As summer makes it’s ways into our collective hearts and armpits, so do the rise of special classes taught at the Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center. One instructor to always keep an eye out for is the unparalleled Christina Gausas. If I were a bit more pretentious I might even venture to say that Christina is the closest thing to my improv guru I have ever come across.

One of the classes I took with Cristina which changed my perspective was her Openings & Group Games class. I had thought it would be a throw away class, I was bored and wanted to take a summer class after my Billy Merritt 401 to pass the time until my Gethard 501 started up. Group games and openings? That’s like a cooking class on boiling water, right? Fortunately for me, I was completely wrong. Christina opened my eyes to the science of group games. She worked with us on matching energy, unconditional support, devising form out of pattern, listening, using openings more effectively to begin scenes, and showed me how to accurately perform my favorite opening of all time… the true Del Close Invocation.

“An opening is like an artist’s palette — it is the foundation for all your scenes.”

– Christina Gausas

The class was different than any I had ever taken before. Christina’s “from the horses mouth” experience makes her an instructor who can lay ideas out in ways you may never have heard before. I found her teaching style super supportive, extra caring, and unlike anything I had experienced before.

Lucky for you, she’s teaching her Openings & Group Games class Thursdays 7-10pm starting Jun 26, 2008. Get thee registered. Nice work yall, it’s sold out! Hope you enjoy it.

Getting on in my improv age, as well as my actual age, I have become less and less impressed in the cookie-cutter Harold. Del, from what I have read, never intended the Harold to be the end all be all in improv forms. It was a blueprint and it was up to the improvisers to build their Harold as they saw fit. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Harolds I see, day-to-day, class-to-class, Harold night-to-Harold night, are 8 semi-terrified performers performing someone else’s form without a sense of their ownership.

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.

–Anton Chekhov

Then I took Chris Gethard’s 501 at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade last year and near the end of the class he threw us the keys to the Harold, telling us in no uncertain terms to make it our own. The result was a performance which we, in the class, termed the “Pink Harold”. It was ours, it was passionate, it was inventive, it was unwatchable. But it was during the Pink Harold that our class realized that with enough support, inevitable listening, and a heaping of group mind — you could do just about anything to a Harold or improv and have it work.

Chris Gethard’s Explosion class, performing under the name ‘The Raw Harold’, has perfected the explosion into something which is truly stage worthy. The class, split into two non-permanent teams by Gethard, opens with something which most closely resembles an organic opening. The group then slides into scenes. The scenes themselves look to loosely follow the Harold structure, but they also seem to follow the focus of the whole piece, rather than stay wed to scene centric themes.

When it is working, the stage is energized and the performers operate in mode often seeing the moves before they are made. There is a sixth sense about the support. Performers seem to always be in the right place at the right time. The scenes last Tuesday, for the most part, really hit me. They were unlike other class shows. Even though there were seasoned professionals and harold team members mixed through both groups, I did not get a sense of any one performer overwhelming the stage.

The first Raw Harold, with the suggestion of skewer, most clearly maintained the structure of the Harold, but had a certain non-linear scene progression that was really fun to watch. The players were playing side games with the main scenes, that intersected and weaved through everything. What was refreshing was to see the team fully risk everything on stage. From the few glimpses of players on the back line, it was clear that a few performers were a little terrified, but to everyone’s credit they performed selflessly in every scene. Abra Tabak’s interchange with Greg DeSantis from the sidelines was a wonderful overplay to the main scene’s seriousness.

The second team, with the suggestion of wrestle, had a wider scope than the first. Their opening was an explosive wrestling match which quickly evolved into a battle of the sexes. This battle of the sexes then was truly explored by the team, leading into fights, arguments, and taunting from both sides. The Harold had referees, some adept pimping, and a show stopping confrontation between Brendan McMullen and Jennifer Bartels about his roughing up of Katie Schorr. Brian Berrebbi also did a very graceful job, being the most most experienced performer on stage, of directing focus without stealing focus of the scenes.

How do you know when you’re on the way? When your map no longer serves you.

–H. Trevino

What I came away with from watching the Raw Harold was a sense that these performers had made the Harold form their own. With that ownership, were not thinking, but rather playing — which is what I think Del would have wanted from his life’s work. I truly believe, that all performers currently studying or performing at UCB should take notice of these performances. They are inspiring, perhaps a little rough around the edges, but also more daring than the majority of Harolds I have seen performed recently. Well worth the extra cup of coffee Wednesday morning.

The Raw Harold continues every Tuesday night at 11pm for the next 3 weeks. The Raw Harold is named after the gay leather bar on 7th Avenue called Rawhide which is offering 2-for-1 drink specials after the show for the length of the run.

New York City is a tough place to carve out your little slice of life. It’s an urban jungle full of weirdos, small apartments, bad bars, awful roommates, failed relationships, unobtainable goals, bed bugs, exorbitant gym membership fees, and a series of unlivable neighborhoods that have been made hip with catchy acronyms. It’s enough to make a grown woman sick… enough to make two grown women sick… enough to make two grown woman and an audience under a supermarket sick.

Photographs by Jodi Skersis

MEGAN & BRIDIE: Friends Without Benefits is one of those rare shows that totally surpassed my expectations. From the awesome preview skits I had seen at a few UCB Harold nights, I had pictured Megan and Bridie to be far more self deprecating and creepily dependent story line, but in reality the show is a wonderful mix of scenes documenting the meeting of two totally opposite women in the big city — one desperate for an apartment, one desperate for companionship.

It’s a classic tale of platonic city living.

Bridie Harrington and Megan Neuringer do a terrific job at creating characters that are both totally believable and ridiculously funny. Bridie plays a oblivious, fitness obsessed gal, whose search for the next big exercise leads her towards workouts that I know I have seen advertised at my local Crunch. Megan plays a neurotic Jewish gal whose life is filled with a series of problematic relationships that always seem to leave her unfulfilled. The two are thrown together in a co-dependent friendship, stemming from the need of an apartment, which begins to tear itself apart by their conflicting personalities.

Megan & Bridie: Friends Without Benefits is a terrific show filled with all the detritus that life serves up, viewed with refreshing candor and humor, with characters you can’t help but love. It’s like sex in the city, without the sex and with ladies you don’t want to strangle. The last show plays Wednesday April 4th 8PM at Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre (37 W 26th & 8th Ave). Make your reservations now.

Directed by Jason Mantzoukas

I know this may seem a little cockeyed, posting a quick review of a Tuesday show after a show I saw the following Sunday, but I got bogged down with procrastinating and just couldn’t get my proverbial shit together.

This last Tuesday at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater, premiered the new Harold Night schedule, featuring returning, revised, and new teams. New players have been added to the line ups, aside from Kill your Darlings, which is still remains the original cast. The most notable change, to my mind, is the departure and re-formation of the Mailer-Daemon team as fwänd.

Mailer-Daemon always seemed to me to be the perfect troupe, and with the departure of Eric Appel, Matt Moses, and Ben Rodgers from the group, I wonder if it had anything to do with the new name fwänd. I can only guess. Regardless of their new name, fwänd (formerly Mailer-Daemon) were outstanding on tuesday night. They had the best Harold I have seen at Harold Night. Hi-lights included prudish english couple, the puppeteers and puppets, and a group teabagging scene (pictured above).

A new player to note, is that of Sean Clements, who joined the ranks of Tantrum, and gave an excellent first Harold night performance. You might recognize Sean from Project Improvisor.
I’m so glad I got that post out of the way.

Update: Looks like I have a few facts askew. 1985 now has a former member of Mailer-Daemon, Ben Rodgers. I’ve updated the text to reflect the correction.

Filmed at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of iO (formerly the Improve Olympic), this movie basically tries to document the evenings shenanigans.

While I appreciate the idea of this documentary, the actual film making is really lacking. Not only do the improvisors have to hold a microphone if they want to be heard, destroying any illusion of character, but the cabled mics get wrapped around improvisors legs and makes for bad scene-work. The 90 minute running time means that almost every improv scene got edited for time and basically defeated the point of Long-form improvisation.

Unfortunately this disc is a very bad representation of iO’s excellent talent. I would suggest instead of renting this film, to check out the iO to Go podcast instead as you will get a far better overview of their work.

Highlights: Tim Meadows playing a spelling bee contestant and the UCB4 creating mischief.