u/Duke-Berryman

I love collecting characters from real life and doing them on stage. Does anyone else collect characters? I went to a hairdresser, and she would repeat everything you say:

How was your weekend?

I went fishing...

You went fishing!

And I caught a fish...

You caught a fish!

She was both the most attentive and most annoying listener. Great character. Maybe could be a therapist in a therapy scene.

Frankly, if I meet you and we talk, I may add you to my repertoire. Joe Bill used to do a character exercise for his classes at The Annoyance. On the last class, he'd buy a beer for the student who could do the best impression of another student in the class. Smart and fun way to start developing characters, be observant, and bust balls!

Child's Play Touring Theatre is a nonprofit touring theatre based in Chicago and performs for students at schools. I started working there as Marketing Manager in the Fall of 1992. Former CPTT actors sound off!

The concept was they visited schools in the Fall and did a writing workshop. Then, the kids would write stories, send them in, and be converted to plays. The company would come back in the Spring and perform the plays. That's why it's called "Child's Play" - get it?

At the time, the music director was Jeff Richmond (future Mr. Tina Fey). He would later become music director at SC and SNL. Jeff was dating Tina, and she was a smarty pants and led a few of the writing workshops. There was a Child's Play to improv pipeline that carried quite a few actors.

Another famous participant was Adam McKay who was tall and fat so he played Santa Claus in the Xmas shows. He got in trouble because the kids saw him smoking a cigarette after a show in the Santa outfit.

Child's Play was an affiliate in the Chicago theater community, and featured graduates of the Theatre School at DePaul. Very deep talent pool, noble education goals, and super creative productions. Worthy of note!

https://www.cptt.org

Whatever happened with this? Besides the death of atherine O'Hara?

Since Louis CK has a new special out, I was reminded of some improv history.

I was on 2 improv teams in the late 90s in Chicago - Missing Fersons and Amateur Showoffs. Amateur Showoffs was named after a swingers magazine. Members included Dana Goodman and Julia Wolov. If you don’t know who they are, do a quick google search. Dana and Julia put together a sketch show, performed it at ImprovOlympic, and then took it to the Aspen Comedy Festival. PS: Dana is Charna’s niece.

At the festival, they met Adam Sandler, and he wanted to do a tv pilot with them. So, they moved to LA and Adam spent a million dollars producing their pilot. It was the first piece of tv work that Adam did with his production company. He also did a revival of the Gong Show. After the pilot was produced, they shopped it around but it was not picked up. You can find it on their IMDB.

I can’t remember if Joe Canale was a member of Amateur Showoffs, but he can probably fill in some details…

What do audiences want? Improv is one of the few art forms in which we actually ask the audience what they want to see and then give it to them.

Sometimes musicians ask for song requests. Films get screened and then changed depending on audience input. But for the most part, entertainment gets handed to the audience.

My take: audiences want loud music, flashing lights, explosions, violence, and sex. In other words, professional wrestling. Wrestling has been popular since the invention of tv. Clearly, it's what people want. They especially like the story lines. PS: in the olden days, it was opera, which was just pro wrestling with classical music.

Do you feel like delivering audiences what they want, or is it too much work?