Thursday, April 13, 2006

Do you have hair on your back?

Last night Corey and I did a show with another girl for a group of middle school boys and their dads. We didn't do this show in association with any theater. Another improviser had a friend who did stand-up and was looking for a 20 minute improv act to go along with him. The original improviser had to work and couldn't do it. She started asking around and the word got passed along to us. We figured it'd be a good way to make a quick buck.
I'd have to say that last night was one of the weirdest shows I've ever been a part of. Let me start from the beginning... We were told to show up at ___ address at 7:30pm, that the show started at 7:45pm and we'd go on for about 20 minutes, maybe a little more if we wanted to and something about highschoolers. The weirdness started when we got there. The so called address wasn't listed on the building. The problem was that there were two schools next to each other, neither with numbers on them. We were about 30-40 minutes early, but wanted to make sure we were at the right place. I called the stand up guy (who had never contacted me the night before with details like he was supposed to) and said, "We're here, which building is it." His answer was, "I don't know. It's the one assigned to the address I gave you." No shit... thanks for pointing out the obvious.
Eventually the stand up met up with us. However, he didn't introduce himself and explain what the order of the night was going to be, or why these kids were here... nothing. He didn't communicate with us at all. He just hurriedly shook our hand and started walking towards the building. He offered to pay us a little more if we performed for 30 minutes and said we should pay attention to what the kids were talking about. Now mind you, at this point we still have to meet up with our 3rd player to figure out the line up and we still don't' know when we're going on.
At this point, we peek into the gym where there are about 50 boys and their fathers to get a sense of what kind of group this is. I hear the speaker asking questions like, "Do you have hair under your armpits yet?" and "How many of you have had a wet dream?" It was a sex-ed class! Apparently these boys were all 5th graders about to go into middle school and were having a sex-ed class with their dads to prepare for the new school. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage the openness. What was awkward is that we weren't told anything about it and here's two girls (me and the other improviser) awkwardly standing there as the poor embarrassed boys have to be asked about theirs and their dad's first erections.
The stand up dude kept telling us to make sure we incorporate what they were talking about into our show. I don't think he understood what we did, because it would be highly inappropriate to act out some of the subjects they were discussing... be it men or women improvisers. After he did his act (which was just him standing up there saying, "wow, you guys just had some awkward talks with your dads... ha ha. I had a wet dream once, when I slept in the bed with my grandpa. ha ha. It's good to be open about this stuff... ha ha") Then he introduced us. This was finally the point when he communicated to us, not before the show... right then and now we found out... um okay I guess we're on.
We ended up just playing 5 games and kept it themed to school, not sex. They actually really loved it and were an easy crowd to play for. In the end, we even got a little bonus money. Next time though, I'd send in 3 guys to improvise and I'd give them a heads up about what to expect.

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