Del Close Marathon XI - Pre-Festival 'Rule of Threes'
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 7:30AM  |
We're not sure what's more surprising: That Del Close Marathon XI is already here again, or that Del Close Marathon is, in fact, 11 years old. How did that happen? We don't know.
What we do know is that improv teams are coming to New York from as far away as Hawaii and Finland (Fun fact: The prime minister of Finland is Matti Vanhanen). And with so many teams on the docket, a whole lotta improv gets overlooked.
As a result, The Apiary is taking a slightly different tack with this year's "Pre-Festival Rule of Threes." We scrolled through the list of "away" teams, and a few teams scheduled to play at "less convenient" hours, and we asked them these three questions:
1. Where does your team name come from?
2. Describe one of your most memorable shows and/or scenes.
3. Which DCM show are you most excited to see?
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Ulla Virtanen (Team Finland: VSOP | Web site)
1) When talking about cognacs, VSOP really stands for Very Special Old Pale. And we feel that it pretty much describes us as well. Being the only Harold team in Finland, we feel...well, special. And we're also somewhat old and typically Scandinavian pale for sure.
2) Maybe the first time we performed bilingually at the School Night at UCB... very random and sort of scary thing to do. VSOP visited New York last March, and thanks to the wonderful Justin Purnell, we got the chance to try out the Harold with mixing two languages. Trying to keep the scenes going while trying to make the Finnish parts understandable and also remember the words in English...and most of us had never performed in English. A lot of sweat, I tell you. But so much fun! And the audience was very supportive and fun.
3) The Stepfathers.
Harlequin | Web site
1) When we were first cast the theater just referred to us as "Team Green" as each team was given a random color as a name. We then started playing around with green-themed names and discovered that 'Harlequin' happened to be a shade of green. Harlequin is also an old school name for a clown/jester so the name seemed to fit. Plus it is also the name of a brand of romance novels and who doesn't love those!?
2) Harlequin has had so many memorable moments but there was an instance where we all just started singing and dancing to Age Of Aquarius. Anal probing also seems to come up in a number of our scenes.
3) The DCM show we are most excited for is probably our own. We will have donuts!
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Seth Lind (Thank You, Robot | Web site)
1) During a practice there was a scene in a skybox at a sports game, where robots served hors d'oeuvres. Someone on our team said "thank you, robot." Afterward everyone agreed that should be our team name.
2) About six months, Thank You, Robot played an Action Pals show at The Village Lantern. We had had a kind of crappy show the night before, but now we were feeling loose. At one point Chris Scott grabbed a plate of penne pasta from an audience member, and he and I started hand-feeding it to each other during a scene where we were watching an Anime while tripping on acid. I ate a napkin. The pasta appeared in most subsequent scenes. There were also live mics and we messed with each other by doing interior monologues. A great night of not giving a shit and using the whole buffalo.
3) The Straight Men. 4AM Saturday at UCB. The only definite sure failure of the DCM is these guys trying not to be funny.
Brian Perry (Rondo | Web site)
1) In name brainstorming desperation we turned to anagrams and somehow ended up with "A Hot Rondo." Concerned that people would assume it was some kind of dirty sex move, we shortened it just to Rondo which we realized fit really well for a couple of reasons. Firstly, a Rondo is a musical form where the principal theme is repeated several times. Secondly, Rajon Rondo is a player for the Celtics who came into his own when we started doing shows. The name covers our two main demographics -- NBA fans and music nerds.
2) It's going back quite a ways, but in one of our shows we had a scene where we all started singing the Bridal Chorus to salute a friend who was getting married. As the song went on we started singing it more aggressively and turned in on the soon to be married friend, eventually ending up with an orchestrated curb stomping as made famous in American History X. After the scene the energy in the room was split down the middle - some thought the scene was hilarious while others were noticeably appalled by what just went on. Tough to forget something like that.
3) We're really excited to see our ImprovBoston Harold night cohorts Marjean perform on Friday. And as fans of both Dave Matthews Band and Andrew Dice Clay we're looking forward to Satellites and D2: Return of the Dicemen.
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Deborah Tarica (Fancy Schmancy)
1) Fancy Schmancy got its name from hours and hours of research, rational discussions and arguing. Ultimately, it just came to us, and the second it was suggested, we knew that was our name. Also, we were very close to being named "Vagina Butts and the Backdoor Sluts," but in the end we decided against it because it was too long. That was the ONLY problem with that name.
2) We recently did a show in Iowa for an audience that ranged in age from 5 to 90, who were not well versed in long-form improv. Eventually they got on board with what we were doing and realized it was okay to laugh at bears who watch "The Gilmore Girls," and penises who engage in mundane conversations. It ended up being one of our best shows!
3) Last year, Them Do This from UCB-LA and Mission Improvable were some of my favorites, so I'm looking forward to seeing them again. I'm also excited to see: To Catch A Predator: Improv Edition, Volume 3, Death By Roo Roo, the NY Harold teams and Convoy!
Rick Andrews (Suspicious of Whistlers | Web site)
1) Like all great team names, it comes from a legendary conversation between our founding forefathers and a cartoon character on a liquor label.
2) The suggestion was "Tiny Dancer" and it ended with everyone hugging. Doesn't that sound nice? It was. There was some laughter in between those points, too.
3) Code Duello.
Benjamin Kennedy (Thursdays With Ryan)
1) The name Thursdays with Ryan came from funny misunderstanding in a rehearsal. We were working on musical improv and the music director stopped a scene that Anthony was in and asked him his name. She waned to know his real name but he thought she was asking for the background story to the character he was playing. So he said his name was Ryan. From that moment on, the music director called him Ryan. We all had a good chuckle over it and Thursdays with Ryan was created.
2) A scene that sticks out for me involved Nick, Anne and myself. Nick had brought a puppet with him that night and we thought it wold be fun to play around with it. The scene ended up in a restaurant with Nick and I just sitting at our table enjoying food. And at one point, Anne walked on with "Frank" and started having some type of lover's quarrel in which she does all the talking. The scene ended when Nick quietly walked over, took "Frank" and sat with us. Anne's reaction of "Frank" leaving her was priceless.
3) I'm always excited to see Improvised Shakespeare. They're a funny group of guys who put on one hell of a show. What they do is truly impressive and fun to watch.
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Illegal Refill | Web site
1) We're a very playful team and our relationships with each other all started in college. The petty mischievousness of refilling up your soda cup over and over again pretty much sums up who we are.
2) We just had a show with a laid-back Orangina-loving priest, inappropriately placed ping-pong, an elephant with a duck's bill, and teachers who give pets as rewards for excellent schoolwork. We also did a camp scene where a leader was taking a camper snipe hunting. This is funny on a kind of meta-level, since several of the members in our group missed the reference and wholeheartedly believed that a snipe was a real animal and played accordingly.
3) Mirra: Code Duello. Maybe this time Burr won't kill Hamilton! Alexis: Bassprov. They always deliver. Amie: I Eat Pandas because I wish I could sing and Statues of Liberty.
Ian Stroud (Bosh Flimshaw)
1) The team name Bosh Flimshaw comes from an episode of The Simpsons (Last Exit to Springfield, Season 4 Episode 17). Mr. Burns's Grandfather, in his olde tyme rhetoric, cries out "Bosh! Flimshaw!" in contention to the recommendation that he allow union workers in his atom factory.
2) Our most memorable show happened at the beginning of the last school year, for roughly 1,800 new freshmen. Before this, the most people we had performed for was about 150. We had a lot of fun with them, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy the show!
3) We most excited to see all of the late night shows, specifically "Prospectors' Make 'em Up Jamboree."
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Matthew Love (The Wilhelm | Web site)
1) It's a sound editor joke. A minor character in a 1953 movie "The Charge at Feather River" called Wilhelm gets shot in the leg with an arrow and he screams. Some sound guy liked the scream, so he used it for a different movie. It snowballed from there. The scream is in all your favorite movies where people die -- e.g. all the "Star Wars" movies. It's also miraculously in the middle of a Judy Garland musical. It's easy to miss if you don't know it; if you know it, you'll always hear it.
2) We had a pretty great one a few months ago on a PIT Wednesday; Matt Donnelly was in town from Vegas and he sat in with us. I don't really even remember the characters or scenarios, really, we just built a really solid number of worlds that started colliding and colliding, everyone was overflowing with ideas and when we ran at the end, we were on fire. The energy in the room kept rising and the audience was exploding along with us. Really fun.
3) Personally, I am amped for some Scheer/McBrayer, some Code:Duello, and I always like to take in a few of those early morning drunky disaster shows, as well.
WhipSuit | Web site
1) A botched turn at the warm-up game "Electric Factory" that became an in-joke in another group we were both in.
2) We've always used whatever space we're in as fully as we can, so last November, when presented with an enormous traditional theatre stage, we quickly found a game where Rick was forced to run back and forth to various points on stage, he must have run a full mile! The audience absolutely loved it.
3) Cubby loves the really crazy stuff that starts around 3AM, and Rick is a big supporter of our Philly compatriots, so he's looking forward to seeing how performing at the DCM boots their game.
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Jordan Hirsch (JINX)
1) An elaborate process involving spreadsheets and probably 40+ emails. We had not yet achieved group mind...
2) Our first year at the Chicago Improv Festival, we did a show involving a Superbowl party, wife swapping and bear masks. It was hands-down one of the best shows we've ever done, and to have that happen at CIF was awesome. Also, JINX includes a real-life married couple, and at one point in the show, they made out. In the discussions about the fest online, someone who'd seen the show gave us a shout-out for "the most realistic stage kiss" he'd ever seen in an improv show.
3) Identity Theft, featuring JINX alum Josh Patten and Washington Improv Theater alum Dan Hodapp.
Jeff Kinsler (Saltine Warrior | Web site)
1) We're based in Syracuse, N.Y. There's a story that dates back to the early 1900s, about the discovery of an ancient Indian chief's remains that were supposedly unearthed during some excavation at the Syracuse University campus. The Indian chief became known as the Saltine Warrior (Syracuse is referred to as the "Salt City"). But, it was later learned that the whole thing turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by one of the fraternities. As cool as all that shit is ... our name has nothing what-so-ever to do with that story. We just like crackers. A lot.
2) One scene that really stands out for me was when Joe (Blum) and Andy (Friedson) were heightening a relationship between two brothers in the second beat. It was established earlier that one brother was highly favored over the other by the parents. In the second beat, they were two kids on Christmas morning, secretly going through their presents before the parents woke up. Among Joe's many wonderful presents, he'd gotten an "X-Box 720" (which was two X-Box 360's taped together). Andy's single present was a gift wrapped Tic-Tac. Stand-out line: when Andy goes to eat his "present" while they're talking and Joe stops him saying, "Don't do that ... you'll have nothing to open later!"
3) Really hard to pick ~one~ show out of sooo many really awesome teams to see. I've heard that Baby Wants Candy is not to be missed, so we want to check them out. And then, there's the Upright Citizen's Brigade doing ASSSSCAT 3000 on Sunday night. How can you ~not~ go to that?
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Big, Fat & Stealthy | Web site
1) We had a hard time in the beginning coming up with a name. We had a running joke that we were going to call ourselves "Why Is It Wet?" but that was just for laughs and would be a hard name to market. Member Christopher Moore was talking about how he had an overly obese supervisor who would always show up at a moments notice without you knowing. Like she had some type of ninja abilities to be able to sneak around despite her weight. He described her as being "Big, Fat and Stealthy." And the rest was history.
2) Probably our most memorable show was when member Travis Pomeroy had to miss one of our performances. Because we still wanted to include him in the show, we made a cardboard cut-out of him. He recorded lines of dialogue like he was responding to someone's offers. Throughout the show, someone would bring the cut-out into a scene and the voicebooth would have him respond with his pre-recorded dialogue. It made for a very hilarious show.
3) We have several we'd love to see such as I Eat Pandas, Delta Force 2: Operation Stronghold, Scheer-McBrayer, Counter Productive Lover, Improvised Shakespeare, Reuben Williams Attacks, Death by Roo Roo, Opening Night: The Improvised Musical.
Prescott Gadd (Karate Van)
1) While in Raleigh for an improv festival, our team was really jonesing for some late night food. A very tangential acquaintance showed up at the theater in an actual karate van (a van decorated in karate decals promoting karate classes). We all piled in, and the van ended up breaking down on the uphill portion of a freeway. We had to push the thing into a parking lot while dodging traffic.
2) An old favorite scene involved a lonely subway worker who has to keep kicking the homeless off the subway. In each callback, the relationship became more and more intimate to the point that the homeless were inviting the worker to sit on their lap to console him.
3) Really excited to see the all-girl group Boner Petite on Saturday afternoon.
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Jose Gonzalez (Galapagos | Web site)
1) After a long arduous process, including late night-induced joke names, we settled on Galapagos, the name of one Kurt Vonnegut's novels. Between the apocalypse survivor motif in the book and the ideas of adventure, exploration and evolution, it's worked out well over the years. The earliest feedback we heard, though, was: "It sounds like you're a bunch of Mexicans!"
2) Taking the suggestion of "Ball Hair" and turning plucking in the opening into "Carol of the Bells." Mark Jordan's last show in Phoenix with Galapagos before moving off to L.A. HGTV's "Over Your Head." It was a sendoff filled with plenty of mayhem, making it pitch-perfect. The time a century-old piano was killed on stage
3) SCRAM! is at the top of the list. Joe Bill is amazing and Jill Bernard is one of the best performers we've ever seen. Lazy Man was tremendous last year and the Mother reunion are can't-misses. We're also looking forward to Virgin Daiquiri, C,C & C Improv Factory, UCBW, all the groups from Austin (especially Midnight Society and Murphy), and DC Pierson's party-rocking jams.
Christine Nangle (The Bishop)
1) We were all at McManus deciding on a team name, and we were about to choose "Astroboss" when Jim Santangeli came over, looked at the list, and informed us that we should be "The Bishop" instead. Santangeli spoke; we listened.
2) I actually polled my team for this, and we all really enjoyed a recent Harold Night where we put our second beats into a monoscene-Thanksgiving dinner. Jessica Stickles was a grandma who wanted to storm out of the room without help from anyone but she couldn't walk. So, we just had to keep moving the chairs around the stage so she could move from chair to chair in order to leave. Of course this was all happening while two people were having sex under the table and Dan Gurewitch was getting advice from his imaginary friend, Skull Bear.
3) I have two answers for that -- I actually wrote a spank show that is happening this Thursday at UCB right as all the DCM madness starts. I've been so focused on my show that each time I remember that once I get through it, it's DCM! and I get excited all over again. Believe it or not, I've never seen the SWARM…I need to make that happen. And Cosby-prov!
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