ABCs of the ADTs: The Thing to DO!
Posted by Mouth | Filed under Guest Blog, Talkin' Shop - We talk improv. Any questions you want discussed can be. Email us @ captain@ussrocknroll.com., The Mouth, Uncategorized
This week’s Abc’s of the ADT’s guest blog is from The ADMINISTRATION’s Chris McGowan. You can check out the Administration every Friday at iOwest’s Adt theater. Also Chris plays in the show Granny’s Squares. You can see them Sunday, March 14 @ 10:00 PM in the The Loft – tickets are FREE! ENJOY!
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“Oh, so you do improv, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that like stand-up?”
If you’re reading this blog, you love the art of improv. Well, and you read blogs. But you likely already know what improv is and probably have at least taken a class. You might even be performing.
If you are performing, you have had the above conversation. Multiple times. Aside from Drew Carrey’s show, a lot of people just don’t know what improv is.
So how do we educate? Or, more directly, how do we make an improv show a “thing to do?”
Let me give you an example. I am a born and raised Chicagoan and although I didn’t train there, I’m very much aware of the love the city has for improv. One visit home a few years back, I was at a friend’s party and we were in the Northern suburbs. My friend’s older brother, just a normal 9-5-type dude, said to some of his friends, “Hey, do you guys want to go to a bar tonight, or maybe catch an improv show?” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Chris McGowan, Granny's Squares, ioWest, The Administration
5 Questions with Pretty Bird’s Tilt Tyree
Posted by Brary | Filed under Big Ups - Other improv teams that rule, Talkin' Shop - We talk improv. Any questions you want discussed can be. Email us @ captain@ussrocknroll.com., The Brary
Every other Monday night at 10:30 in the loft at iO West, Pretty Bird (Tilt Tyree and Maggy Keegan), hosts an evening of two person improv shows. I caught their performance a couple weeks ago and it was great. Maggy and Tilt played two extremely limited bakers under the gun to get cake made for 200 people. Not only were they business partners, but they were romantically involved and had quite an unpredictable relationship. Tilt and Maggy played off each other really well and provided many laugh out loud moments and also many quiet moments. I’m still smiling at the Cordon Bleu Academy, which Tilt’s character was a graduate of. Tilt was gracious enough to answer 5 questions I was itching to ask after the performance. Check out the iO website to learn more about their performances.
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Q: How did Pretty Bird start?
TT: Maggy and I were in class together and we had a practice team that we were doing together. But then we decided that we wanted to do a 3 person show. So the show was Maggy, me and Brandon Barrick. We called ourselves Maze En Sane. But for some reason Brandon always had stuff come up and missed a few shows. Then it kind of became a joke as to whether Brandon would come or not and we would always give him shit for not coming. But it was cool because it forced us to just do a two person show, which pretty much scared the crap outta us. So it was great because I think we both grew a lot because of it. So eventually, we just decided to make the two person offical and called ourselves Pretty Bird, which was based on a comment Miles Stroth made about one of our scenes in class once.
Tags: Maggy Keegan, Pretty Bird, Tilt Tyree
Keene Observations On Spiders
Posted by dandy | Filed under Guest Blog, Uncategorized
A native Hoosier, Matt Keene is an actor with a day job in LA. He auditions and often gets called back, but he hardly ever gets booked. He’s a member of the Harold team Gypsy Lou at iO West and the author of the ‘Keene Observations’ series.
Observation No. 2:
Not everyone has arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. But I would argue that almost everyone would feel immediate fear if they woke up and found a spider on their face.
Tags: Gypsy Lou, Matt Keene
Interview: Brian Firenzi from 5SecondFilms.com
Posted by mouse | Filed under Interviews, Outside Projects, The Mouse, Videos
If you polled viewers of internet-based comedy, their main complaint would be that the videos are simply too long. This has never been the problem with the videos of 5SecondFilms.com, a crew dedicated to wasting very little of your time. As a bonus, their movies are very funny, so it’s win-win. Giving the world a new movie every weekday and allowing themselves 3 seconds for titles and end credits, the full 5 second run time gets stuffed with more skill and humor than 95% of the internet comedy videos out there, producing such indelible bits as “The Changeling” and “Don’t Thinko de Mayo.”
I recently spoke with 5 Second mastermind Brian Firenzi about where the group came from, commitment, and how these films have opened their minds to clichés.
Phillip Mottaz: Let’s begin with a controversial question first: how did 5 Second Films get started?
Brian Firenzi: Late one night during a particularly loathsome frat party, we all burst up out of the carpet, covered in womb juice and we just kind of ran out into the street, yelling and grunting. We’ve since learned English and filmmaking. 5sf was actually invented while I was in college, though. Spring 2005, in the dorms. It was a nice environment, packed with cinema students and overall very receptive and jovial and whatnot. Read the rest of this entry »
Sinbad is still alive!
Posted by Tuck | Filed under Interviews, Shows, The Tuck
I was driving to work the other day and a radio promo came on advertising that Sinbad will be performing at the Morongo Casino this weekend. My first thought was, “I thought Sinbad was dead?”. I used to really love Sinbad’s stand-up. This was back in the 90’s, but I hadn’t heard of him in probably 10 years. I hope the show is better than the radio clips they were playing. After the announcer stated that ” You will laugh until it hurts”, they followed that up with a clip of a routine where Sinbad is talking about the problem with temperature being measured in Celsius by saying, “Celsius is Canadian for should’ve been called Fahrenheit”. Oh brother! That’s what he has been working on? Here is an article about him being at the casino this weekend in case anyone wants to go.
ABCs of the ADTs: SHHHH!
Posted by Mouth | Filed under Guest Blog, The Mouth
HI EVERYONE! We are back with more guest bloggers from iOwest’s ADT teams. This week our guest blogger is the lovely and talented Julisa Smith from UPSTATE. UPSTATE has shows every Friday night in the ADT for $5! AND they will be hitting the mainstage on Tuesday March 30th at 8pm… check that shit out yo! ENJOY!
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So much can be said and not one word spoken.
Daily we interact with people and never say a word. Awkward eye contact in waiting rooms, the unspoken aggravation with a stranger unaware of personal space, hand gestures to the person driving in front of you in traffic, a moment when two people experience an event that leaves you speechless, the list goes on.
You know what? I’m going to be honest. I don’t think I’m a very funny improviser. Right now I even feel the pressure to be funny. “ooh this is an improv blog. be funny! dance monkey, dance!” But I’ve learned that honesty is…well…the best policy. When I go on stage with my team I can’t help but feel like I’ll be the one dull bulb on stage. I can’t think of witty things on the spot. I can’t come up with that zinger. I won’t give the audience that one-two punch. Or at least I don’t think I will. So I go up with the hope that I can somehow be the person who will give a scene a little more color. Whether I play the grandfather clock in the corner, the sound of the roaches in the wall, the pet cat, whatever it is I just want to make my team look good and that scene to feel real. I do initiate scenes too, but it’s because I know it scares the shit out of me and I need to work that “muscle”- but lately I’ve taken even more joy in playing silent characters. I don’t get to that often, but I try. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ioWest, julisa smith, upstate
WED MARCH 3rd! iOwest WORKOUT with Annie!
Posted by Mouth | Filed under Outside Projects, The Mouth
Work Out Classes are ideal for students and alumni who are not currently enrolled in a 7 week session, or those who want to supplement the class they are already enrolled in. They offer students and alumni the opportunity to train with a wide variety of our instructors. Classes are $20 cash payable at the beginning of each class.
THIS WED March 3rd the instructor will be
USSRR’s own ANNIE HOFF.
The class is 4-6pm and is $20 at iOwest.
It’s gonna be a fun zone. So I hope you can stop by! Let’s improv sweat it out!
The Science of Laughter Pt. 2
Posted by Brary | Filed under Uncategorized
In improv, we talk a lot about creating and identifying games and patterns in our scene work. My improv teachers always stressed the repetition of a recurring joke three times. Three was a magic for an audience to find something funny in the most satisfying way. As a viewer, I think this is often true. Usually, my instructors would mention something about how the brain responds to a joke presented three times since it is divided into three parts. Here’s an excerpt about this very subject from a London Times article that I found really interesting:
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So what is humour, and why is it so important? By studying more than 10,000 examples, ranging from stock formats such as sarcasm and slapstick, through to individual instances of both popular and high-brow comedy, we began to notice a pattern. What the research tells us, essentially, is that the brain finds something amusing when it recognises a pattern that surprises it. These patterns take a variety of different forms, from simple repetition to more complex variations. The reason we are beginning to understand this only now is because the process of recognising the patterns is unconscious.
Tags: Laughter, London Times, science
NOW? With Annie & Levin Show MONDAY!
Posted by Mouth | Filed under Outside Projects, Shows, The Dandy, The Mouth
That’s right. NoW? With Annie & Levin is happening now!
Now? is an improvised show based on the honesty of the moment. Every show begins in silence, allowing the players to feel a true connection and then to move forward and explore that world and its characters. Each show will be comedic, dramatic, patient or fast as the moment calls for. The only rule is the be present, now.
We have 2 shows this month at our home theater, Mi’s Westside Comedy Theater.
MONDAY MARCH 1st at 11pm
& MONDAY MARCH 22nd at 11pm.
BOTH SHOWS ARE FREE AND YOU cAN BYOB! AND THE HOUR STARTS AT 10PM IF YOU WANNA CHECK OUT SOME GREAT WESTSIDE HOUSE TEAMS!
THANKS FOR YOU SUPPORT AND HOPE YOU CAN MAKE IT!
Tags: MI's West Side Comedy Theater
Show Review – “Nirvana”
Posted by mouse | Filed under Shows, Talkin' Shop - We talk improv. Any questions you want discussed can be. Email us @ captain@ussrocknroll.com., The Mouse
Compared to last week’s show, this was closer to “Van Halen II,” even though it dealt with a different musical era and started far from it. Our suggestion of “Nirvana” lead us simultaneously to both the seeking of tranquility and the band, sending us into “name that tune” territory. Don’t get me wrong: I think we as a group could just riff on lyrics and song titles for 30 minutes, but I know we were frustrated that it felt like that’s about all we did in our opening. The feeling in the group is that we’re second and third guessing our on-stage decisions, and it seems to end up locking us in one place. We’ve got “Can’ts” in our pants, as a grandmother would say if they did improv at iO West. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: commitment, game, group mind, improv, jack off, nirvana, review
