Feeling Victorious

This week was a good one. For starters, my improv troupe Rebels Without Applause (find us on Facebook OR ELSE) went up against two other improv troupes Tuesday night at the Back Page in Lowell. It was a comedy contest judged by a local stand up and some radio personality types, first prize being a gift certificate to a local joint, and tickets and back stage passes to Who's Line Is It Anyway? alumni Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood show coming to Lowell. Going into it, I didn't think there would only be three groups performing and it never seriously occurred to me that we could win. But we did! I know, crazy right? We did some strong stuff in our opening set of twenty minutes, then in the semi final five minute one scene round, we really knocked out of the park with some kick ass scene work, singing and my guitar playing. Our plan going into it was that if we made it that far we'd do one of our signature games, "Musical" which is basically a mini musical with an ingenue threatened by a bad guy who is then saved by the hero... musical! Our heroes in this case were nuns who's bus broke down outside of a bar on the super bowl, the villians were drunken patriots fans and the hero/in this case guitar player was Jesus played by me who encouraged everybody in the joint to drink heavily and tip their bartenders well. If you are ever performing in a bar, that's probably a sound strategy. Anyhow, everybody performed awesome and it was a pretty great time. Winning was kind of icing on the case.

The show is Friday, and I still haven't fully processed it. I grew up watching the Who's Line guys in reruns (I was always more of a fan of the English version) and it definitely affected my view of performance and improv. Getting to watch and then meet someone like Colin Mochrie... let's just say it will be a blog post. And my profile picture for a while.

The past two days we rehearsed and shot a staged version of my friend Cassie Seinuk's play "The Muse", which we'd previously performed at Turtle Lane as part of their Young Actor's Winter Festival and then in New York for the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival. The script is pretty fantastic, and it just keeps having legs, because this time it was accepted as a contender for the Strike 38 festival in New York. Our options were to go and do it, or film a staged presentation, so we ended up filming it. Working on this script was like visiting with an old friend after having done it twice already. It was new again, because we had a third actor playing my scene partner. It was interesting as well, because I felt the weight of my experience doing Swimming in the Shallows upon my performance and I mean that in a good way. Malcolm Gladwell, I think in Outliers and this quote I've only heard referenced I've never read the book, thinks that to get really good at something you have to spend like 10,000 hours practicing it. I think that applies to acting. And the best way to get better is performing in front of people. Swimming in the Shallows was pretty incredible, because I got to do it live fifteen times which is quite a few more performances then I usually get. So I really felt fresh and vital revisiting Finn, and that felt good!

I should wrap this up. I'm auditioning today for Apollinaire's R&G Are Dead and then tonight I have a front row mezzanine seat to Ma Rainey's Black Bottom which I will then blog about more throughly. And also other stuff I'll have to talk about later. Till then!