Sketch22’s New Summer 2006 Show

Tomorrow night (Thursday), Sketch22 premieres its third
successive season’s production of all-new sketch comedy.  Like past shows, it will combine both video sketches and live on-stage sketches. And, like past shows, I’m excitedly nervous about presenting these new sketches to our audience.

With comedy, it’s always a nervous time when you are about to present new material.  After rehearsing it for so long, the “funniness” of the sketches has more or less evaporated for us, and we have to trust that audiences will find them as funny as we did when we were originally writing and rehearsing them.  Also, with new comedy, there’s really nowhere to hide when you present it.  Eitherpeople laugh or people don’t.  You know whether it works or not.  With dramatic pieces, you can sort of convince yourself that the audience’s stillness and lack of response is supposed to happen.  

But with comedy, you pretty much know when you perform it whether it’s working or not.  Another slight worry after rehearsing sketches that you think are funny:  when rehearsing, you don’t really pause for the laughter you expect to happen after certain lines.  So, during the first performance, your timing can kind of get screwed up because you’re not used to waiting for laughter.  And, of course, the opposite
problem is expecting laughter at certain lines and not getting it.  That, too, can throw you off.  My approach over the years, I think, has been to never assume a line will get a laugh, and always assume that a line you have no expectation of laughter will get huge laughs.

I think this year’s crop of new material is our strongestyet.  There are a couple of sketches in particular that I simply cannot wait for people to see.  One of them, I’m very worried about because I have yet to get through rehearsing it even once without laughing.  Usually, I am able to control my onstage corpsing, but this sketch, particularly at one moment (which actually is a verydramatic, tender moment) just kills me every time.  I wasn’t particularly pleased with some of the video segments we presented at our Christmas show (we were too rushed, and the scripts just weren’t ready for production), but I think we have a strong bunch of videos for this summer.  A couple are pretty “out there” as far as concept go, and I’m a little worried that people won’t want to come along for the ride on those, but I think they’re really funny.

What else?  We play every Thursday and Friday until September 8, at the Guild in Charlottetown.  Tickets are only $15 plus tax .  This year, you can reserve tickets beforehand by calling the Guild box office at 620-3333.

If you come to the show (and I really hope you do), I hope you enjoy it.

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Who Ran Off With The Fiddle?

People who read this blog:
Sketch22 is down to its last days before we open our summer show of 2006.  We are looking for a few last minute props and so I come to this venue to ask of you:

Sketch22 is searching for a fiddle (or violin, I suppose) and bow for our show this summer.  If someone has, or knows someone who has, an old fiddle lying around, and wouldn’t mind parting with it for the summer, we’d be grateful if you’d help us out.
The only requirement is that the fiddle is playable.  However, it does not need to be in tune, or sound good when played.  Even if it only had one string, it would suit our needs.

We would compensate you with a couple of tickets to one of the shows, if you were able to loan a fiddle to us.
And you would be forever in our good books (yes we have more than one).
Thanks, peeps.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet Review of Superman Returns

  •  Brandon Routh was great as Superman/Clark Kent.
  •  I didn’t care for the woman who played Lois Lane.  While I have no complaints about her quality
    of acting, I didn’t believe for a moment that her character was a journalist.  She needed to be someone a bit older looking,
    less coiffed and more world-weary looking, I think.  What’s-Her-Name from the Mummy movies would
    have been great, if she was younger.
  •  I wanted to hear some of her Pulitzer Prize winning
    article “Why The World Doesn’t Need Superman”, and was disappointed that they
    didn’t give me anything from it.
  •  I hated the scene in the airplane where Lois Lane was part of the gaggle of
    journalists, and the lone camera kept panning back from her (when she asked a
    question) to the person holding the press conference.  Wouldn’t the camera remain focused on latter,
    rather than pan between the two?  That
    really bugged me.
  •  Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor was a disappointment to me.  I wanted him to be either more campy, or less
    campy.  The amount of camp he gave the performance
    was too middling and ended up being un-noteworthy. 
  •  I also found his “evil scheme” to be beyond ludicrous and
    laughable.
  •  Parker Posey had a great amount of camp to her character, but
    since nobody really rose their bars to her level, it seemed kind of out of
    place with it.
  •  I appreciated the performance of Lois Lane’s husband.  Lots of subtle things happening there, I
    thought, and he ended up being a super kind of guy, too.
  •  I didn’t appreciate the performance of the kid who played
    the son.  And I didn’t like that “surprise”
    plot-twist that I never saw coming a million miles away (all the way from
    Krypton, perhaps?)
  •  I began to get really bugged when, after surviving
    catastrophe upon catastrophe, each time Lois Lane would end up back at the Daily
    Planet offices, looking refreshed and absolutely raring to go again,
    unconcerned with the psychological ramifications of the near-death experiences
    she had just gone through.  A little bit
    of realism in this respect (from all the characters) would have really helped me
    enjoy it more.
  •  The plot seemed to move as slow as the rough beast that
    slouches towards Bethlehem. 
  •  Far too frigging long.  And too slow-paced

 All that being said, I still enjoyed it okay.

TAM Daily Trivia – June Results

Here are the results of The Annekenstein Monster’s Daily Trivia for June:
25 players played during the month.

1. reverseflash (332 points, 4 wins)
 2. Grover (295 points, 1 wins)
3. dsoju’s sis (293 points, 6 wins)
4. Mrmovie (281 points, 1 wins)
5. Wessie (268 points, 4 wins)
6. RFTT1985 (245 points, 2 wins)
7. desperation (221 points, 0 wins)
8. dsoju (214 points, 2 wins)
9. annekenstein (191 points, 1 wins)
10. TracyJ (189 points, 1 wins)

Congratulations to reverseflash for walking away from the competition this month.

I find it interesting that in the past two months, I have performed poorly in my own game of trivia, yet in another person’s game, which utilizes the exact same pool of questions, I perform well.  On par with the top scorers in this game.

A new month of daily games begins today.  Come and join if you want, at The Annekenstein Monster Daily Trivia.

Your Perfect Movie Family?

I was watching To Kill A Mockingbird (again) last night, and it made me think of this potentially interesting idea:
You have the ability to cherry-pick your ideal family: father, mother, brother, sister, etc.  Only requirement is that they all come from the movies.
So, who would be your ultimate movie family?  You don’t have to worry about whether the various choices would get along with each other.  I will stipulate, however, that the person you choose must play that role in the film s/he is in.  So, the father you pick must be a father in whatever film you choose a father from, the brother must be identified as someone’s brother in whatever film you choose a brother from, etc.  You do not have to be concerned about matching these people to your current age.  You can choose a best friend, for instance, who is 3, 13 or 53.

I’m currently choosing my list, but I’ll post this now to let anybody who wants to bother playing to do so.  You don’t have to complete them all, just any you want.  If you want to supply the reasons for your choices, we’d all love to hear them.

I choose this person (name & film) as my:

Husband:
Wife:
Father:

Mother:

Brother:

Sister:

Son:

Daughter:

Uncle:

Aunt:

Best Friend:

Pet:

First Love:

Boss:

Nemesis:

Friend to be with me in a street fight:

Mentor:

Business partner:

Any other categories you’d like to add?

Rollerskate Hunt

This, from Jason, our intrepid producer:

Free Sketch tickets! For rollerskates!
Okay, everyone remembers
Let’s Make a Deal, right? Well, if you have the right item kicking
around in your shed, attic, or basement, you can win free tickets to
Sketch-22 this summer!

We are currently searching for 3 pairs of ROLLERSKATES (not
rollerblades) for the show this summer. The sizes are: men’s 12, men’s
9, ladies’ 7. If you have one or any of these rollerskates in these
sizes and would be willing to part with them for the summer (I know,
it’s hard!) let us know. And we’ll set you up for 2 free tickets to a
Sketch show this summer. If you can help us find these, you’ll be our
hero forever. If you do, respond to this blog or email me, Jason, at
jasonrogerson@hotmail.com.

Rollerskates! You got ’em? We need ’em!

And Worth Every Penny!

Moving back to old-style coin-fed parking meters is going to cost the city of Charlottetown $100,000.
I hate their guts so much!

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Pay Me My Money Down

Every time he plays, it’s like his first time, what with the enthusiasm and enjoyment.
Here’s The Boss on a recent Conan O’Brien show, singing a Pete Seeger tune (from Bruce’s latest album, covers of Seeger tunes):

Get Ready, Charlottetown


sketch3
Originally uploaded by The Annekenstein Monster.

Sketch22 Season 3 is about to tear this city a new one!
This is the poster for our 2006 summer show, designed by the wonderfully talented Laura O’Brien. I am in love with this poster.
Thanks, Laura, for giving Sketch22 such a fantastic poster.

The Sketch Cull

The problem could be worse.  We could be in a situation where we don’t have enough material to create a good Sketch22 show.  But we do.  In fact, we have about 25 minutes more material than we need. 
I think we all knew weeks ago that we had too much material scheduled into our summer show.  But we were, I think, denying that reality until such a time that we got fairly consistent run times for all the sketches, hoping beyond hope that somehow we could slow time (or would it be speed time up) in order to get everything into the show.
Last night, we finally got those run times and sure enough, we’re about 25 minutes too long.
And that’s 25 minutes too long for a show that will end up about 15 minutes longer than we’d like it to be.  It’s always a delicate balance, trying to cram as much material into a show, and balance that with the audience’s ability to continue laughing.  I think comedy shows (good comedy shows) run the risk of tiring the audience out by laughing if the show is too long.  We always want to make our show end at that perfect, magic time when the audience is just starting to exhaust their laughter, but still happy enough to think they got major value for their dollars.

So, now, tonight, we have to get together and try to cut 25 minutes of material out of the show.  That means feelings are likely to be hurt as sketches are (unfairly) ranked against each others in terms of how funny we think they are, or how well they fit in with the rest of the show.  There will likely be some huffing and puffing and raised voices as the evening undoubtedly turns into a discussion of what exactly is comedy, and how certain sketches don’t blah blah blah.

Not looking forward to it.  All of the sketches are great in their own way, in my opinion, and it’s going to be like killing babies when we decide some have to be cut.

But, some have to be cut.

Here we go…