AC4: Friday

3/5 of Meat Lodge went over to UNC to poke around the alma mater while Bill was in class; I headed over to open ComedyWorx. Mike Baumann was in the parking lot; Larry Howard arrived with Andre in tow. Green Bay wandered in. Introductions. Excitement. It was cool to feel like we were creeping closer, but it hadn’t quite started yet. Somehow.

We fired up a new shortform games workshop, which was cool. The Green Bay guys had some cool stuff, but I had to jet– Meat Lodge practice at 1:30. My one regret for the weekend was that I missed Andre’s confidence workshop at 3:00… because I felt like it would do me a lot of good, and because I think it hurt his feelings that I didn’t make it.

Meat Lodge practiced in my driveway because it was a damn nice day and that afforded us more room. We didn’t make the strong connections that we had the night before; maybe because we were out in the sun, or maybe because we just weren’t listening as well. But we had a damn fine time, and we started editing a little more efficiently.

We hopped in the car and joined a group of 22 for dinner… a group that included the rest of the Buffalo gang (Randy & Karen Resse, Julie Oesch, Alan Baumgardner, and Jeremy Hardwick, who is one of the coolest 18-year-old kids I have ever met). Why is it that improvisors choose the greasiest foods possible before shows? Self-loathing?

Then, back down to the club for some shows! John Betz and Dave Rockwell from DC arrived just before the 7:30 show they were slated to perform in, and the Richmond team pulled up in their giant comedy van. That was when it really felt like a real festival. All the old friends were in the house.

Highlights:

Green Bay pulled out the guitar for a game of Ballad. Raleigh countered with a gothic horror scene. Later, Raleigh captain Matt Cunningham said, “Well, at that point, you just sit back and smile. You can’t beat a guitar.”
• Ben Moser, masquerading as Joey Greene with the DC kids, pulled up with the best groaner of the weekend.
• Green Bay’s Ken Goiltz had an ear-to-ear smile that would not stop. He looked like he was having enough fun for all of us.
• A lot of the newer improvisors from our club crowded around the back of the room, and there was this quiet awe punctuated by laughter. You could tell that they were really stoked by seeing new approaches and different improvisors for the first time.

Meat Lodge snuck out into the parking lot not too long after that show ended. I was a little sour, because the house manager, who is normally really on top of things, was discombobulated and pissy, like having other teams in from out of town had changed every little thing he normally does, and he needed me to make his decisions for him. I really wanted to enjoy more of the first show, but I kept getting asked to do cruise-director-y things.

So I needed a long warmup. We just started building, and within two minutes, I think we were all charged. That first show warmup was the tightest we’d gotten thusfar, and we walked into the club ready to rock. It was awesome.

We watched the tail end of CHiPs’s show, and I thought they did some things really well. But what stuck out at me was that it felt like I was watching college improv (which I was, so that was fair). They had some really talented people, but the worldview felt a little bit limited. It made me want them to work with a director, which I don’t think they do. But all in all, I wanted to see some more of them, and I really need to be more attentive to catching their shows when Bill performs with them, and when Jon Karpinos returns from Europe. (I am firmly of the opinion that most any group would benefit from those two guys. They are top-notch, and nice guys to boot. They keep talking about a two-man show when Jon comes back, directed by Greg Hohn. I can’t wait.)

The Meat Lodge show was crazy fun. Dan started us off on the right foot, and things built slowly, deliberately, out from the original suggestion. We didn’t reincorporate a whole lot, but we found games and played them. It was the most tremendous sense of trust that I have felt on stage in ages. Probably since the last time I had played with Anthony. More complete than Destroy All Monsters. Somewhere mid-show, I had this realization from the back line (which was actually two side lines) that the true strength of this team was that each of us does one thing well– far better than the others– but we bring the other four up to our level when we combine those strengths. It was awesome.

It was the first show I have ever performed in that no one ever introduced us as individuals.

We went out for drinks with the Kansas City folks (Dan Walsh, Linda Williams, and Clancy Hathaway), who’d just arrived, most of the Richmond gang, and Mike B. Then adjourned to my place, where Charlie, Dan, Anthony and I were up until 3:30 talking about the first shows.

I dreamt one of our scenes went well past the edit, and Charlie made me start laughing so hard that I caught on fire.