Put a Cork In It!

Amanda Chadwick invited Terry and I for a night of Absent Minded Improv Comedy at Put a Cork In It (7339 W Sand Lake Rd). One wall was stacked with fine wines and patrons are encouraged to pick their own bottle from the racks. Amanda and Terry sat in the front row in some thick leather arm chairs. I found those seats too restrictive so I found myself a table in the back. The comedy was lively and entertaining. The Absent Minded Improv Comedy Troup performs here every Saturday evening from 8pm to 9:30pm and there was a $5 cover charge that was tagged onto the bill at the end of the evening.

I drew Elisabeth Drake-Forbes and Mike Besaw as they performed a piece in which then had to say, "If you know what I mean," after each statement. Terry yelled out that the routine should incorporate a Llama. Elisabeth said, "I need to go outside and shear the Llama, if you know what I mean..." The sexual innuendos flourished and everyone laughed. The quaint space was packed seating about 20 people in plush seats arranged around coffee tables.

After the performance I sat back up front with Amanda and Terry. Comedian Drew McCalmon stooped baseball catcher style in front of our coffee table joking with Terry. Terry gave him a playful shove and his arms spun up as he tried to catch his balance. He hit a wine glass which crashed to the floor. Amanda gave Terry a time out locking her outside the wine bar. Jokingly Terry pounded on the glass doors reminiscent of the final wedding scene in the Graduate. Amanda couldn't stop laughing.

Squatters

Squatters was conceived by Jeremy Seghers. This was one of the few improvised shows at Fringe this year. Jeremy built the idea around the premise that a sitcom about people living through hard times can be funny. I arrived a little early and blocked in the set in my sketchbook since I knew the show was only half an hour. Logan Donahue was a guest star. Every performance of Squatters at Fringe would be unique. Jeremy said he had given prompts and suggestions the evening before in a prior performance and he suspected the actors had too much time to over think the possibilities. On the evening I sketched the actors were given prompts just moments before they went on stage.

I found myself doing improv once when director Aradhana Tiwari insisted I join her group of actors. I was way out of my comfort zone yet the thrill of scenes taking on a life of their own is a thrill. Therefore I was rooting for the cast with every quirky turn.

The show started with a stage hand wearing a head set came who out to announce the beginning of the show. We were the studio audience. The set consisted of an ugly lime green rug and furniture that looked like it was from the 60's. Hints that the family was squatting were subtle, like when Cody Bush bragged that he had landed a job at Walmart. Logan added a real spark when he entered as a new age guru with a purple mask painted on his face. Scenes where he seduced Ashli Conrad were inspired.

There were plenty of laugh out loud moments and some outright strange surreal moments that were so campy I had to laugh. The laugh track added another layer to the humor. I must say, I had fun and this show took many chances many of which paid off. This is what Fringe is all about.

Comedy Open Mic

On the morning after Thanksgiving, Terry is breaking jokes but I don't laugh because I am so caught up in trying to steel a wireless connection from my sister Pat's neighbors. After an hour of trying I finally found a spot. I opened the front window and rested the computer on the window sill to get a signal. I would go outside but it is raining. This sketch is of a comedy open mic I went to at "The Other Bar" (18 Wall Street) downtown. Two or three of the comics were really funny that night others were painful to watch. The old man on stage, named Uncle Ralph, was really fun and the person at the bar turned out to be a comic as well. He studied the notes the whole time until he was called up to the stage. Actually most of the people in the bar were comics.

Katie Windish was with me this evening. A friend of hers named Kingsley Everett Bennett , is a comic and he introduced her to this event. He came to our table to let us know he might not get on stage. He was called up after all and he was very funny. He returned to our table after his set and gave me a hard time for not sketching him. I couldn't resist sketching Uncle Ralph however. As the audience drank more, the hecklers grew louder. It was fun to see how abusive some comics had to be as they lost audience support. It takes some serious guts to be a stand up comic, especially if you aren't funny. This was a fun evening that I would gladly sketch again.

Improv Full House

Of all the theatrical events I have sketched, I have never seen a sold out house. When I entered the Winter Park Playhouse on the second night of the festival, Brian Feldman seated in the front row said to me, "Get up on stage and sketch, this is the audience we should have had." He was referring to "Thomas Thorspecken Sketches the Audience" where we only filled at most a quarter of the seats. Tonight every seat was taken. I watched "The Arm" improv group from Atlanta. I was there to spend time with Terry since she had left early the night before without seeing a show. She recognized some of the the scene structure since we lived in NYC. We laughed the whole show, even when one comedian during a fast-paced routine stood center stage and blurted out, "I got nothing." He laughed, was pushed aside and someone else took over.
We decided to stay for the next performance which was "Some Like it Improvised" from Austin, Texas. This act consisted of the duo of Roy Janik and Kaci Beeler. I wanted to sketch this go around, so I asked Mark Baratelli about sketching the audience from the sound and lighting booth. Mark pointed out Cody Bush, the tech, and so I followed him up to the booth. We walked through the dressing room past a couple in 1930s period clothes. In the back room there was a rickety ladder made of two-by-fours that ascended into a hole cut in the ceiling. It was a tight squeeze with my backpack of art supplies. It was dark up there so I pulled out my book light. The audience poured in as I sketched lightly in pencil. Every seat was filled. People finally had to sit in the center aisle.
Roy and Kaci were amazing. They performed one long improv show that involved them being bootleggers after the prohibition. Kaci would change characters on a dime. Some of the remarks made were so absurd it is amazing they kept their forward momentum. Since probably half the audience were improv comedians, it felt like the room was rooting for them. This was like watching a feature film being improvised on the fly. A stunning performance.
I knew I only had about 45 minutes to sketch so I rushed. After the show everyone crowded into the lobby. Brian Feldman was talking to Terry. He pulled me aside and said, "You should have been sketching the performers. Kaci is a sketch artist just like you." He insisted I walk up to Kaci and ask her if she was an artist. I did so while Mark filmed the meeting on his digital camera. It turns out Kaci sketches set designs besides being an improv actress. She has a girlish charm while on stage, and can be the femme fatale as well as a comic. After this show, Terry was tired and wanted to go home. For once I joined her, since I had my sketch and an amazing success story.

Orlando Improv Festival

Mark Baratelli of theDailyCity.com organized the first annual Orlando Improv Festival. I know he has been organizing the event for months so I had to stop by the Winter Park Playhouse and see how the inaugural night played out. When I arrived Mark seemed a little harried but from the start I could see that the event was a success. The lobby of the playhouse is warm and inviting. There are comfortable couches and a full service bar. It has what I consider a Parisian flair. I sketched the box office where Dina Peterson and Ileana "Blue" Johns, were greeting people as they entered. Dina would chime in with, "So, are you here to see a show?" The lobby quickly filled up. Hannah Miller who was also a volunteer sat with her handmade high heeled bunny slippers, working diligently at sidoku on her cell phone. Rabbits that resembled Betsy Die's wonderful quirky creations were everywhere. I texted Betsy and she explained that Mark had asked her to create rabbits as improv mascots. She didn't want to spend the 2 hours needed to sew each rabbit. Mark recruited the mom of a friend who ended up sewing the lookalikes. Betsy did have final approval of the final product but some of the demonic charm was lost.
I heard a woman seated at the bar say to her friend, "I think that is Thor." Since it is a small lobby, I heard her and walked over to say hello. Terry stopped in after work, but she had to get up early the next morning so she didn't stick around for a show . Hannah and Mike Maples sat at my table and we talked and laughed for the longest time while I finished my sketch. Hannah and Mike went to get some sandwiches and we had dinner before finally heading in to see a show. when we entered the theater, it was pitch dark. I got my iPhone out to use as a flashlight and Hannah shouted out, "Hey help guide us in with your cell phones! " I believe Sultana or Brian guided us to some seats in the third row.
Mark bounded on the stage and the crowd hooted and hollered . He introduced Boston Improv and everyone cheered. They had me laughing out loud from the start. Scenes changed quickly and the fast pace never slackened. 0ne scene was at a dating service where one woman was training another on how to act when first meeting her date. Someone was pulled from the audience and he was seated next to her. She pushed up right next to him and rubbed her head on his chest like a cat. when she was reprimanded she clutched his knee refusing to give him any space. When she was prompted to say something about herself she said, "I like to drug people while they are asleep." I couldn't stop laughing.
The second act I went to see was Droll Academy from Orlando. I was told they perform every week at "The Funky Monkey". They started with musical improv which had me bopping my head to the beat while I laughed . They too pulled an audience member on the stage. They chose a beautiful Asian woman who they serenaded gently till the lyrics showed the truth, that they wanted to make love to her. As she stood embarrassed one actor writhed on the ground as he continued to sing.
Both performances I went to were packed and people lingered in the lobby between shows. I hope this festival grows and returns bigger and better each year.

Truth or Dare with Pepe

Terry and I went to The Peacock Room to catch Pepe. We entered and paid the five dollar cover to Mike Maples who had on a very stylish fedora. At the bar we sat next to Devin Dominguez and Shannon Lacek who was just getting up to leave. Devin and Terry talked about the various boards they work for. Rob Ward was greeting people up and down the bar. I ordered a Corona and relaxed. I decided not to sketch until the show started so I sat back and enjoyed the social interactions firing up all around me. We waited for quite a while since some of the guests for Pepe's show hadn't arrived yet. Aradhana Tiwari muscled up to the bar and ordered a cosmo. The bartender wouldn't accept any of her credit cards so she had to go out to her car to get cash.
Terry and I were some of the first people to enter the backroom performance space. I collapsed into a beanbag chair at Terry's feet. The set had gotten much more elaborate since I had been on the show many months ago. A gorgeous red patterned couch filled the stage along with Pepe's giant red pump chair. Pepe's co-star for the night was Blue Star from VarieTEASE dance company. Megan Boetto dressed in a tight red corset was the evenings Jello shot girl. Guests of the show were Beth Marshall and Mark Baratelli.
Mark arrived late and sober so he started sucking down jello shots one after the other. When asked by Pepe if he wanted to pick Truth (gasp from crowd) or dare. Mark picked Truth. Everyone was very disappointed. He related a story about someone who stole a show idea intending to use it as a fundraiser for a cause but then the individual pocked the money. It was a true arts community scandal. Beth Marshall was asked to pick someone from the audience to some on stage and she picked Aradhana who had to be just about dragged up on the stage. She complained, "I have been up since 7:30 this morning, this isn't fair." She was offered the truth or dare challenge and she picked dare. Pepe explained, "I have a privacy screen behind this chair and I will allow you to sit behind it and then verbalize your best orgasm." She asked, "Do you want the whole thing or just the ending?" He pulled the screen out and set it up in front of her. She gave a performance worthy of that deli scene in "When Harry Met Sally." I was shocked and amazed. Directors are mighty fine actors. Two men were pulled from the audience and one was told to do a lap dance for the other. Mark kept shouting out, "Take off the shirt!" When the shirt finally came off the crowd went wild. The two men were then given a slip Jim meet stick and told to chew from either end until their lips met in the middle. his was another hilarious moment. At the same time Beth and Baby Blue were doing something involving a banana on the other end of the couch. A woman at the back of the room started to dance to the song, "Put a ring on it." She shouted out that her name was snipples. Megan started doing the dance on stage with plenty of hip action. When jello shots were thrown out to the crowd again, Pepe offed a toast, saying, "To the arts community in Orlando, may it thrive!" I raised my shot high in the air and sucked it down by shoving my tongue all around the rim dislodging the tasty jiggling mass.

Truth or Dare!

I was invited by Heidi Dog Productions to sketch Pepe and Miss Sammy as they performed Truth or Dare at the Peacock Room located at 1321 Mills Avenue. The twist in this strange sketching excursion is that I was to sketch the act from on the stage. After Pepe and Miss Sammy finished their introductions, (It turns out miss Sammy was in La Cage aux Folles on Broadway for 4 years) Pepe had the crowd summon me to the stage by shouting my last name 3 times, Thorspecken, Thorspecken, Thorspecken, just as Beetle Juice was summoned. I hopped up and gave Pepe exaggerated French cheek kisses. Then I sat in a stool at the back of the stage and started to get to work.
The first guest to be called up and the one I decided to draw was Jeff Horn. Jeff was fund raising for a charity project he co-founded with Daisy Lynum called Genesis Community Program. This program helps teach young aspiring tennis players the game in the Parramore neighborhood of Orlando. A large jar was passed around to see if anyone wanted to donate. Jeff is also a nationally recognized tennis professional. After Jeff, a politician named Todd Christian was given the Truth or Dare challenge and he ended up putting a condom on a banana with his mouth.
Things started to get crazy when Dewey Chaffee and Douglas McGeoch got on the stage. When confronted with the Truth or Dare challenge Dewey made a bold decision to tell the truth. Pepe asked him "If chew could have a one niiight stand with anyone in the room, who would chew peeeck?" Bet Marshall shouted out, "It would have to be the youngest boy in the room!" He chose a young man with very curly hair standing in the back of the room with his girlfriend. Pepe shouted for the young man to come up onto the stage. The fellow looked just like Frodo from the Lord of the Rings movies. He was given the Truth or Dare challenge and the audience gasped in anticipation. He chose a dare. Pepe held up a stack of playing cards and fanned them out. He told the victim, I mean contestant, to pick a card. The contestant was told to pick a card, any card. Before he did, Pepe threw away the 2 of hearts and said, Chew don't need dees card". Frodo picked a five of clubs. He was told that he must remove 5 items of clothing. He removed his shoes which as a pair made up the first item, then his socks, his tee shirt, shorts and finally his underwear which left him totally naked. Miss Sammy and Pepe actually shielded the audience from seeing everything with a leopard skin towel. I didn't have time to sketch the towel, I don't think it is needed in the sketch. I worked furiously to catch Frodo's bottom knowing only the folks on stage could see what was actually going on behind the towel. I am so glad I got a chance to document this strange and fun theatrical experience. I had a blast with my first on stage experience.