DAY 10 - UPSTAIRS GALLERY HOUSE TEAM NIGHT WE'VE FINALLY MADE IT OH GOD YES!

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SHOW TONIGHT?

DUGAN: First off, big thanks to Alex Honnet for bailing us out tonight. The show that we were supposed to do kinda fell through, and he swooped in like a caped superhero and put us in on the UG house team night. We played with Anthony Oberbeck and Kenny Kelly, the tallest funniest guys I know. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been doing improv every single day for 10 days now, but I think that we’ve had some energy issues the past couple days. The shows are technically sound, but (to use the analogy that Griffin has beat into the ground) it’s like we’re trying to keep a balloon in the air. We hit it up, and then watch it float back down, then try to hit it again. The thing that I keep noticing in the shows that we’ve done lately are the long pauses where we look around at each other wondering who’s going to say something next. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with silence onstage, in fact a lot of my favorite teams are wonderfully comfortable with silence (Dummy, TJ and Dave, etc) but it needs to be an engaged and active silence, and I don’t think that’s what I’ve been doing lately.

GRIFF: We played with two friends, Anthony Oberbeck and Kenny Kelly. The show was nothing to write home about but it was fun. Lots of fun moments, but could have done a better job of heightening things. I’m not at all disappointed with our performance though. For a group that has never played I think we did well. Anthony commented that he thinks playing one long scene with a mash-up style group is the best way to have a good show because you can dig in and find the characters, then I hit him for speaking out of turn in front of James and me. We’ll have no more trouble from him.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT GRIFF/JAMES?

DUGAN: I wish I knew how his brain worked. I wish that I could tell you that after playing with him this much I had some insight into what made him tick and where he came up with half of the things that come out of his mouth. But I would just be a liar if I did. Griff is great at bringing things into scenes that have momentum. Often times what he says is just off the wall enough that you can’t resist digging in and seeing where it will lead you.

GRIFF: Jams has played nerdy characters several times now. Tonight he brought up Dungeons and Dragons, last night he was a head-case who just wanted to be the smart one of the group, and I’m pretty sure he made a Magic the Gathering reference earlier in the month. Besides showing how little he gets outside, it points to something I’ve noticed lately. Jams is a thinkin’ man. He plays characters with an intellectual perspective or to whom being perceived as smart is emotionally important. What’s that all about?

HOW DO YOU FEEL/WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT IMPROV?

DUGAN: You get out what you put in. If you’re not putting all your energy into a show, then you probably shouldn’t be surprised when it’s a low energy show. Like The Beatles say, “The love you take is equal to the love you make”. Boom. It took 10 days of blogging, but we finally got to a Beatles quote. I’m gonna go hang myself.

GRIFF: Doing so many mashed up shows (where we play with random people we usually haven’t played with) it is kind of easy to just chalk everything up to “oh we’ve never played”, and as far as my attitude about last night I’ve kinda done that. However, I really feel like there is something to learn here. Every night we have an opportunity to do something really wild and risky and I think those are the first things you drop when you play with a new group. You kinda feel like being polite and that sucks the fun out of the show. I had more fun talking to my girlfriend after the show than I did during it because I know I can say silly weird shit to her and she’ll still talk to me and even run with it. And yea duh of course that makes sense and that relationship is much different and real and more intimate than most other relationships, but I honestly feel like you should approach playing in any show with the same sort of comfort as if you have talking to a significant other or best friend. It’s a trust thing and I’m starting to see you just have to assume that trust. That’s tough, but I think the more I do this stuff the more comfortable I feel and the more like myself I become onstage.
 

IF GRIFF/JAMES WAS BITTEN BY A ZOMBIE, WOULD YOU KILL HIM OR LET HIM TURN?

DUGAN:I’d let him turn. I wanna see what an even less intelligible Griffin would look like. And then shoot him with my crossbow.

GRIFF: Fuckin’ mercy kill. Hell, I’d sooner shoot a baby than watch it turn into one of those freaks. The premise is overplayed in modern T.V. and cinema and I don’t want any part of it. If Jams even intimates that he is going to play a zombie I’m killing him immediately in real life without remorse. I’ve talked a lot about murdering people in this blog lately. Whooooooboy.