December 13th, 1996
Lucky Day
It's Friday the 13th, lucky us. Thank God I don't believe in superstition.
It's been an interesting week, very interesting. Put a new scene in the
show last night. It's called NPR. It's rare I'll put a scene in the show
that's only been in the set twice. Couple of reasons for that.
1. Everyone enjoys doing it.
2. It works.
3. We needed to replace a Citizen Gates scene fast.
The scene we needed to replace was called 1st Ladies. It dealt with
potential first ladies backing their candidate husbands. It was the
last bit of election residue left in Citizen Gates. The audience just
didn't give a damn about the election anymore, who can blame them.
I didn't give a damn about the election while it was happening. So we
got rid of it and everyone was relieved.
So we put in NPR, and it worked well. The other interesting thing about
it is that it's the second scene in the show and it's improvised. If someone
asked you to put together the best sketch revue running order of scenes,
they would advise you not to put improvisation that high in the show.
They would suggest that the audience needs to get to know the cast better
in order to give them permission to improvise. It's amazing how many
things are not true. That's one of them. If the piece is protected enough,
improvisation helps the audience relax to the cast. It worked just fine.
Birthday
Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 34. Could someone tell me where the last
10 years went? "It's Miller time". As I get older so much more of everything is bullshit. There really aren't any rules. At this point I'm only
amused if I hear, "The way you have to do this" and "You should...." and
"You really can't" and "Here's the only way it will work", and especially
"It's important that....". For me, it's important if I get food, a cigarette,
a beer, and some sleep. Everything else is important relative to the
the position of the observer (General, not Special). I'm so looking forward
to pushing the structure of this show to the limits. Why the hell not.
Injury
Scot Adsit wanted to see if he could make the audience believe he had really
hurt himself in the improv set. He succeeded. During an improv game,
he lept from the stage to the floor and feined a foot injury. Now Scot's a
good actor so he got away with it. 90% of everyone thought he really hurt
himself. This was further confirmed when he limped on stage in pain only
to reveal a blood splotch on his sock to the audience. (no one really stopped
to think about how in hell you would draw blood from what apparently was a
sprain). Then the cast started fucking with him, acting as if they hadn't
noticed what had happened. The jumped on him and kicked him and wrestled
him, etc. The audience still believed him. Not only the audience, but also
the staff. A host ran to the office and insisted upon an ambulance, the
someone else ran up to the light booth and wanted the stage manager
(Craig Taylor) to cut the set short.......lotsa fun......or was it?
It got a mixed reaction from the audience and the cast. Was it responsible?
As director, should I allow an actor to betray the trust of the audience,
to manipulate them in that way. Some in the cast thought it was a violation, that it is a mis-use of power.....others loved it and wanted to
pursue it further. Scot was just looking for a little wake up call and a good
time. I was merely curious if he could pull it off. Well he did and people
were upset and it was a heated discussion and everyone went south and
we decided it's a tool that must be handled with extreme caution and blah
blah blah. We'll see what happens..........
As Lou Reed said..."Life in the theatre is certainly fraught with many thrills
and chills". Thank God he was saying it sarcastically.
see ya.
Go to.....
