wil anderson

More and more I find myself loving stand up comedy. The latest gig I checked out (last week) was Wil Anderson's A Work in Progress. Each year before he tours he does a series of small shows to try out and play with his new material. I love these shows. This guy is not just funny; he also hosted a really popular TV show called The Glass House ~ excellent ~ so he's very well known and he can (and does) sell out really big shows, yet there am I at the WIP show each year seeing him perform five feet in front of me, in a venue that holds around two hundred people. Each performance is different. He covers basically the same territory, but the tangents tend to be different. And how do I know this?

Sky: That was great!
chosha: I know! I feel like I could just turn around and go back for the 9pm show.
Sky: [wide-eyed and excited] Do you wanna??!!
chosha: Sure. Let's see if there are any tickets left.
[We enquire.]
Couple at counter: Actually, we have to leave suddenly and we were just asking if there was anything we could do to recoup our ticket price...do you want to buy our tickets?
chosha and Sky: [thinking: how freaking written in the stars was that?!] Hell yeah, but if we're paying cash we need to run to an ATM first.
Couple at counter: No problem.
chosha [to Sky]: Okay but we really have to run, because I've been to four of his shows now and I know exactly what joke he's going to use to give us crap if we go in late!**
Ticket seller: [laughing] Just hurry and I'll ask Wil to wait a few more minutes.

And off we ran to the nearest ATM (about a block away) and back, bought the only available tickets and slipped into the audience. Wil did wait till we arrived and the second show was just as awesome. Yah!

This is the third year he's done the WIP show and the third year I've seen it. A lot of his comedy is social comment and political satire, but he also tackles religion and a little observational humour on life in general. So imagine my surprise when the guy comes out and does almost an entire two hour show on love, relationships and the end of his seven year romance with the love of his life (so far), Amy. The show was hilarious, but it was also poignant and heartfelt. I was in the front row and there were times when he looked right into my eyes and said something, and it was like the comedy show was paused for a moment and all I wanted to do in that moment was give him a hug. One of the friends I went with expressed exactly the same feeling about it the next day at work.

I really admire the honesty and courage it takes to do material like that. Even more impressive is that he managed to talk about someone who completely broke his heart without shredding her or encouraging us to think ill of her even once. I found out a lot about dealing with pain through comedy the first time I listened to Julia Sweeney's God Said 'Ha' show. It's her retelling of the most terrible year of her life ~ the year when both she and her brother contracted cancer. The facts of that year are heart-breaking, but the show is fantastic and very funny.

Even though cancer and love lost are quite different challenges, they're both hard to deal with emotionally, and to be able to take hard times and find the humour in them (as opposed to being defeated by them) is an amazing strength. Because in the process of doing so, you have to not only face your feelings, but be willing to reveal them in all their vulnerability and embarrassment and whatever else those experiences make us feel, to an audience who are then (hopefully) going to laugh about them. But I think when comedians do this, they tap into something that is very human and vulnerable in the audience as well as themselves. I'm sure that anyone battling cancer would feel cheered and comforted by listening to Sweeney's show. Similarly I felt like I connected with Wil's material in a whole new way last night because some of it was personal and was painful and because most of us knew from personal experience exactly the kind of feelings and scenarios and emotional processes he was describing. I've never had to personally face any illness as serious as cancer, but I've certainly had a couple of broken hearts.

I certainly don't need all this from a comedian in order to laugh or enjoy a show, but going to a show like that delivers quite a different night out than does the usual fare. We went out for a very late dinner afterwards and there was just so much to talk over and think about. It branched out into one of the best conversations I've had in ages. Great night.

To any Aussies reading this, I highly recommend checking to see if there are tickets left in your area for Wil's 'BeWILdered' tour happening March/April. But please don't let my emotional little spiel over-hype the show, because it's great and I don't want anyone to be disappointed because I made it sound life-changing, haha. There's nothing heart-wrenching about his impression of his cat typing letters to the editor or his description of mishearing an adult talking about sex when he was ten and then trying in vain to work out what kind of sexual act a 'hedgehog' could be. This post is more about my reaction to parts of the show than about the show itself. All you have to go there with is the intention to laugh your ass off.

**Hi there. No, it's okay, come on in, sit down. Can I get you anything?...like a @#$%ing watch..."

adventures in frustration

Big storm last Friday. I got home that night around midnight to find the computer fine, but the router/modem completely fried, and having taken the ethernet port out with it. The 320GB external drive I bought a about two weeks ago was also toasted to golden brown uselessness. Sigh. My powerboard claims to have a surge protector, but I'm sure you can understand my skepticism.

Saturday I bought a Belkin model, only to find that they have a protocol problem with exactly one internet provider in Australia: TPG. Guess who I'm with... TPG also has issues with NetGear. These are, naturally, the two most popular brands, sold everywhere. Somewhere around Wednesday I found a computer store that sold NetComm and finally our net is up and running again with newly bought surge protection in place.

To use my dad's favourite reward when I was a kid...a golden nothing to the first person who can guess what the computer guy found in between two little panel things in the computer when he was putting in the new ethernet card!!

triumph may be too strong a word

However, at the Roadshow on Saturday night...

1. Everyone remembered their lines, including the ones they were singing.
2. All props were in place at the right time.
3. The audience laughed, and at the right stuff.
4. They remembered to slow down and project their voices, things they were still not doing even at the dress rehearsal.
5. The disco dancing chorus were awesome!! And the disco ball, lowered by way of a string by yours truly, fell at just the right moment.
6. One of our actors won an award for 'best personality'. The character was a servant who was ever-alert and prepared to save the Prince's skin when things went awry. We just loved him because he was the key player in a number of staged moments - stuff like catching the glass that the hero drops when he springs forward to catch the sister doing the fake swoon...and he managed them all without a single mistake.
7. They all had a good time and came off stage bubbly and pleased with themselves!

Woden ward won the night, and deservedly so. They did this fabulous Bollywood style 'star-crossed lovers' type story, complete with colourful Indian costumes and dancing. My other favourite thing, from a different play, was this kid dressed as a tractor. They'd somehow set up the box around him so that depending on which way he turned the steering wheel, the tractor would either smile or frown ~ so cute! They used a lot of kids in that play and had them dressed as chickens and pigs and all manner of farm animals. I didn't actually watch the play, though, as that was when I was assembling our props ready to go on.

In the end it was a fun thing to do, but I'm glad it's over, because it's taken over my life the last few weeks. Now my main goal is to get some eBay listings up and do a couple of new t-shirt designs. The last is a great way to de-stress, which is weird in a way, because drawing when it's NOT on my drawing tablet has the opposite effect on me. I like drawing ~ I just suck at it ~ and the drawing tablet makes it easier to make things look the way I want them to look.

roadshow countdown

Two days till the performance and I am quietly flipping out on the inside, which calming running lines with nervous people on the outside. I always seem to have an armful of props, whether I'm at rehearsal or not, and I still have to make a big pretend fairytale book for our narrator kid to read from...argh! I'm actually starting to enjoy it a lot, but I'm also living on toast and getting about 4 hours sleep a night.

Someone asked for the song lyrics. Here they are. The situation is that Sarah has just faked tripping so she can fall into Williams arms and say things like, 'oh you're so strong!' while Brittany (I didn't choose the names), Mary's other evil sister, is telling Mary, 'oh dear, it looks like you've lost your date'. Mary is devastated, throws her shoe at William (little Cinderella moment there) and storms off to the end of the stage so the audience can see her cry. William drops Sarah (very funny) and tries to think of some way to explain. His trusty servant, James, appears with a CD, and it's game on for apologetic beaus. You also need to know that William is being played in an over the top posh British type and hammed up to the nines in the process, which is why his lines in the song are so ridiculous - they sound right in his mock-upper crust accent.

To the tune of 'I Will Survive' by Gloria Gaynor

William: I know that what you just saw didn't look so good.
Made you think I hadn't acted quite the way I should.
But you have to know that you're the only one that I adore.

Mary: I should have known.
You've never let me down before.

Brittany: Oh William, please!
Don't give us that.
You had your arms around our sister soon as Mary turned her back!

Mary: Don't worry dear, I know the truth.
And you two better understand,
In all future conversations, talk directly to the hand.

Chorus (every else on stage except these four) bursts into big disco dance moves as they sing (a disco ball descends from the ceiling, hit by a spotlight):
And just like that.
Their plot's revealed.
Brittany and Sarah
Couldn't keep their jealousy concealed.

Sarah: I still don't understand what she sees in that guy!

Mary: His heart is pure.
And he's a really funny guy.

William: Oh no, not I.
You're much too kind!
Oh as long as I have you my dear
I'll always wear a smile.

Mary: They tried to make me love you less.
But I'll always love you best.

Sarah: (sob) I'm gonna cry!

Brittany: And so am I!

Chorus: Hey, hey. (They've been moving subtley while the others sang, but now burst back into big disco moves as they dance in formation around William and Mary as he returns her shoe (using James as a stool for her to sit on) and they embrace.

We didn't go for a second verse, for time reasons. I know the lyrics are a little corny, but trust me, that makes them fit right into the play as a whole.

roadshow update

Last Wednesday we finally had a rehearsal and a proper shamozal it was, too, at least at first. A woman who has, apparently, a lot of experience in youth productions came along to offer advice. What actually happened is that she contradicted the director loudly about half a dozen times in two hours. Which is not to say that all of her points were bad, but her way of doing it undermines him. Still, we assigned all the parts, we had two decent run-throughs, and the kids are committed to two nights of rehearsal a week, so we got there in the end.

Because of the short time frame and the fact that they are already all free one night a week (the night they have their regular youth activity) the roadshow has basically become a youth play. Which is fine. It's a good experience for them and at this point I think we have to go with whatever might work in a few weeks. Normally I love being on the acting side of things, but this time I'm totally okay with just being in the background. I've defined my own role as getting needed props together and helping the youth to run lines, plus one other thing I'm very excited about, which is writing some lyrics for 'the big number' in the middle. I was going to write an original tune, but that takes a lot longer, so I'm putting new lyrics to 'I Will Survive' instead. It starts slow, which is good because the song starts as an apology (storywise), but then will build into a huge disco number that the whole cast can join into. Looks good in my head, anyway. :) I wonder if I can get hold of a disco ball...

T minus two weeks and counting.

roadshow

I've just been enlisted to help run the upcoming roadshow. Roadshow, for the non-LDS church members reading this, is a play challenge that happens (in our neck of the church woods) every two or three years. Each ward submits and performs a play, usually involving at least some singing and dancing, on a given theme. Most of the great roadshows I've seen over the years could be described as a cross between a comedy skit and a pantomime. The plays are all performed on the same night and are judged in various categories. Back when people didn't have to sell their firstborn child to afford petrol, the roadshows actually travelled around from audience to audience in the various chapels in the area, hence the name.

Here's the fun part. For various reasons, our ward didn't get started on its roadshow until this week. I in fact spent tonight with two other people (including the original author) turning the submitted script from a story outline with basic dialogue into a workable (and funnier) script. We have not yet assembled a cast. And the roadshows are due to be performed on July 7.

Gonna be an interesting four weeks...

soy beans and strawberry pocky for everyone!

The international culture night was a huge success - I reckon about 300 people turned up. There were booths for Australia, Greece, the Phillipines, Scotland, England, Samoa, Tonga, China, maybe one or two more I can't remember, and of course Japan. We had to provide some kind of food for people to sample. I had edamame, wasabi peas and strawberry Pocky. And consequently spent roughly half my time in the booth explaining that you don't eat the pods of the edamame and showing people how to squeeze the beans out, and the other half stopping kids from coming back to take Pocky again and again. One Samoan girl was relentless. I told her she had to try the edamame before she had another Pocky stick, and the next time she came back she ate about nine of the edamame. :)


I didn't get a lot of time away from the booth to check things out, the people helping having decided that 'helping' meant putting up a few posters and then spending the rest of the evening with their friends and leaving me to it. But I did get to try treacle tart, something that I'd never had but which was often mentioned in the British boarding school books I used to read when I was a kid. Quite yummy.

There was also almost two hours of entertainment ~ singing, dancing, bagpipe and fiddle playing, and one guy read a bush ballad. I wish I could have done some Japanese drumming but I have no way to get hold of a drum here. It only occurred to me halfway through the night that I could have done a booth and even maybe a song for my own birthplace, Barbados. Maybe next time. We ended the night with everyone singing, "I am Australian." The chorus goes:

We are one, but we are many.
And from all the lands of the Earth we come.
We share a dream and sing with one voice,
I am, you are, we are Australian.

Quite stirring with 300 people singing. Strangely the chorus seems all about multi-cultural Australia/migrants, but the verses only mention the Aboriginal people and the British convicts/settlers. Nice tune though.

escaping my to-do list

My to-do list for the next couple of weeks:

Tonight: 90 min activity for 8-11 year-olds
Saturday: garage sale (yard sale) at my house (lots of stuff to get togther)
Next week: friends over for dinner (they just moved here from Sydney) and prbably babysitting their kids one day that week, too
Every day until it's done: list a LOT of items on eBay
Soon: first of four "Harry Potter film festival" nights between now and when the new film comes out.
31st Mar: Japan display at the big International Culture festival at church (which the two people who were helping me have dropped out on...hmmm)
By Monday: Finish two entries in the monthly challenge at my local scrapbooking store (I'd put this aside, but the challenge packs go like wildfire - to not enter after getting them would be so rude)

My list of escapist behaviours used while trying to live in denial of the above list:

- finishing all three 'books' on Bookworm Adventures (spelling game (no really) recent gift - loving it!)
- watching the first series of Biggest Loser Australia, series 1 & 2 of Tru Calling, every available episode so far of Heroes and series 2 & 3 of Beauty & the Geek
- sleeping my whole Saturday away
- trying out my new TV (see previous post)

You're probably wondering why I haven't blogged lately - it being such a good time-waster for people ignoring their to-do list. I think maybe it just feels too productive at the moment...hmmm.