General: ======== Good show. We did some new things and got the audience more involved the show. I guess we now know who has the real talent in the Mike McDonald household :-). I thought our MC'ing is improving as we are getting more comfortable on stage. We debuted some new scenes - A day In The Life, Puppets, Party Quirks, Say Again, and First/Last Sentence. We need to do a better warm up to get the energy level up, get us pumped and get us focussed and cohesive before the show. Let's aim for building up to 1/4 of the energy with which those high school students stormed onto stage. Finally, we did a very good job given we didn't have Sheila or Dan S., and we were dealing with so much new material. I think Leslie earned her spurs with last night's performance. She participated fully and was a real asset in all her scenes. My only other comment is that perhaps we should try and stay away from so many scatalogical references - they're cheap laughs, and we don't need them. Some scenes went too long, others were quite good. I liked the audience participation games - we need to continue to do this. I did not hear any current events in any of the scenes... Our money collector did not make it & gave us a problem that hampered our warm up. The next time this happens, I like the suggestion (by Leslie) that one of us should be the designated money collector freeing up the rest of us to warm up. I really want to go through some of the scenes again next Thursday and ask ourselves what could we have done differently. One thing I thought we let ourselves down on was the warmup. 1/2 hour before the show, we need to start focussing ... there were several times when folks kind of wandered in/out of the warmup ... I think our overall cohesion was hurt by this. Prelude ======== I like that we tried to do something different to start off the show. I would like us to continue to come up with innovative ways to start the show hopefully with high energy. (Can we start the show a different way each time) Like a good movie - we want to throw surprises to the audience and never try to be too predictable. Word Association ================ Seemed okay, no long pauses. Dan kept it moving well. Nothing in particular to work on here. We've had better word ass, but we've also had worse. It went well, but it went better last show. We need to get better at this! By this I mean we need to kick in our imaginations more - here is an opportunity for us to be clever and really show our stuff. And we do this - sometimes. Perhaps we will get better at this over time. We need to bring in more references to movie titles, song titles, well known phrases, variations of the word. Word Ass (love the name!) is probably the biggest hit 'n miss game we do, simply because it is a whole bunch of little games rolled into one. When our energy level is high, as it was during the last show, and during the practice beforehand, we do well. I think we were taking it a bit easy on Thursday ... perhaps because of the smaller turnout, or who knows? Scripts ======= One of the show highlights - let's have Mike's daughters in every show. Scene Replays (Styles) ====================== I personally felt this one did not go very well (for me at least). I was not prepared for the styles that we had to do and will have to become more familiar with them. Thanks to Julia and Lesley for carrying me through the scene. This is a game where I think the adage 'go big or go home' strongly applies so we need to have some tricks/cliches up our sleeve for each style. I thought it went alright. Not as good as we've had. Having the soap opera style in a scene that had already started as a soap opera made it difficult. Perhaps a better way of getting styles from the audience ( a list they choose from and shout out suggestions? that way they feel more like they're involved, rather than picking a slip of paper out of a cup.) One way to improve this is to ensure we employ objects in the scene that could be transformed with the styles. (gun to laser to lance, for instance). I thought it went fairly well - better than what the participating actors thought. The scene was in a very small environment which limited its physicality. Security Guard ============== I think this one went okay. Kudos to Martin who did a good job as the security guard. You did the job when it needed done. Excellent. Good guessing, Martin. Try to keep to the front of the stage, however. First Sentence/Last Sentence ============================ Went well - good death scene. Good use of the stage - you managed to avoid being static This was almost too easy. It seemed like we were setting up for that last line all the way through the whole scene. Perhaps we should have had more conflicts, or moved the scene ahead further. It's hard for me to judge because I was in the scene. This did not work for me - not sure why. I thought it went okay ... probably the cardinal sin was that Alan and I headed straight for the exit line ... we could see it coming a mile away, which took a bit of the tension out of the scene. One thing I *know* I'm not so good at is coming up with scenarios in the huddle ... I suggested the two brothers and grandfather at a family reunion, which in retrospect was a pretty average idea ... Y'all can help me by challenging my ideas in the huddle, if you think they might be somewhat mundane. Puppets ======= Puppets went well. Say Again. ========== Went okay. A few basic problems, mainly that the scene was not advanced as well as it could be despite the interesting idea of the grave robber I still think we should get the audience more involved with this....and that the "say agains" not always be expected to come in threes. There was some good reiterations however. With respect, I thought this wasn't anywhere near as good as at rehearsals. The difference was that at rehersal, we would come out with outlandish 2nd & 3rd comments that were really funny, and would take the scene in new directions. Last night we weren't taking those risks. Instead we seemed to be trying to say the same thing two or three different ways. The 2nd and 3rd "say agains" have to be riskier and wackier. This was the big disappointment for me on 2 levels: 1- We did not come up with zany say agains like in the practices, 2- We did not advance the scene and explore the possibilities in which it could have gone. Both Chris and I did not explore Alans character enough and take the scene in a good direction. I would really like some feedback on how we could have advanced in a different direction next Thursday. I do like this game a lot for performances though- Party Quirks ============ Not sure. I'll leave this for others to review. This scene was good, but I'm not sure we should use the magazines to determine the quirks. What are quirks anyway? Is there another way to select them? Movie Review ============= I thought it went well. Al and I worked the review well, and yes Martin, it is better if we disagree. Chris & Julia did a great job. I appreciate Leslie's comment, but as one of the reviewers, I try to give the actors the freedom to take the film clip where they want rather than to box them in. This did not work for me at all (again, sorry for the harsh words). I was in the audience during this game and it looked uneven and like the game say again - don't know if we really took advantage of the possibilities of the library vs. Wizard of Oz.. There were a couple of times where Mike wanted to jump in with i am sure a good offer but it did not transpire. I wonder if we were to do this again - how would be do this. Dan and Alan talked a bit too much at times and both Chris and Leslie looked uncomfortable at times Personally, I wasn't particularly uncomfortable ... I wasn't having a great evening, but I thought this one was not bad. I think Julia had an excellent suggestion in that the reviewers' job is to set up the players ... if they are quite specific (In this scene, a large spider attacks the train our two heroes are riding in, causing them to interrup their game of canasta ... etc.) it makes the transition much smoother. Also, there is a bit of a tendancy for the reviewers to 'review' the movie ... i.e. expound at length on their opinions. IMHO, the transitions should be quick ... Movie Review is a classic expand/advance game ... the reviewers can *only* advance the scene, while the players can *only* expand. Concentrating for too long on one or the other really causes the thing to drag. Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles do this well on 'Whose Line' when they do the Hit Singles game ... each transition is basically 'Well, Ryan, that was the most painful thing I've ever heard since William Shatner covered 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' ... bla, bla, for a few seconds ... and then, 'Our next hit is that old Scottish Highland Fling classic etc. etc.' Day in the Life =============== Went okay. Dragged a little bit in the middle and I think the classroom portion was a bit unfocused. Too much chattering etc. Julia should have been allowed to steer the focus thru this part. Also a clear need for sensitivtiy training for all SAR members (except myself of course). Apparently Susan was laughing during that scene, but my friend Dan who works in a group home for mentally challenged adults was uncomfortable with it. I agree with the lack of focus on that scene - too many people trying to do different things at the same time. When there's so many people in a scene we still need to practice being aware of what's happening and who has the focus at a given time. The other scenes went well - good addition of a dog, a husband, a cat. I liked the accupuncture scene, although it was too far back stage. I was a little nervous and noticed I rushed through some scenes and missed opportunities to develop interesting details. I guess that come with practice. Chris (and Julia) did a good job getting information from the woman. When she said she worked with the learning disabled at Carleton, my mind was screaming "stay away from it". I realized it was a no-win situation. But that said I was still up there acting like an idiot with everyone else. It was an embarassment and a mistake. I looked at the woman too, and she was smiling during that part - but we should have known better than to have done it. I'm sure it offended some audience members. It offended me. I think the problem was that we'd never discussed this kind of situation before, so we just carried on in "typical" fashion, instead of coming up with some kind of alternative (which would have been a miracle, given our inexperience with this game, and the fact we only had 15 seconds in the huddle). If we get a situation like this in "Day in the Life" - we've got to work out a way to handle it with dignity - probably we should do that part of the scene straight. Feedback? I also felt that the stage was too crowded with any more than about 4 actors performing at once, and so I tried to stay out of the way in that scene. This went ok and will get much better with practice. I feel just awful about the class scene. No red lights came on in my head until afterwards. We need to learn from this and next time be more clever. This is another scene I would like to run through again on Thursday and ask ourselves - how can we do this differently. Like Word Ass- how can we avoid going for the obvious and bring in something more clever. Yeah, this kind of got away from us. I think we kind of forgot about the audience at this point ... to me, it wasn't anything different than the sort of screwing around we do in practice ... I seem to recall we did almost an identical bit in 'Day in the Life' with Sheila one time (in a nursing home, I recall) ... and didn't think anything of it, then. For whatever reason, we've gotten a bit more off-colour in our humour ... our directed stories often seem to have some sort of gay/death/bodily excretion component, and this seems to appear in other scenes as well. Perhaps we're just trying to push the envelope a bit, or we're trying to crack each other up by out-grossing ourselves, or whatever ... hard to tell, because unfortunately, I often find that sort of stuff hysterical, too (yes, I am a twisted goofball at heart ... ).