Tag Archives: Sketch 22

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.

Looks like our Sketch 22 website is up and running.  Haven’t looked around it yet, so I can’t guarantee it’s all smooth as silk, but there are a few treats available at least.

Go have a look:

www.sketch22.ca

Sketch 22 is in the process of creating something (a couple of somethings, actually)  other than a sketch comedy theatre show for this summer (although we’re currently writing sketches for that, too).  For fear of spoiling the possibility of it coming to fruition, I’ll not say anything further on what it (they) is (are).
One of the elements, though, required me to record some Moe Gorman songs.  For those who don’t know, Moe is a character I created for last summer’s show.  He’s a fictitious descendant of the real Larry Gorman who was a 19th century PEI poet and songwriter, who, as Moe says "wrote and sang songs about them what pissed him off." 
Moe has not one bit of poetic or singing talent, but nonetheless feels the urge to carry on the Gorman tradition of creating songs about the people who done him wrong. Despite his lack of talent or ability, he does have oodles and oodles of passion and belief in what he’s singing, and in that, I suppose, lies his appeal.
No matter how slight the slight to him, Moe is likely to write a song about it.  Last summer for Sketch 22, Moe hocked his CD Moe Gorman – Songs of Slander and Libel and sang a couple of the songs that were on this (non-existent) CD.
Well, some of his songs are now recorded and will soon be available for public ?enjoyment?.
Even though I am not a great (or all that good) singer, it’s difficult to sing songs that are purposefully tuneless.  It’s even more difficult when the songs are such poorly crafted works.  Structurally speaking, the lyrics are abysmal, with horrible run-on sentences and absolutley nothing to hitch a melody to.

Here are the titles of the songs I recorded Monday night:
Phillip Arsenault’s A Real Arsehole
I’m Glad She’s Dead
Dan Simmons Got A Real Small Dick (And He Don’t Know How To Use It)
First Time I Stepped Foot On This Campus In Twelve Years
Keep The Thirty Bucks
(Ya Stupid) Snowplow Operator
Rubber Sheets
A Partial List of The Affairs I Know About

Here are the lyrics to my personal favourite Moe Gorman song:
I’m Glad She’s Dead
Sybil Monroe never gave me the time of day when we was going to school
She thought she was too good for me, and would laugh at me clothes.
Well, the last laugh’s on her,
‘Cause now she’s dead.
And I’m glad.
Oh yes, I’m glad she’s dead, oh yeah.
I’m glad her poor old mother outlived her.
And her stuck up friends, like Gladys Kennedy, and that fat one, Sharlene O’Connor
Crying their tears and smudging up their makeup at the funeral
Can go to Hell too.

Stay tuned for future updates on how you can get a little Moe into your world.