Veal was in CageMatch at UCB last night. Damn good fun. CageMatch audiences are pretty darn good. They want to have fun. Which is slightly weird because you'd think the competition thing would undercut the fun. I think kudos should go to Charlie Todd and all of UCBW. Comedy professional wrestling, with all of it's over-the-top-ness and riling up the crowd both gets the audience excited and makes the whole competition portion of the "improv division" just that much sillier. It's a good combo. Like cheddar cheese and cracker Combos (and not like the pizza ones... those are disgusting).I'm pretty proud of Veal. We put on a good show. I can nitpick (because it is my nature to nitpick... I love to nitpick) but won't. I am particularly proud that we did a musical harold. They're tricky, especially to get in at 25 minutes. A lot of the editing is taken out of the hands of the backline. Once a song starts, there's not a lot that can be done until the song is done... and that's up to the singers and the accompanist. You an help and support the song but the singers have to find their own end. Luckily (if done well) song naturally end on a heightened note. The audience will clap after a song and things natural edit there.
(I would never say musical improv is full of cheats – there is a whole set of skills and instincts you must learn to do it well – but by the very structure it fits naturally into a lot of the "rules" of long form improv. In fact, it has informed a lot of my non-singing improv. Heighten like a song. Get to what really matters. Find the game and play it.)
Anywhozits, we managed to do a musical harold and one I'm very happy with. I think I played to my a lot my strengths. More and more I've realized that I'm pretty good and playing games once they've been established. I love structure and patterns and finding unexpected ways to follow those patterns. I had a few last night. One was particularly meta. (I love meta when done well and it doesn't take over the show.) We had a game of an echo in a cave coming from the backline. The echo kept being more and more irregular, sometimes repeating the last word said and sometimes calling back to a line 30 seconds before. In the 2nd beat, I was about to do an echo of the chorus from the 1st beat ("jackpot") but just as I was about to do it, Doug said it. (Man, I love those moments when you and a teammate are thinking the exact same thing and they beat you to it. Often it feels better than doing it yourself.) I tossed in "Why didn't you do the dishes," echoing a scene we never saw. It was a fun heightening from the first scene. My meta move came when I called out "Can we have a suggestion of a location... location... location," calling back to before are show even started. The improvisors in the audience seemed pleased. (I love that a lot of my closest friends have distinctive laughs. When I hear them laugh I feel supported. It's nice to have people who "get you.")
I did fall back on my standard of singing about sex. Man, why is that? (Nevermind. Please don't answer that.) I ended up with the tagline "...jack me off." I feel like I found an interesting take on the subject... and an audience loves a heartfelt hand job song... but I need to broaden my topics. Not everything is a metaphor for sex. Yes, it can be but it doesn't have to be. I would say that if it was happening to me I might not sing about it as often... but I know me better than that. I think about as much if not more when it is actually happening. Perhaps I need to thing about baseball or dead puppies before I perform.
There were really only two people I wanted to impress yesterday: Veal's coach/director Stuart and my musical improv teacher Eliza. Those were the two people (beyond my fellow Veal-ies) that I was playing to. They both seemed to enjoy it so I'm glad I did well by them.
Oh, Veal lost to Death By Roo Roo, 79 to 109. That actually puts us in 6th place since it is the most votes by a team that did not actually win. We are very very unlikely to stay in 6th unless Roo Roo manages to continue winning all the way through October. But it's nice to be there for now.
(Note: If you missed Veal last night, shame on you. You'll have more opportunities. We are in the Del Close Marathon... of course our show is at 11:15am on Saturday, Aug. 9th. We will have other shows in the near future. You can also catch my 201 Musical Improv class at UCB this Sunday at 5:30pm. It should be a magical musical la ronde.)
