Category Archives: Sketch 22

We are performing a special midnight show of Sketch22 tonight.  We usually do this for the Festies and assorted people who aren’t normally available to see the 8pm shows…  It’s usually a pretty fun show and the audience is usually, um, primed for a good time.
Check it out, if you’re up to nothing at midnight tonight.
Believe me, you’ve not lived ’til you’ve seen Debbie Gaudet at 2 in the morning.

I know, I know, you’re all sick of the Sketch22 stuff.
Sorry, it’s all I have.
Here’s a little bit of a word-up on the show from Steverino, the brother of Sean McQ.

Click Here to read the post from his blog, Steverinoland.  Thanks, Steve, for coming to the show.

Sketch22 magazine 2005
Originally uploaded by The Annekenstein Monster.

Saw a fun app to allow you to create phony magazine covers, with Flickr photos.
Make Your Own

Well, I suppose I should comment on the quickly-becoming-legendary Charles Mandel Sketch 22 review.  Many are calling it the worst theatrical review ever to hit the pages of the Guardian.  I don’t know, some of those Confederation Centre reviews they spew every year are pretty ass-kissy.  But I guess that’s taking "worst" in the opposite direction.

First off, I acknowledge that it’s hard not to sound petty when the scathed confronts points made in a scathing review, so I hope I won’t sound too petty.  But, in short, I think Charles Mandel pretty much got it all wrong.
Yes, he’s entitled to his opinion and yes it’s his job to report his experience of the performance.  So let’s get that out of the way first.  He did that, and he quite obviously hated the show.  I can live with that.  I wish, however, that in his review, he would have been more truthful
about how his opinion of the show seemed to be counter to the opinions
of the majority of the people in attendance with him.
When we were writing and rehearsing the show, we knew there would be segments of the audience who would hate the show.  Our hope, though, was that the majority would like it.  Our hope seems to be winning. 
Besides the goal of producing a Funny Show, another of our goals this year was to challenge ourselves and our audience as to what is funny: So we wrote sketches that dance all around the limits of comedy, and the boundaries of "good taste".  We acknowledge quite openly that we often cross those boundaries.  Yes, to shock, but also (and I don’t want to get all artsy-fartsy here), to explore.  Explore just how far one can go before a joke becomes too much.  Explore how far an audience is willing to go before they say "enough, that’s too far".  Explore the depths even further and see if the audience decides "no, we were wrong, this is still funny", and then go farther still, until all agree that the limit has been reached.  And how do we judge the results of the explorations?  Simply, by the laughter.  If an audience laughs, then it’s funny.  It’s (almost – see below) that simple. 
Now I know of actors who kid themselves that their productions are better than they are, and who brainwash themselves into believing that audiences are loving their shows and performances more than they actually are.  I believe that I’m a pretty objective critic of any shows I’ve been involved in and I believe I have a pretty good sense of when an audience is honestly enjoying a show, and when they are "being supportive".  With comedy shows, it’s much easier to guage an audience than it is with drama.  With comedy, audiences either a) laugh honestly, b) laugh in support, or c) don’t laugh.  I may have brainwashed myself into believing this, but I’m pretty sure that audiences who see Sketch 22 are laughing pretty honestly.  A lot.  And hard.
Which brings me to the crowd in which Charles Mandel found himself in last week.  Now, Charles insinuates that the audience wasn’t enjoying the show very much.  Saying things like "People forget to laugh"; "but the majority of the crowd remained silent" implies that the audience didn’t laugh.  Saying something like "finally, though, a couple of the questions loosened the crowd up", implies that the crowd that night was stiff and tight.
This may very well be the way Mr. Mandel heard the audience, but from my perspective, the crowd that night was, without doubt, the most boisterous, loud, accepting, energetic, appreciative crowd we’d had so far to that point.  This year or last year.  It was a fantastic show, from beginning to end, and the audience’s enjoyment was a huge part of it.  Again, maybe I’ve talked myself into imagining this, but I honestly don’t think so. 
Because the audience was so over-whelmingly supportive and appreciative, I was looking forward to Mr. Mandel’s review.  If he didn’t like the show, I thought, at least he’d have to comment about the way the rest of the crowd liked it.
So, I was rather dismayed by Mr. Mandel painting the picture to Guardian readers that the show was not appreciated by the audience.  I think what happened was, the show wasn’t appreciated by Mr. Mandel (and, no doubt, a few others), and to prop up his minority position, he, perhaps, chose not to  hear the roaring laughter, the clapping and cheering.  Maybe he was so worked up and bothered, outraged, by the content, all he heard were the swear words, and all he saw was filth.
Because, based on his review, he certainly missed a lot.  In fact, he missed a fucking great show.
What did he miss, in particular?
In my opinion, he missed some very key components of some of the sketches.  Too fixated on the crudeness, perhaps.  Regarding the lesbian stand up comedian, he claims (at least this is how I read it) that I bombed in my performance.  Even if he is referring to the character bombing (but I’m pretty sure he’s referring to me, the actor, not the character I was playing), he says "It’s not pleasant watching a comedian bomb."
Well, to me, that comment speaks volumes and perfectly illustrates how Mr. Mandel failed in his review of the show.  You see, Mr. Mandel, in that sketch, the character is supposed to bomb.  She is supposed to be an unfunny comedian.  Regarding that sketch, you wrote "nervous titters and giggles came from a number of people along with outright expressions of dismay".  What you failed to recognize is that the sketch was written and is performed to achieve precisely that reaction from the audience.  I wrote that sketch so that an audience would (hopefully) laugh along at the beginning of the sketch, and then as the character becomes uglier and more vile and more gratuitous in her language, more and more of the audience would feel uncomfortable and fewer and fewer people would laugh.  And it works very well.  Most people, whether they realise it or not, understand this, and are more than willing to come along for the ride to see just how bad it’s going to get.
So, Mr. Mandel, you see, you don’t see.  Now, you may ask, why would you want to have a sketch in a comedy show that’s designed to get an audience to stop laughing?  It’s a very good question, and one that compelled me to write the sketch.  It’s kinda like an experiment.  In one sense, though, Mr. Mandel, I did fail in that sketch.  You see, by and far away, that character and sketch has become beloved by a huge number of people who’ve seen the show.  I tried to write a character that would repulse an audience, and ended up creating one who is adored by many.  In that way, I failed.  Yet, you were repulsed, Mr.Mandel, so in that way I succeeded, I guess.  Just like a Bag of Dog Poop, I’m so confused.
What else?
Okay, the "man-on-man" kiss.  You seem to take pleasure in the "Thank you" heckle from the audience member.  As if you were relieved that there was another person in the audience, besides yourself who couldn’t handle such an event taking place before their (your) eyes.  You seem to be proud of that heckle, whereas I see it as a sad statement of homophobia.  A person so appalled by the very threat of seeing two men kiss that he is compelled to shout out his thanks at it not happening.  In truth, though, I don’t think that guy meant it in such a homophobic way (yet I’m wondering whether your inclusion of it in your review is meant in that way?).  I prefer to believe that he just didn’t want to see the big blonde guy kiss the skinny dark-haired guy.  I think that’s the beauty of that moment.  Most people are equally compelled to watch and to avert their eyes.  They want it to simultaneously happen and not happen, hoping it’ll be as awful as they’re scared it will actually be.  It’s such a Beautifully Ugly moment.
Hey, you know, maybe that homophobic reaction is exactly the kind we were hoping to elicit?  Maybe we’re saying it’s not the two guys on stage who are kissing who are appalling.  Perhaps the appalling ones are those in the audience who are disgusted by it. 
And, in reference to that heckle, you say "it’s bad when the funniest lines come from the crowd."  Now, I question, really, whether that was the funniest line of the night, but it did get a laugh, to be sure (there are so many lines that get huge laughs, it’s really hard to single one out.  We love all our babies.  Again, strange you didn’t mention all the laughter in your review).  Yet, again, I have to disagree with you when you say "it’s bad".  To me, a funnly line at a comedy show is a good thing, whether it’s spoken by someone on stage or off.  If it somehow fits within the context of the show (as this line did) and it gets a laugh from the rest of the crowd, then I don’t care who says it.
Oh, the "minds of 13 year olds" line. I’ll have you know, I don’t think there’s one fart joke in the whole show.  Your comment almost compels me to imply that your review was written with the same basis of maturity, but my sense of decency keeps me from doing such.
Really, though, you’re right that many of the lines in the nudist sketch are rather juvenile and full of double-entendre.  I don’t know why that’s a concern, though, since most nights many of those lines can’t even be heard by the audience or by the actors, since there’s a roar of laughter through so much of the sketch.  Seriously, it’s like the Beatles performing at Shea Stadium.  We can’t even hear ourselves perform at many points during that sketch.  Too bad the audience is being tricked by us into laughing.
Another comment that I think misses the mark is the one about Trailer Park Boys being a "not so intelligent satire".  Truthfully, I’ve only seen a few episodes, but the ones I saw seemed to be pretty smart satire.  And I would also suggest he misses the point if he thinks that sketch was making fun of TPB.  I would say we were exploring the same areas of society that TPB explores.

Other lines to comment on: 
"But bludgeoning their audience with scandalous language isn’t particularly clever."  I would counter with this: Nor is it particularly clever to entirely miss the clever aspects of the show you’re claiming isn’t particularly clever.
"Much of the show can’t even be discussed in a family newspaper such as this one." I bet a competent writer would find a way. (okay, that was a little petulant.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant he didn’t *have time* to bother to find a way to discuss those aspects of the show in a way suitable to a family newspaper such as this one.)

I guess, in the end, it boils down to a difference of opinion.  I really enjoyed reading it.  It doesn’t bother me that he didn’t like it.  I wish, though, that he tried a bit harder to see beyond his outrage at the foul-mouthed outrageousness and attempt to review the aspects of the show that take place beneath that layer of filth.  I am also a bit bothered that his review, in my opinion, misrepresents the fun and excitement and pleasure so many audience members seem ot experience when they see the show.  I feel bad for those who were perhaps contemplating coming to the show, and then, having read his review, decide against seeing it.

Seriously, who are you going to trust?  The guy who hated the show the one time he saw it, or the guy who loves to perform in it more and more with each successive performance?  And one of the main reasons I love to perform in it is because the audience reaction is so fantastic and enthusiastic.

He’s right though, the show is appalling.  But in a most appealing way.

Sketch-22 pushes show to the raunchy limit

by Charles Mandel

    Judging from the full house Friday night at The Guild, the word is out about Sketch-22.

    The suspicion, however, is people are jamming the venue not because the comedy quintet is especially funny, but because they’ve heard the show is especially raunchy.
    Make no mistake, Sketch-22’s second season is about as raw as it gets.  Much of the show can’t even be discussed in a family newspaper such as this one.
    But if foul-mouthed stand-up comedians strike you as funny, you’ll love this show.
    It’s not as if profanity is something new in humour.  Comedians like Lenny Bruce have relied on the shock of the outrageous to pull laughs from their audiences.
    It’s a little different, though, when the outrage overtakes the humour.  People forget to laugh.
    That’s exactly what happened at times at the Guild. The troupe pushed the performance so far that they lost their audience.
    During at least one skit in which Rob MacDonald played a lesbian stand-up comic, nervous titters adn giggles came from a number of people along with outright expressions of dismay, but the majority of the crowd remained silent.
    It’s not pleasant watching a comedian bomb.
    Josh Weale’s appearance as Jesus offering to take questions from the crowd also got off to an awkward start.  Finally, though, a couple of the questions loosened up the crowd.
    Elsewhere, at the end of the night, when MacDonald was threatening to give another cast member a full tongue "man-to-man" kiss, but backed off, someone from the audience heckled, "Thank you!"  That prompted one of the first full laughs from the audience in several minutes.
    It’s bad when the funniest lines come from the crowd.
    A segment featuring Andrew Sprague as a doctor visiting a nudist colony drew waves of helpless laughter from the audience – even if much of it was in disbelief.  Although the language of the skit was fairly juvenile, composed of obvious double entendres, people cracked up as members of Sketch-22 appeared nude but for strategically placed items.
    The Full Monty had nothing on this.
    Another piece that kept the audience in stitches featured MacDonald as a man who arranged swaps for unwanted babies.
    And why would they be unwanted?  Because, they were "from away".
    Advised MacDonald: If you want that boy to be an Islander, "make sure his first word is pogey."
    But the laugh-out-loud skits were few and far between this year.  The problem isn’t with the comedians.  MacDonald, along with fellow satirists Josh Weale, Andrew Sprague, Graham Putnam and  – new to the troupe this year – Dennis Trainor are reasonably funny guys.
    However, if their material is anything to go by, they have the minds of 13-year-olds.  The majority of their skits seemed designed to be as offensive as possible.  If that was the goal, they succeeded.  But bludgeoning their audience with scandalous language isn’t particularly clever.
    Occasionally, snippets of local or political humour made their way into the act, but for the most part it was just one vulgarity heaped upon another.
    Perhaps Sketch-22 believes this is what an audience raised on Trailer Park Boys, rap music adn MTV’s Jackass deserves.
    To be sure, one skit explicitly made reference to that whole culture when MacDonald introduced himself as "Teddy Goldman, producer of the Low Income Boys."
    The problem, though, with trying to make fun of something that’s already a not-so-intelligent satire is it becomes a question of how low can you go, and as Sketch-22 proves, they can go very low indeed.
    Given that Sketch-22 wrote their humour to be as outrageous as possible, what more can be said: they succeeded.  The show is appalling.

Here’s the review of our show by The Guardian’s Charles Mandel.  I’ll comment more when I get a chance.  Thought you might like to read it, though.  I think he liked it!

Well, our first show of the summer is finished.  What a relief.
The house was pretty much full, the crowd was ready for a show, and they got one.  It felt really good to hear laughter at the places where we were hoping laughter would occur.  It felt really good to hear gasps  at the places we thought there might be gasps.  Overall, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the positive response from the audience, both during the show, and afterwards, talking with those who stuck around, and who showed up at the Opening Night party at St. James Gate.  I believe much of the positive commentary was honestly offered, too, which is nice.  But maybe I’m necessarily naive in that respect.

Comment of the night, as it related to me:  At The Gate, talking to a couple of people, and this pretty young lady that I didn’t recognise walks past me and whisper-speaks:  I saw your balls.  As for the context of how that might happen during the show, I’ll leave that to the imagination of those who haven’t seen the show yet.  I was left speechless when she said it.  I almost asked her if she liked what she saw, but I was afraid her reply might be in the negative and I’d be forever scarred emotionally by her potentially cutting remark.  So, I didn’t say anything.  I was kind of wishing she’d have said "nice balls" instead, though.

As for the rest of the show, I was very pleased with the way we performed it, and the way the audience reacted to it.  I was very nervous about performing my Debbie Gaudet monologue (especially with my in-laws in the audience), since she is, well, let’s say she’s [understatement} a bit potty-mouthed [/understatemnt].  I walked out and there was probably about 30 seconds of huge laughter just at the costume.  After that, my fears disappeared and I launched into a speech that I found very therapeutic.  That sketch was probably my personal highlight.
I am, of course, very fearful to perform it again tonight.

To those of you who came out to the show last night, thanks for laughing and being generous with that laughter.  You are all very kind.

Well, our second season gets underway this Thursday evening, a mere 23 hours from now.
I’m pretty nervous, wondering how the audience will react.  I have a lot of confidence in most of the material, although there are a few sketches for which I wonder how an audience will react.  We are, of course, fearful that the audience won’t share our group’s sense of humour, yet we also know that much of the show makes us all laugh a lot.  And the few people who’ve seen snippets of the new material have been genuinely laughing at it, so that’s good.  Still, the "Will They Like Us" nerves are definitely there.
It’s going to be a long 23 hours.  We have a late night dress rehearsal tomorrow night which should wipe us out.
Gulp.  What have we gotten into?  Whose bright idea was it to come up with all new material for this summer?  It sure would have been safer to rely on the successful sketches from last year.  But then, I probably wouldn’t have this pit of worry and nerves in my stomach right now.
The payoff, assuming that audiences dig it, will be worth it.  And the excitement and anticipation of giving the audience all new material is pretty intense.

Stay tuned…

We had a Sketch22 gig last night.  It was a 45 minute show for an Oncology Doctor Conference in Cavendish.  We used this performance as a chance to try out some of our new material for this summer’s show.  We also brought back a few of the sketches from last year.
Doing shows like this is usually pretty tough.  The venue is usually awful, the people aren’t really interested in what you’re doing and it’s generally a pain in the ass and something one just looks forward to being done with.  It was also a pain to re-rehearse those last year sketches because it took (precious) time away from rehearsing the sketches for this season.  But they had asked for some of the sketches from last year, so what the heck.
I think the performance went about as well as it could have, given the circumstances.  First of all, our dressing room turned out to be a deck outside the room where we’d be performing.  Okay, no problem, it was a nice night, and while the clouds were threatening rain, it stayed dry.  Secondly, the performance was late getting going because it was taking longer for the conference participants to come into the room to eat.  But they ate quick, the room was converted from dining to performance and we went on.
We weren’t expecting a lot of response from the audience because the sketches we chose are fairly PEI-centric.  Still there was hope that the universally comedic aspects of the sketches would shine through and that would engage them enough to enjoy the show.
The stage was quite a bit smaller than we were used to during rehearsals, and our first problem during the performance was to accomodate the small size to our sketches.  The blocking in the first sketch got all confused and discombobulated, but it went pretty well.  Of all the sketches we’d be performing, that was the one I was most worried about.  Because it’s kind of like – the audience is eating, enjoying, digesting and then – BAM – they’re taken to this kind of weird sketch universe and asked to come along for a strange ride.  It didn’t take them long to adjust though, and it went about as good as I could have hoped.
The next couple of sketches were from last year (Road Crew, Piping Plover and Moe Gorman) and they went over very well.  Our next new sketch went over fairly well, too, and our new finale sketch (which has an either hit-or-miss ending) got enough big laughs to make us feel pretty good about the evening.  The feedback from the audience was very favourable as well.
Now, with that show out of the way, we embark on the final week and a half of rehearsals for our July 7 opening.  A lot of work left to do, but now we have a couple of the sketches at performance level, so the Oncology show was good for forcing that upon us.
Plus we got a nice chunk of change for it too.
I think, though, that it will turn out to be our last such gig.  None of us like doing them, really, and despite the easy money, they’re not something we’re going to pursue in the future.
It may also have been the last time ever we perform Road Crew, Plover and Moe Gorman.  Time to put those characters to rest, we think.

So, we’ve been getting together for rehearsals for Sketch 22 twice a week for the past couple of weeks.  Next week we move up to three times a week as our July 7opening looms ever closer.
Last Thursday night, it hit me just how little time we have left.  And still there was a sketch to write.  Not an important one, though.  Just the final sketch of the show, and the one that somehow should try to a) connect the earlier sketches together if possible and b) make some sort of artistic statement without, of course, sounding like it’s an artistic statement.
I took on the task of writing that final sketch and gave myself the deadline of having it finished by this coming Monday’s rehearsal.  Friday day I had to work – no time to write.  Friday night I set aside a chunk of time and began to write.  Hard, unfunny laboured writing.  Just a bunch of unconnected lines of dialogue that one somehow sometime come together to form a complete sketch.  I managed to write an opening monologue that I kind of liked but left it feeling lost and hopeless that I’d ever finish in time.  Still, I thought, I had Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday likely wouldn’t be happening for writing, so I had convinced/challenged myself that Sunday would be the writing day.  However, with a Montreal Formula One race to watch in the afternoon, time would be tight.
Saturday day was spent shooting the final video segments for the show.  They went very well, I thought, and should provide some laughs.  At the very least, they’ll provide some puzzlement and confused raised eyebrows.  Which was kind of the point of them to begin with.  Laughter would be a bonus on those videos, we figured, when we first wrote/read the scripts for them.  Having now shot the video, I think laughter is guaranteed.
Anyway, Saturday day was a bust for writing.  I got home and was so very tired as I trudged out to help my son cut the grass (he and a friend now cut the whole thing – two mowers, two kids, very little assistance from me), play a bit of football with son and friend, go buy groceries, barbecue portions of just-bought groceries.  After supper I told myself to sit in front of the computer and see if anything happened in terms of writing.
After the obligatory time-wasters such as browsing blogs, websites, etc, I finally opened my word processor.  A quick unsatisfactory re-read of Friday night’s stuff and I was ready to call it quits on Saturday.  Don’t give up!  Play around with some formatting of text:  italicize any stage directions I already had.  Okay, what if this character says this: type type type… man, that sucks!  So dry and dull.  A few more attempts like that and I started thinking that Sunday would be my day.  Ugh.
Wait a second.  What if this character says this: type type type.  Yeah, and then this character says: type type type.  That allows this other character to enter and say: type type type.  etc.
Four hours later, and it’s done.  And I like it quite a bit. Yay!  The final sketch of Sketch 22 2005 is finished.
Assuming the rest of the group likes it, of course.  If they don’t, then, hell, one of them will have to write it himself.
Now my Sunday will be free for me!  You have no idea how much of a bonus that is.

Today, we shot some video for our upcoming season of Sketch22.
We started out bright and early (for a Saturday) at 9am at Timothy’s.  After caffeination and chit chat, we headed to the CARI complex.  It was my first time in the building.  From the brief glimpse I got, it’s a pretty nice facility. Today was also convocation for UPEI students, and that was also taking place at CARI, so the place was buzzin’.  We were shooting a video that required three of us to dress in drag, and we shot it in one of the two rinks, while watching girls hockey.  It was pretty noisy in the rink, and the rink itself really swallowed up the sound, so I’m hoping the sound will, well, sound okay.
I was impressed with the level of hockey we saw too.  I guess a tournament was on, or something, but some of those girls can really play hockey.

After shooting that bit of silliness, we went to the Farmers Market for some lunch (I had a schawarma) then it was to the CBC to shoot another video that’s part of a live sketch.  It was a pretty simple setup and Andrew and Dennis, the actors for that video, gave it their all.  They had me biting my tongue quite a bit, trying not to laugh.  I hope that video turns out to be nearly as funny to others as it seemed to me.
Overall, the summer show is starting to come together nicely, I think.  It’s kind of hard to gauge now, because some of the sketches that we have, we’ve been looking at, tweaking and fretting over for a couple of months now and the humour has long been drained out of them for us.  We have to keep remembering our first time hearing those sketches and trust they are as funny now as they seemed when we first heard them.

Behind the scenes at Sketch22, we’ve been fortunate to have the mighty Ghislaine O’Hanley come on board as our stage manager for the summer.  Ghislaine is tops in my book, and I look forward to what she’ll bring to the show.

You can keep up to date with the latest Sketch22 goings-on at the Sketch 22 Online Glamour Site.