Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I arranged with a number of classmates from my improv class to get together this past weekend to see our instructor, Dave, perform at ComedySportz. We'd been going back and forth over e-mail to set it up. I arranged with the group coordinator at ComedySportz to rope off some seats for us. Including guests, we were expecting 22 people.

A smaller group was getting together for dinner beforehand. At 7:30, Carol, Fran and her husband Jeff, and The Gryphon and I met at Moshi-Moshi on 18th Street for a nice dinner. They had great food there. I ordered sushi, of course. The Gryphon and I got sake for everyone, and between the five of us we split three appetizers. Carol, The Gryphon and I also tried some of their fabulous desserts.

During dinner, we talked more about personal lives. Carol is very involved in community theater and says the improv class really helped her. Fran was once a teacher, and she and The Gryphon talked a lot about that. Turns out Jeff is in the chemistry profession, so The Gryphon could talk to him about that, having worked in that field, as well.

We had just enough time, then, to walk to the Playground on 2030 Sansom Street for the performance. It was a pleasant night, just warm enough for a spring jacket. I think it's a little cooler this year than it was last year at this time. As I remember, we were right in the middle of moving to our new place, and it was warm enough to be running around in shorts.

When we got to the theater, there was a little confusion over whether or not we should get the group rate. I'd arranged with the group coordinator that we would, even though you normally only get that by ordering tickets online. She'd been willing to bend the rules for us, since we'd been improv students at ComedySportz. But the ticket takers weren't aware of this arrangement and had to call to confirm it.

One after another, my classmates arrived, including Boris, who brought along six friends, Geoff, and also Lindsay, who brought two friends. We stood in the lobby chatting a little before taking our seats. They had seats in three different rows marked off for us in the center section.

The show was great. I don't think I saw any of these performers before. They didn't give out the player roster with pictures and names on it at this performance, but I have an old one that has almost everyone on it.

The referee for the evening was Don Montrey, a.k.a. Ref Don, who I'd seen perform twice before. He was a very different referee from Bobbi Block, who's very bubbly. He'd got a sort of sardonic wit and does a lot of interaction with the audience. In the beginning, he was trying to teach us some of the audience participation activities, and The Gryphon was distracted, not following along. Ref Don stood in front of him, then, until he did he right. He also joked that The Gryphon thought he didn't have to do it because he was wearing the same shirt as the ref (The Gryphon was wearing a button-down shirt with dark blue and white vertical stripes).

When The Gryphon finally did it right, Ref Don gave a "ref treat", a hard candy from a car on the corner of the stage, to the girl sitting next to him. He did that throughout the night; whenever someone in the audience did something right, she got a treat.

Then Ref Don made it more difficult, and chose the letter "J" from someone's name in the audience. All the activities had to start with "J." Dave fumbled during this, and the word that came out of his mouth was "jorking a joystick." But just as Ref Don was about to call him out, he defended it: "Jorking is the particular way you jerk a joystick joyfully."

Ref Don deferred to the audience, and we applauded our approval, so that became a running joke throughout the evening. Eoin O'Shea called out the next activity, "Jorgling balls," but Ref Don refused to let that stand because, "Then we'd descend into chaos."

I could tell that they were using the so-called ralphing technique, where you don't even know what word is coming out of your mouth half of the time until it's out. It was great to see people in action, doing it the way it's supposed to be done. They were so much faster and funnier than us beginning students had been!

They played so many games, it's hard to remember them all, but I'll talk about the ones I do remember.

The Amish did a game whose name I forget but it was something like From the Play. One person on their team got to say whatever he wanted to. That was Dave. The rest had to speak only lines from plays that the audience selected for them from a bunch of possibilities. One guy was speaking only lines from a play called The Bald Man. Another was speaking only lines from some sort of play about labor organizers. The team captain was speaking only lines from a Futurama comic book.

Ref Don asked the audience for something you'd find in your basement. The suggestion from the audience was "hot water heater", and Dave and his teammates began. They were talking about fixing the hot water heater. Dave was the son, and his teammate was the father, speaking lines from the labor organization play. Somehow, he made them fit, which was amazing!

Through the course of the scene, Dave revealed that he was adopted and the hot water heater was his only friend. It turned out they had a crazy uncle, played by the team captain, who was competing in some sort of a grass trimming competition or something. They cut to that scene, and the team captain zipped around the stage, cutting grass, while the Todd Rodenhiser, playing a vicar who had just been mentioned in one of the previous lines, wore a shoulder-length gray wig and kept going on about some fish dinner he was supposed to be making.

As absurd as it got, Dave found ways to react to the characters and bring them together so that it all made a strange sort of sense.

I could really see how they were using techniques such as high and low status between characters (such as the father, at high status compared to the son) and how they were using mime and body language to create a sense of space.

The Cows did something called Space Opera, where they enacted a soap opera. Every time one of the players stepped into the penalty box at the front of the stage, Mr. Voice, who's the unseen keyboardist and show announcer, provided their inner thoughts. He introduced a good amount of chaos into the scene with his contributions.

This was the only team that actually had a woman on it. Alexis was on stage with Nathan, and they clearly had some sort of love relationship.

Based on an audience suggestion for the title of the soap opera, which was something like "Spontaneous Hospice Worker", they were hospice workers together, and he was confessing his love for her. She stepped into the box, and Mr. Voice said, "If only I wasn't pregnant with Darryl's baby."

But the players forgot his name and someone called him Derek, so when they cut to a new scene, Eoin was wondering around saying, "Derek, Darryl, Darren," as if he was trying to decide what his name should be. When he stepped into the box, it revealed that he'd gotten someone pregnant but couldn't remember her name.

Of course, Nathan burst back on the scene to confront Derek-Darryl-Darren. His moment in the box revealed that "I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I have obsessive compulsive disorder." He began doing things repetitively, which was hilarious. He's great with characters, and I also love how his uses facial expressions and accents to get his character across.

The audience judges then had to chose which was funnier, the Amish version of By the Play or the Cows' version of Soap Opera. Carol was one of the judges, so of course she was partial towards Dave. Another judge was the cousin of Steve Roney, so he was more partial towards the Cows. The third judge was the girl who kept getting all the Ref Treats. They voted for the Amish, who won five points.

The scoring is sort of like on Whose Line Is It Anyway? It's a good way to get the audience excited, but ultimately which team wins means very little.

The New Jersey Cows did Five Things. Steve left the room, taking an audience member with him who could testify that she hadn't heard anything.

Then Ref Don directed the audience to come up with five activities. To make it more difficult, he had us add more to it. Once he returned, the other teammates then had to help Steve act them out, by using gibberish and pantomime.

They were very difficult things. The first was playing softball, with a zeppelin for a ball and an orangutan for a bat. The bases were marshmallows. Then there was playing water polo in hardened cement while wearing baklava. The third thing was playing dodgeball with something I forget for the ball and the opposing players were Sandra Day O'Connor and Milli Vanilli. Of course, all the players started singing "Blame it on the Rain" until Ref Don made them stop.

I don't really remember the other activities, but there was one that involved vacuuming with a wallaby. As the Cows were taking notes, they asked what a wallaby was. One player said it was a baby kangaroo. Then someone else said, "No, that's a joey." So "baby kangaroo" became a running joke for the evening, popping up again and again in sketches. For example, Mr. Voice plays music between the sketches and then announces, "This break brought to you by..." Once he said "... Joey Buttafuoco, the Italian baby kangaroo."

They only got through three of the five things, but they were extremely difficult. They spent a lot of time trying to get him to understand baklava. They conveyed that it was Greek and delicious and in layers, but when they asked him what he was doing, he announced he was "playing water polo in hardened cement wearing a falafel!" So close and yet so far.

It was really funny when they were singing "Blame it on the Rain" in gibberish. He actually guessed Milli Vanilla, but then he guessed Ruth Bader Ginsberg instead of Sandra Day O'Connor, probably because she's the only woman on the Supreme Court right now.

The Amish did a Musical Day in the Life. They got a story from someone in the audience and then did a musical based on it. When Ref Don asked if anyone had anything interesting happen recently, someone in the audience volunteered that she'd had an ingrown toenail removed.

Ref Don found out more about her life. She works in a Soy Cafe, where her coworkers are Alice and Grace. When pressed for details about them, she said that Alice is responsible and Grace is not. They also got the name of her doctor and some information about him.

She had long dark hair, so the team captain put on a long dark wig to act as her. He was skipping and limping as he went to work with a big smile on his face, singing about his ingrown toenail. As he twirled around and limped, it was great.

Joining him at the soy cafe, one of the teammates wore a curly wig to play Alice. Todd wandered in late, as Grace, wearing a long blonde wig and announcing, "I hate split ends." They launched into a song about working at the soy cafe, where the refrain was "Soy, soy, soy, soy, soy!"

Cut to her at the doctor's office. Dave introduced himself as her doctor and informed her that her toenail was so bad she was going to need a toenail transplant. He sang about that, while Todd blew bubbles and announced "This bubble sequence will show you your future." The other teammate arrived with a big pair of plastic scissors and started making big cutting movements towards her toe as she stared blissfully into the bubbles. It was great.

Afterwards, Ref Don asked the audience member how well they did, and she said, "Perfect."

The Cows did Advice Panel. It was much the way we did it in class, except that they got to choose their own characters. They started by each grabbing some costume elements, and then Nathan acted as the host while the other three were his advice panelists.

He wore a silver hat and started by announcing, "Clearly, I've got some issues, as demonstrated by my choice of hat. Can you tell me how to make friends?" They all answered in character.

Eoin was wearing a bathrobe with a feather boa as a tie. He was a children's puppeteer, and he was sort of creepy but funny. He's such a big guy, and to hear him talking like Mr. Rogers and sort of hunching over as if talking to little kids, it was deliciously weird.

One of the audience members asked him, "How do you jork a puppet?"

He replied that it's something you normally do alone, "with water running."

Alexis was wearing an ill-fitting wig and was a jingle singer, and she answered every question by singing the same jingle. Steve was wearing a suit jacket and was a politician. He did a lot of pointing and posing, and he gave a very studied, sort of political response to everything. When asked about meeting women, he said something like, "Women are very important. I like women. I value their opinions. Vote for me."

There were also a couple games where they all participated. One was called, I think, Rotation. Ref Don lined up all the players in a line, alternating Cows with Amish. Then they played a scene, and when Ref Don said to rotate, they all had to switch into the role of the person who had been in front of them in the original lineup. The person at the front of the line switched into the role of the person who had been at the back.

So, for example, if Dave was behind Steve, and Steve was playing a grandfather, when Ref Don said to rotate, Dave had to take his place and continue the scene as the grandfather.

While Ref Don was explaining this game, Dave had a snarky comment, and Eoin said loudly to the audience, "What a jork."

They started very simply, with just two characters, Nathan and the Amish team captain, as brother and sister. The Amish player acted very much like a Valley Girl: "I'm so, like, glad you wanted to spend time with me. It's been, like, forever."

Nathan was all business, and you could tell he didn't really like her. "I just wanted to discuss Aunt Hortense's inheritence with you."

A little old lady, played by Todd, toddles out to offer them cookies, and she says, "And I'm very upset you're discussing my inheritance before I'm even dead."

More characters entered, including an elderly uncle, a cousin, played by Dave, who attempted to assassinated Aunt Hortense with a dart gun but missed and ran off the stage. "Is that your cousin?" Aunt Hortense exclaimed.

It got more and more confusing as more characters were added, and it was more and more frenetic every time they had to rotate. One of my favorite parts was when the Amish team captain came on as a new character who acted a lot like the original sister, saying in Valley Girl talk, "Isn't she dead yet?" Everyone stared at her, and Ref Don had them rotate just then.

It was up to the person filling his shoes to justify who the girl was, and it turns out she was the brother's girlfriend. She was upset because they were supposed to go to Bermuda. "We can't go to Bermuda without, like, the money!" The cousin jumped on-stage again and tried to dart Aunt Hortense but got the girlfriend instead.

She fell to the floor, and someone began giving her CPR. Ref Don had them rotate, so two new people had to get in the same position. When they rotated a third time, it was Dave on the ground and the Amish team captain began nearing him for the CPR position when he jumped up and exclaimed, "I'm alive!" I didn't stop laughing the entire time.

They also did a group game called Objection. Someone would stand in the penalty box start talking about a subject as an authority. Anyone from the other team could object, and the referee got to decide whether the objection was sustained or overruled. If he ruled it sustained, the new person got to take the place in the penalty box. Whichever team had someone in the box at the end of four minutes won.

That was a really fast-paced game and was a lot like a combination of Story Telling and Advice Panel. The topic was troubadours, and Alexis started out with a really rambling discussion of the importance of troubadours to society. But as the rambling verbal essay continued with new people, eventually the troubadours were a secret weapon during World War II, and were traveling underwater, mating with mermaids.

The objections were sometimes logical ones, such as when someone said, "As we're talking" they said, "Objection. You're the only one talking." Sometimes they were almost unrelated to what was being said, such as when Dave was talking about the Germans use of troubadours in World War II and someone objected because, "You're not German. You're Greek."

Dave defended himself, saying that, "My grandmother is German."

Alexis called out, "Objection. She's Austrian" and got to step into the box.

That looks like a game that would be a lot of fun to try, and I'd certainly be up to it, if given the chance.

The final game of the evening was a classic, Story Telling. In this case, they played it elimination style, where anyone who messed up was eliminated.

The title of this story was "The Pirate Pony of the High Seas." Every time someone was eliminated, Ref Don jumped ahead to a later chapter and had the same audience member say the title aloud again.

This story started with a pirate pony named Beery who got into misadventures. One of the funniest parts was that after awhile nobody remembered his name, and then Steve said, "The pony, whose name was Beery and which it would remain for the remainder of the story".

There was also a female love interest introduced whose name was Shoeliette, as well as an evil pony, Black Bar. I thought that Todd did an especially good job in this game, and he stayed with it for a long time, ralphing out contributions to the story. Steve also kept his cool and stayed with it until the end. The Amish just barely squeaked out a win in this one, thus winning the match.

Ref Don announced that "The only thing left to do is dance," and the players came out in pairs, dancing wackily to music provided as Mr. Voice announced their names. When it came time for Ref Don, he pulled out a chair, sat on it, pulled an imaginary chain and then tossed his head back and forth as he poured water on his face with a water bottle, in reference to Flashdance. The audience loved it.

We slapped everyone's hands on the way out, and Dave had a big grin as he saw us all come through. We hung around out front for a little while to see if he'd come out, but when he didn't seem to be showing, we eventually all drifted our separate ways. Everyone thanked me for organizing it, though, and we all said we'll be looking for each other at the intermediate class this fall.

More fun at ComedySportz Philadelphia:

November 14, 2005 - Interactive Improv

May 4, 2004 - A Night at the Improv

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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