stand-up, and live-streaming capabilities. All of the classic qualities of live performance successfully merged with cutting edge technology in a venue where there are no limits. That is how one creates “new theatre”.

I’m optimistic about theatre because I know theatre isn’t dying, it’s evolving. It’s getting more perspectives from women and people of color . It’s thriving in places, even when you can’t find it. It’s refusing live or die by outdated definitions of what it is or isn’t.

Whatever old-school theatre folk think of the new upstarts (and vice versa), the point is that we’re all after the exact same thing. Know how I know? We chose theatre. No one goes into theatre to be cool. They go into theatre because they know there’s nothing like an audience and a performer breathing the same air; nothing like connecting with someone, even when there’s distance between you; nothing like truly losing yourself in the experience of something that you logically know is make believe. I recently read an article of polled theatre audiences who say that attending a live show is just as invigorating as getting a pay raise. And that is what we do, what we have done, what we will continue to do until the end of time: make everyone’s life a little richer, one performance at a time.

But seriously, fuck Vertigo.

Charles Lewis is a local actor, writer and director who is equally adept at mending fences and burning bridges.