Happiness is a Warm PUN!

Thursday night we taped the first official episode of the Alley Theater Improv Challenge. Or so we thought. Joel, our musical director, never showed. He not only plays the music during the show, but he also plays sound effects, gives me onstage cues, and gives me someone to banter with during the slow moments. After we were done, Carol and Scott were leaning heavily into the field of "let's make this a final dress rehearsal and start fresh next week" - it really all boils down to editing and deciding if Joel missing will disrupt the flow of the episodes. I just hope he's ok, cause we never heard from him.

But the entire time we proceeded like it's going to air. The whole day while at work I was anticipating what to do and psyching up. One of my co-workers was on a team that was performing tonight, and she was antsy too. Fortunately the workload was light enough, so I didn't make any major gaffes.

I got there about 6:30 and was first told about Joel missing. I covered with Scott all the things I needed to do in case he didn't show. Most of my cues we going to be delivered by the floor manager, which wouldn't look that great on camera, but would get the job done.

I spent a few minutes with the judges and gave them the rundown on what they'd be doing. They'd come from all walks of the performing arts, and were great all evening giving me someone to banter with when things got slower. I'll probably utilize them more in that regard.

I then gathered the teams together to cover all the last-minute changes and how they're going to affect them. Our competitors were evenly matched. The Second-Chancers were a group of ladies (including my co-worker) that had never pursued the performing arts, and were finally throwing caution to the wind and going for it. Heyman Talent was a group of aspiring performers - however one of their members had to drop out at the last second and was replaced by someone that had just a little instruction. All of them were ready to act silly and have a lot of fun, so I was thrilled to see them go.

Lots of memorable moments. During a one minute re-enactment of "Cinderella", my co-worker just randomly kicked her shoe off to her teammates, and that got a big laugh. Two members of Heyman Talent seemed very natural playing a husband and wife shopping, and they brought a ton of energy. In the end, Heyman Talent won by a mere 14 points. No one left unhappy, which is my goal.

Afterward, I "debriefed" with everyone. The judges gave solid critique of how we can tweak a few of the skits to make them more interesting to the viewing audience. Scott gave a lot of production notes there at the club and later in e-mail that will tighten the ship considerably. Carol and the performers had nothing but praise for the comedy and comfort they had.

If this show winds up being used as "promotional material" for the next few weeks, like when I go on the CW morning show, Heyman Talent will probably get a bye in the tournament, and the Second Chancers will get, funnily enough, a "second chance".

Despite all the setbacks, I'm still extremely happy with how it's all coming together. I'm especially surprised at my own comfort level in front of three cameras trained on me. This thing is going to be HUGE!

Ticket to Ride

My last blog until probably Tuesday. So those of you waiting with baited breath on my weight loss info (both of you) will have to wait a little longer.

Tonight is a dry run of the Improv Challenge. Doing this for the first time ever, I don't completely know what to expect. Here's what I'm assuming will happen:

Scott, the cameramen, and the improv artists (a mixture of the pro team the Indicators, some of my old improv buddies, and actual competing teams trying to get their sea legs) will pow-wow on how it's all going to go down. I'll give brief examples/training to the teams on the various skits, with the other improvisors demonstrating how it's done.

Then we'll do a mock taping of the show. They WILL be running the cameras, and some of the footage will be used for commercials to run on TV and web (and if I have my way, be included in the Season One DVD collection - I'm nothing if not ambitious!).

My biggest tasks - learning cues from Scott on how much time we have before and after commercial breaks, learning how to make it interesting, and trying to not look like the rank amateur I really am! No problem, right?

We'll be doing it again next Thursday as well, so I'm not expecting all smoothness and miracles tonight.

***

Then tomorrow morning, RedFaery and I leave for our vacation to Chicago. Yay, a Friday off - first one since the honeymoon!

Saturday is the Fest for Beatle Fans (Beatlefest is SO much easier to say - damn lawyers!). I get to show my wife all the exhibits, merchandise and artwork that I love. I'll probably record a song or two, and I always buy a loud tie. But the most fun is relaxing with 5,000 new buddies, doing nothing but kicking back and singing Beatle's songs. It's the closest to being a hippie I ever get. I just may confuse RedFaery completely!

Sunday we're meeting a few pals from an online community we both frequent (Tech Support Comedy) at the Museum of Science and Industry. RedFaery and I haven't been there since we were kids, so we hope to act like kids the whole day. We've partied with Grue and HairTech before, so it's going to be a blast. Dinner afterward at the location of their choice - always trust the locals when it comes to cuisine!

Monday we'll begin the drive back home, stopping along to way at RedFaery's mother's home. Seeing the new home her sister's family is moving into in two weeks is on the docket as well.

I'm still deciding whether or not to take Tuesday off to get a few more things accomplished. I'll just play it by the ear. Hey, it's a vacation, right?

Not a Second Time

Here's my favorite of the four commercials made:



To see the other two, go to YouTube and search for "alyscott"

A Taste of Honey

The first commercial for the Improv Challenge!



Sadly, these are destined to be web-only. We're filming the workshops and using footage from it for the TV commercials.

There are a few more that will be on YouTube soon.

Things We Said Today

Last night we filmed 15-second promos for the Improv Challenge. Here's the tale of that little adventure...

I'd been playing e-mail tag with Scott on setting up the time and place to film the commercials, and he realized our schedules wouldn't mesh during the week. And since it needed to be filmed in HD (break out the Clearasil!) and Scott didn't have the right equipment, he gave me the contact info for Joe, the videographer for City Block, and asked me to take it from there.

The promo pieces were an amalgam (love that word!) of bits written by Scott, Carol and myself - mostly Carol. I added a couple of lines in an effort to make it more comedic in nature, but otherwise is packed a lot of info into 15 seconds.

I spent Wednesday night writing the info onto cuecards. To save cash, and to make RedFaery's job of holding them a lot easier, I wrote each spot on one card where she could easily flip it. More on that later...

Thursday at lunch, I studied the words and went over them in my mind, counting off the seconds to make sure I could keep them under or at 15 seconds. Got the timing down pretty well. On the drive home, I read them out loud a few times each (yeah, I was driving and reading - I'm really good at it too!). I think I found a nice level of enthusiam without venturing into "monster truck show announcer" territory.

I pick up RedFaery and head to Joe's house/studio, right when a thunderstorm was rolling in. Wonderful - how many retake was I going to have to shoot due to God's sound effects, I wondered.

Joe was ready for me, and I stood in front of a green screen while he focused in on my head and upper chest - no since scaring folks off with my gut just yet! We decided that each scene we worked on would be one continuous take, and the garbage would be edited out later.

The good points: I think my enthusiam was dead-on perfect, my gestures weren't too wild and distracting, and I kept my eyes wide and expressive (unlike my normal squinting). I think there's enough there for Scott to work with.

The bad points: I'm appearently really bad at reading cuecards - watching my eyes bounce back and forth might be pretty distracting. I'd much rather be making it up as I go - which I will be during the actual show thankfully. Plus I forgot I had a blue pen in my shirt pocket, so there's this annoying blue spot on my chest. Hopefully whatever Scott puts in the background keeps everyone's focus off those negative things.

The funny thing: My effort to save cash and time nearly ruined things. RedFaery was underneath the camera's mic, and flipping the cards make a thunder-like noise - as if we didn't have enough of that to deal with. When she slowed down, I'd miss my cue line. But between her anticipation of the coming lines and me imprinting in my mind the website address (which was always the next line), we got it solved in a couple of minutes. I just hope we make a DVD with a blooper reel - my way of dealing with frustration without swearing involves rattling my head and hopping in place, and I had no choice but to laugh at watching myself!

Next week sometime the commercials will be done, and I'm going to YouTube them and link them everywhere I can think of. Last I knew we had several verbal commitments, but no written ones yet, which is frustrating. Maybe these spots will spur it on more.

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

I've talked just slightly about an improv project I've been working on. I've not been too forthcoming with all the details, because I've not really known how much I should be talking about, since you never know who's reading and if they'll steal ideas. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you - that sort of thing. I think we're finally to a point I can blog a little more about it (which if you know me I've been dying to do!)

Waaay back in January I read a simple line ad in LEO about auditions for actors, singers, writers, etc. for a new caberet-style theater. I was intrigued, because I can do all those things - plus being relatively new to the Louisville theatre scene, I didn't know where to begin to inserting myself. I reserved a time, I prepped a song and a monologue, and went and did my thing.

When my audition was over and I'd suitably impressed everyone (I DID get a role, after all!), I asked about the writing aspect of the ad that was posted. That's when one of the panel, Scott Davis, pulled me aside and started explaining more about this new theater, the Alley Theater. Scott, along with Carol Dines, had restarted this once-active theater now (formerly on Baxter Avenue, now in City Block) with the intention of doing all sorts of cabaret-style projects and trying innovative things with the space.

I saw my opportunity and took it. I brought up my experience with coordinating RASCAL Improv and my desire to get involved with a similar project. Scott indicated that they had designs along those lines further down the road, and he would definitely keep me in mind when that time came around. I left feeling like a superstar.

Fast-forward about 2 months. We're coming to the opening of "Blue Plate Special" and all is going well. During one of the breaks, I'm chatting with Scott and Carol, and Scott mentions that the improv idea he has is getting moved to the front burner. I renew my statement that I'd love to be a part of making it happen, just in case he'd forgotten. I guess he hadn't, because he gives me the skinny on his idea.

He wanted to take the skits that you'd see on "Who's Line Is It Anyway" and make a competition show out of it, with teams competing for charity. It's a pretty common notion in cities with a lot of improv groups (like LA, Chicago and New York), but in this case he wanted to persue local companies to form their own teams.

The rest of our rehearsal, I kept thinking about all the possibilities. I couldn't shake it. That night I wrote an outline of how I thought the show could be constructed, taking from game shows like Family Feud, the Match Game, the Gong Show and American Idol (yes, it's a game show!). I e-mailed the outline to both Scott and Carol and hoped that they didn't think I was trying to usurp their ideas and make them my own.

Fortunately they didn't. Scott replied that it was pretty much how they'd envisioned it, and he'd be getting in contact with me again when they finished the next production being put on at Alley. Since Scott was directing and starring in and promoting this one, his free-time was nothing. I'm nothing if not patient.

About April, when "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)" wrapped, I wrote to see if there had been an update. Scott replied that they'd already been contacting some media outlets to see if they wanted to field teams, and had already met with some success. I gave him a few ideas of venues to chase he might not have thought of, such as Ohio Valley Wrestling. Hey, if anyone was going to be hilarious to watch, it would be these guys, right?

That's when I got the surprise of my life. Scott wrote and asked for help to cut the show down from it's hour-long format for stage production to a 30-minute version, as he was approaching the local TV station for a regular timeslot.

Television? Really??? Umm...wow!

That's a whole new level of intensity I've not experienced yet. Most of you know I've struggled with insecurities about moving into a more professional level of acting, and this was just another spice in the stew. But I've learned a few things to combat those issues in the last couple of months.

The first I've blantantly stolen from RedFaery - when she experiences fear in something, she researches the hell out of it, analyzes it to the nth degree, and draws comfort in that knowledge. That's pretty easy here to do here.

Second, I've learned to be comicly arrogant. I like grinning at my wife and a few friends and saying things like, "I'm gonna be a TV star!" It's an effective way to shunt the fear away and replace it with giggles.

So now we're going to make a TV show - filming two episodes at a time. I met with Scott and Carol over lunch, and we talked about everything. The new format, how the stage is going to be set up, the teams, contracts, promotion, logos, etc. I walk away certain we hammered out a lot of the details to make this into something special.

A week later, Scott tells me that not only are we set up on the cable access station, but the local CW affiliate as well. Now I'm gonna be a TV star on TWO stations! W00t!

Currently, we are in the process of writing the commercials to promote the show, and starting the real push to encourage companies to form teams. We need 16 teams in our double-elimination bracket, and getting the word out should like we plan should get the bracket filled in no time. I've written up promo pieces that Carol is revising and adding to, and most likely sometime next week we'll shoot them. Our first taping (still believe I'm saying that!) is tentatively scheduled for early August, so we're going to be moving fast!

And all I can hear in my head is the loud click-click-click of going up the first big hill on a rollercoaster...

I'll post the official press release here soon.

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

Regular readers may remember my excitement about the chance to pay Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" at the little local Corydon theatre I've done many shows at before moving to Louisville. Irregular readers may want to look for that entry about two months back...

Monday was the auditions. I hurried home and picked up RedFaery. I warned her to eat, cause I figured we'd be there for an hour and a half, plus I had her bring me a peanut butter sandwich to keep my hunger at bay. We'd planned on hitting one of our favorite little restaurants afterward.

We got there plenty early, and I filled out the necessary forms, plus attached my resume (almost like I'm a professional, huh?). RedFaery pointed out that I still had my weight listed at 240 lbs, so I happily scratched it out and wrote "215" instead.

Now a typical audition for a musical at Hayswood Theatre involves getting the littlest children to do their singing and reading done first, so they can get home in time for bed. Then the adults sing their prepared songs, then do cold readings. Simple, no?

They started out with the kids doing their thing. Lots of kids, so this took a while. Then they started having some of the adults sing. Hmm, ok.

They suddenly stopped with the adults (before getting to me) and had everyone learn a couple of the songs to sing as a group. Ummm, what? Why? What can be learned about the people auditioning by doing that? Who's loudest?

Next, the choreographer works with the little kids on dance steps. As expected, that was like herding cats. Fortunately that didn't take too long, and the kids were dismissed.

We finally get back to the prepared songs, and I finally get to sing. Since Tevye's a baritone role, I chose a lower range song I did at a high school singing contest, "When I Have Sung My Songs". Well received by the crowd and directors, and I'm happy with how I did. They also had me sing the first verse of "If I Were a Rich Man". The directors weren't paying very close attention, and I got to sing more of the song than the others auditioning for Tevye - including the part were he sings the quacking and honking of the ducks and geese. When they heard the laughter from the onlookers, they realized they'd let me go long and said, "That's good, thanks." SCORE!

Next was more group singing, this time older men and older women doing "Sunrise, Sunset". I'm confused as hell.

Now we get to learn choreography. I'm guessing they wanted to see how how we pick up on it - which is great if the choreographer actually takes more than a moment to watch instead of instruct. I'm not the best dancer, but I held my own.

As I return to my seat, RedFaery wonders to me how much longer. It's only then do I find out we've been there two hours, and we haven't even gotten to the reading yet! All the disorganization between two directors, a music director and a choreographer fighting to get their time in running the audition was causing the process to drag on.

In what I'm sure was a pure "diva moment", I decided I was done. RedFaery is always fine with being used as an excuse, so I pulled the director aside and said I needed to get some food in her. She wanted to know if I could come back tomorrow, and I said basically, "No, but you know what I can do on stage, right?" She understood, and off we went. Maybe I shot myself in the foot - but I honestly didn't (and don't) care.

As expected, the restaurant was closed, so we went to a favorite fast food place instead. RedFaery had never been to an audition at Hayswood, and she asked, "Is that how it normally is?" That touched off an hour-long rant of mine about how that was a disorganized mess, and that if rehearsals were run like the audition, maybe it wouldn't be in my best interest to NOT be in this show. Considering how much I want to play Tevye, that's something coming from me!

Today, I get the call from the main director on my voice mail. Despite knowing I was auditioning only for Tevye, they offered me Mordcha in Innkeeper. It's an awesome role, but when you combine my Monday night experience with the long drive, and my selfish desire to play the role I've been pining after for 2/3 of my life, it was an easy decision. And as many of my acting friends have already told me, I've got a shot at that role for the next 20-30 years. I'm a patient man.

Plus, it doesn't hurt to find out that the improv project I've been working on is now on the front burner, and will be televised on a local station. But that's another, future blog entry...