One Plus One Equals Three

My last Amazon order just came in, and I am so excited.

I got this book after an e-mail about it was forwarded to me...and I didn't even expect it to come in a handy, pocket-sized paperback binding!

And then, of course, there's the Drowsy Chaperone cast recording with extra-cheeky liner notes. I also finally got my very own copy of Jeffrey for six bucks.

Most importantly, I have been watching my new DVDs of "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and the Brain"; if anything, they have pretty much cleared up any speculation as to whether my short attention span was more nurture than nature.

Or, at least, why the words "One time, okay see, one time, Randy Beaman..." have permanently entered my vernacular alongside "Whaaaat?" and "Oh, hellooo."

Let's see: What should I note here? Oh yeah, the musical parodies. Here is a show I am finally able to fully appreciate, because it works on so many levels. I know a lot of people remember "Pinky" over "Animaniacs," but, screw it man! I liked the Warners better: I know Brain was wholly based on Orson Welles - and I was never able to truly adore the infamous "Yes, Always" episode until I was in college and heard that bootleg tape of Orson cursing out the people behind the booth of his frozen food commercial voiceover, when I decided to write my sophomore year film term paper on Welles- but never has there been a more perfect match between character, design, and voice talent than the Warner Brothers and their lethally cute Warner Sister, Dot. You've got Wakko, who is very much clearly based on Ringo Starr; Dot, whose voice is squeaky-cute but not-quite-annoying-enough to match her penchant for imitating Keane paintings and Mary Tyler Moore; and, my favorite, Yakko, who possesses one of those impossibly high tenor belts that don't ever seem to exist in this universe.

Sure, there's enough mindless violence and uncanny jokes to please the underage set. You want adult references? I counted Sweeney Todd, Apocalypse Now, Persona, The Seventh Seal, The Day the Clown Cried, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Phyllis Diller, Urkel, Swedish neutrality, Ray Charles, Gilbert and Sullivan, Termite Terrace, The Doors, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, Meadowlark Lemon, Jonny Quest, Camelot, "Wayne's World," George Burns, Baryshnikov's defection from Communist Russia, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Perry Como, Brian's Song, Bob Hope, and Burns and Schreiber, among many others.

And the fact that there is "Chicken Boo" fan fiction out there definitely raises speculation of a much different nature.

What I'm especially digging about this set are the Broadway parodies: Not just the fact that nearly all the characters, especially the Warners, can very well break into musical numbers at the drop of a hat. They did musical episodes that were flat-out-freakin' hilarious. It seems as if any character on the show can fit into a musical theatre idiom. Par example: As excited as I am that I finally "get" "Goodfeathers," I'm pretty jazzed that I finally know what "La Behemoth" starring the Hip Hippos is actually supposed to be a parody of, too.

Lest we forget "Mouse of La Mancha," which parodies the musical and the awful movie adaptation to a T, and featuring my new favorite Pinky callback ever: "I think so, Brain, but why would Sophia Loren do a musical?"

My old favorite, in case you were wondering, was - now and forever - "I think so, Brain, but, me and Pippi Longstocking? What would the kids look like?"

Leave it to "Animaniacs" to do an entire cartoon ("H.M.S. Wakko") that uses pretty much the exact score of The Pirates of Penzance to explain why cartoon characters pull random objects out of the air. Or "West Side Pigeons," with the Goodfeathers doing West Side Story, complete with the "T'kiyah" opening montage and a Ray Liotta voiceover. And how about the cartoon that finally got me to appreciate the very first Broadway show I ever saw (even though I probably fell asleep during it!), "Les Miseranimals."

I feel like I remember that better than the actual show Les Miserables. Is that so wrong? Is it a crime? I can't even think of "Master of the House" anymore without thinking of "Bitten in the Butt." I thought, to this day, that Inspector Javert's name was actually Camembert. No joke, I had to re-listen to "Recitative" from Forbidden Broadway Volume 2 just to remember what the actual plot of the show is. I cannot tell you what "Dig Down, Dig Deep, Les Miseranimals" is supposed to be a parody of, even though I can hum the frickin' tune.

I can't believe I even remember the Rita songs. And I think I know why: Rita the Cat was, for better or for worse, my very first highly impressionable exposure to Bernadette Peters. Until I was old enough to see Pennies from Heaven, I never once made that elusive connection to "At the end of the road is the city of light," and Lily St. Regis. Meanwhile, the very first time I saw Rain Man was traumatizing because every time Dustin Hoffman spoke, I kept laughing my ass off just thinking about Runt the Dog.

This will definitely tide me over until they release the inevitable "Citizen Brain" episode on the next round of DVDs.

You know, all of this this madness doesn't have to end here...What about "Pigeons on the Roof"? Hey. Spielberg! Bring on "Tiny Toon Adventures!" I happen to think "Grandma's Dead" is one of the funniest cartoons ever made: Way up there with "I Like to Singa!"

Let's forget that "Pinky, Elmyra, and The Brain" ever happened.

Exit, Right

You ever buy a CD because you've only heard one of the songs, and you really like it...naively thinking all of the other songs will be as good as, if not better than the one song? You know when you buy a CD for one song you like, hoping that one song will be worth the $17.99 investment - not including the tax - and the one song you like is the only decent song on the CD because the rest of them are crap and you can't return it?

I'm sorry. I didn't like Songs from an Unmade Bed. I bought the CD because I really, really liked one song, foolishly hoping it would be a good indicator. It wasn't. This was particularly evident tonight when I was rearranging my nightstand, and the jewel case for Unmade Bed was at the very, very bottom of the pile, just below Cyndi Lauper's The Body Acoustic.

Typically, I do not put a lot of thought into the CDs I am going to buy. But I got a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records - and, seriously, who am I to resist a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records? And there was this great song that came on...a song called "Perfect, Finite," that was just deliriously beautiful. Exactly the kind of song you'd want to hear on a New York morning in the east side as you're taking a shower, just before you head off to the soul-sucking temp day job.

If only...If only I didn't know what this show was. I shouldn't have bought the freakin' CD, because I already had the one good song on CD. But, I guess you couldn't blame me. It's a fairly innocuous song, with a bouncy melody and ambiguously haunting lyrics. If anyone had told me this was not a good new band, or some innovative musical, but instead was a "Theatrical Song Cycle" about some Paul Scheer-lookin' dude whining about how his boyfriends never put out sexually, they would have spared me the torture of actually listening to this horrible CD.

The guy who sings this? He sounds like valium. It's not that he sounds like his vocal cords were actually injected with the drug; it's really more like his voice is valium. I don't know what he's going for, or if he's trying to involve himself more with the lyrics than the music...which I guess is pretty understandable. After all, the songs were written by many, many, many people. No less than eighteen composers are credited with the music. The lyrics are all by the same poet. They all contain the same klunky Borscht Belt jokes and kinky, pseudo-intellectual word play pertaining to the laffs involved with faulty gay sex ("Play a part in romantic scenes/Not induced by pharmaceutical means..."). This poet clearly has ideas ("Oh, to be stupid again./Being gripped by a boyish yen..."). Ideas that are all set within the same meter and scansion and near-perfect ha-ha-this-is-clever post-Sondheim rhymes and arcane references even Zelig-era Woody would have to look up ("Screw being older and quote-unquote wiser/Love was once a warm and gushing geyser/That's now about as warm as 'Die Winterreise'). I guess he was just too lazy to set any of them to a tune. Or a beat. Or snazzy choreography.

I should mention that the three above quotes are all from the same song. And it just goes on and on and on and tries my patience.

I can't fathom whose brilliant idea this thing was, or how anyone ever thought it was worth investing their money in; I mean, reading the liner notes? Well, this is the entire plot: Some dude sits in a bed and whines about his crappy sex life, and how he isn't getting any, and how otherwise his life is filled with such nauseating lyrical imagery as "grappling with a block of brie" until he opens the door to his apartment and sees fake snow.

That's it.

And the guy who sings everything? He can't even make a song called "I Wanna Go Out Tonight" sound fun. Where's the enjoyment in this? Are we supposed to be feeling this dude's pain? I mean, I don't discredit his ability as a singer. I think he was in Mamma Mia! or something, which I really can't comprehend, because a show like that requires being happy and singing loud and actually having energy. This guy doesn't even get excited about being on vacation in Italy! And do you want to know why?

Because he never leaves his fucking bed! Jesus! It's like, they might as well have called it "Rose Louise's boring life of unemployment: The Conceptual Theatre Piece."

Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it is me after all. Maybe I just don't "get" conceptual song cycles. Maybe I'm too much of a snob to actually see off-Broadway plays in the Village. Maybe I'm just being naive and have absolutely no understanding of the painstaking craft that goes into the creation of a musical theatre piece. Maybe I just don't want to live in a society where "Sherry Baby" is considered a showtune.

Or maybe anything where the entire band consists of a piano and a cello with no percussion and everyone on the stage is wearing white is enough to drive me batty up a wall.

Blech!

Life With Harold

The Upright Citizens Brigade is a school. It is a theatre, a training center, a community...and yet, it is merely the salad bar at the vast homestyle buffet of improvisational comedy that exists today.

This is a conclusion I came to this weekend during the Del Close Marathon, a weekend-long celebration of the eponymous improv guru Del Close, and his teachings...most prominently the Harold.

What is the Harold, exactly? It is what the UCB teachers impart on their students. It's the style of Chicago longform improvisation developed by Close and Charna Halpern at ImprovOlympic and, to a lesser extent, Second City. By Level 3, you learn how to do a full Harold, and, in Level 4, you refine it. There's a common perspective shared by UCB students that after Level 2/3/4, everything gets much easier. Then again, everyone has different teachers at different Levels, and different people in different classes. For me, with every subsequent class, there has been another seemingly insurmountable hurdle to overcome. To quote the great Gilda Radner, it's always something.

For the most part, I spent the weekend packed in a dirty, crowded Chelsea basement with many sweaty underground comedy fans - predominantly white heterosexual men - who hadn't showered all weekend, with no air conditioning, so the vibe I got from the marathon was, "The white guys...so many white guys..."

I mean, that's what comedy is: A fraternity? Maybe this is some Dubya-style fuzzy logic creeping in (darn ultra-liberals have gotten to me this weekend), or some good old-fashioned physics, but, to the best of my understanding, if improv is the fraternity, than musical theatre has to be the sorority, as far as the creative arts are concerned.

Growing up in Kansas, there were too many ingenues. And, to me, one of the big inherent turn-offs of musical theatre is the constant categorization. In the worst cases, you're almost stripped of your individuality and pulled right into the chorus: Then you work your way up to a lead, and thus involuntarily forced to decide whether you are an ingenue or a character woman. "Ingenue" meaning "pretty blonde girl in a pink flowered dress," "Character" meaning "fat ethnic." Once I dropped the extra weight (Thank you, Fat Flush and Jenny Craig!), things just got even harder.

This does not apply to comedy. In comedy, there are people - all types, shapes and sizes, from literally all walks of life - who have "it," and people who don't. I have not yet really answered the core question of whether you can learn to actually be funny or not: It's all in the eye of the beholder, and, if it wasn't, the UCB wouldn't be making any money. You can defy type in improv, and the scene and circumstance guides you into becoming whoever or whatever it needs to be. Too often, some white male fratboy who was very popular, somewhere else or in his own mind, will feel this need to constantly make himself the center of attention and basically shoot the Group Mind to Hell.

The Group Mind is another key component of both the Harold and improv in general. It is exactly what it sounds like, and, if you've got some jackass who won't stop putting penis jokes or some bad Paul Lynde impression into the mix, you have to go with it. This is always completely unpredictable, and, in the best improvs, you're flying without a net.

If you're incredibly lucky, improv can become a career. You can make money teaching, coaching, and being gainfully employed in theatre, film, television, or the Internet, but, that rarely happens - least of all to women. It is a nice structure: You train, go through all the levels, and we are made to believe from our teachers that coming out of it builds this amazing confidence and overwhelming clarity that enables you to give near-perfect advice. In retrospect, it seems to make sense; it sounds like upward mobility.

The thing about upward mobility is that it doesn't exist in the creative arts. Coming from a family of Ivy League doctors and lawyers, they seem to believe that the Ideal Career involves moving up. As a doctor, you graduate college, go to medical school, do a residency, and get assigned to your future. Of course, fate throws a wrench into your life, one convention leads to another, which leads to a conversation with an associate who finds out that you're unemployed and need hospital placement, and somehow you find yourself raising a conservative Jewish family right in the middle of Kansas. It's the same thing with law school...you go in for three years, apply for jobs, take the BAR, work for a firm or in the government...and maybe feel compelled to give it up some years down the road, when you have kids and decide to raise a family instead.

At this point, the best thing I can do is keep dreaming and feeling inspired by those performers and writers who can give good advice and just take what they've learned from the Harold, in order to boldly go out into the mainstream and keep doing my own thing. I know it sounds a little corny, but there are some incredibly talented improvisers and groups I got to see this weekend that helped answer a lot of confusion I had just by setting an example.

First up: Baby Wants Candy, probably the best musical improv group out there - or at least the vanguard example for what our still-untitled musical improv practice group aims to accomplish. What BWC does is improvise a Harold-style musical, except they break down the conventional 1st, 2nd, 3rd, et al beats into musical theater terminology. The fact that one of their alumni is going straight from the group to an actual Broadway musical speaks volumes!

The group, led by the inflexibly awesome and rubber-faced Peter Gwinn, who takes the suggestion of a funny title of a musical from the audience, in this case, "George Bush: A User's Manual" (see what I mean about ultra-liberal?) and the resultant songs essentially tell a story that manifests itself through the scene and character work that happens through this initiation. The fact that BWC has a house band, the Yes Band, backing them up, instead of an upright piano, is a huge advantage in and of itself. I'm a huge rock geek, and I tend to look out and see if they're using dual pickups, or what kinds of guitars the guys are playing, or if the bass player uses a pick or his fingers, or if they've got foot pedals connected to the amps.

But I digress...it was much different seeing these guys for the second time, because, around the first time I saw them at the UCB theatre, I was only thinking about taking a musical improv class for shits 'n giggles, knowing I was really scared to death about singing in public for all my improv buddies. Cut to some months later: This changed all that. Now, I was able to watch it with an understanding of what goes into a longform musical. They sort of had a structure, given the patter song, the big opening number, the medley, the big chase scene...And they sure took that one and ran; at one point, Gwinn, as Dubya, ducked behind the piano, played a riff, peeked out from under the bench, and went, "That was me!"

Of course, this was on a Thursday, and we just walked over to the Abingdon to catch the show after musical improv practice. The inarguable highlight of the marathon, for me, was hanging out with Jeff Hiller and John Flynn. I think I spent about an hour talking to them about Gypsy, because no one else would get my June Havoc references.

I've never met Flynn before, so I just blurted out, "I'm such a huge fan of yours!" I think I scared him a bit with that. I told him I loved Dances with Pitchforks, and that he shouldn't worry, because our non-Equity Farmboy #5 went on to do great things, too.

I saw I Eat Pandas (sans friends), and those bitches were on fire! I'm still reeling from how simple it seemed, and, yet, how amazing their musical improv skills were. Considering that BWC had an entire set, while the Pandas got a marathon-mandated half-hour to show their stuff.

What they did was improvise a longform musical based on a single suggestion, as opposed to a title. The suggestion, "cupcake," had the ladies, mmes. Glennis and Eliza, and their gifted male accompanist Travis, doing a series of two-person scenes revolving around the simple story of a girl in love with a guy. The songs mostly erred toward "I Want" songs, and "Philosopy" songs, like one about how cracking an egg and adding flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda makes a cupcake - and that is a metaphor for love.

You know what the Pandas should do? A Back Line. Call me crazy, but I really feel like there should be an improv version of A Chorus Line. Have it take place at Harold Team auditions, with various improvisers doing "I Want" songs about how they got into improv, or why they started taking it in the first place. Mine would probably be "I Can Do that." Maybe "Nothing." And I reached right down to the bottom of my soul...

Anyone Can Whistle

Hello, everybody! My name is Rose! What's yours?

I have a dirty confession to make.

I was an Annie kid.

There. I typed it.

This is a statement I have seriously taken years to come to terms with: In short, when I was a child, I was obsessed with the movie Annie. I wanted to be Annie. I wanted to live in an orphanage, hassle Miss Hannigan, and hang out with Mr. Bundles and Sandy the Dog. Maybe, just maybe, a nice bazillionaire like Daddy Warbucks and the brilliant Ann Reinking would have taken me in, adopted me, put me in a nice dress, and called me his own...saved me from the underlying torture of an orphan's true life. I guess I had somewhat of an orphan-fetishization complex, if you want to get into the semantics of it - my other favorite movies were Oliver and Oliver and Company.

In some ways, this revelation was completely unexpected...and yet, we all saw it coming.

Since we're in such a confessional mode tonight, hello! My name is Louise. I am twenty-three years old, and I am currently attempting to pursue a career in musical theatre.

Let me try to retrace things back to where it all began...

I grew up in a small town in the Bible Belt. Granted, there was nothing much going on there - artistically or otherwise. Add to this the fact that I was a Jew and had to deal with a lot of anti-Semitism throughout my adolescence. I was also a fat, shy kid with braces and huge glasses, and very greasy hair. I suffered through every adolescent stigma you could possibly imagine. In short, I had no outlet for salvation.

Well, there was the Synagogue. But that's beside the point.

And then, we started doing shows at my school. I loved the thrill of performing. I watched movies and T.V. all the time, but there was very little emotional connection to it. And I didn't have much of a social life, so pop culture, in effect, became my life: Movies and T.V. shows and music. By the time I discovered Broadway, I immersed myself in it. Even though I was an all-around good kid who tested at genius-level, I yearned for more. Much more. I couldn't wait 'til I got out and discovered real, true, high culture for myself.

You have to understand that the corn-fed definition of "high culture" is not the same as New York City's, where I live right now: While Lincoln Center creams itself over the creative Renaissance provided by such new-generation composers as Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel. Michael John LaChiusa, and other guys you've never even heard of, we were, and still are, stuck in Rodgers & Hammersteinland. I started out in the local professional theatre doing summer stock that was completely unreflective of what Broadway is today. I mean, Disney and downsizing are in: Every show we had was happy, whitewashed, and completely made use of the actors, singers, dancers, and peerless Triple Threats that the Greater Midwest had to offer in the ensemble. Today, there is no chorus, there is no tapping, there is no real singing, even. For the most part, it's more like screaming.

But there is some salvation left to be gleaned from this. I think back to that scene in Jeffrey, where Nathan Lane, as a "hilarious gay priest" (per the video box!) attempts to inflict the original cast album of La Cage aux Folles on his congregants. There needs to be a lesson here. I just don't know what it is.

This wasn't something I immediately decided was going to work in my favor. Actually, the odds were, and quite posssibly, still are against me. See, I come from a family of doctors and lawyers. I had to take the sensible path, and they pretty much barred me from majoring in Musical Theatre in college - who needs it? What kind of a career could you have with that? I went to an excellent, east coast Ivy-level liberal arts school that is consistently top-ranked in the country. But I ended up majoring in "straight" Drama, and ultimately hated it there. Sure, I did a few musicals in between, but I was still depressed. I locked myself in my room and watched comedy DVDs in between studying. Forget theatre: The only things that made me happy then were "Mr. Show," Tenacious D, and the Upright Citizens Brigade. They were being funny and having fun performing. I wasn't. I was resentful, bitter, and combative. And, yet, it took me five years to pinpoint the root cause of my depression.

I wasn't like the other kids in college. I was always weird. And, in an atmosphere that is meant to foster idosyncrasy, you'd think someone would at least understand...

I should have taken the hint. While everyone else found their muses in Equus, Charles Ludlam, Bernarda Alba, and Blood Wedding, the one performance that inspired me to go into the acting profession was Nathan Lane in The Producers my senior year in high school. I mean, I couldn't study Shakespeare because I was undisciplined. I cried every night, and the depression took a toll on my physical health, as well: It's a long bloody story I don't usually get into, but, maybe my journey will provide some depth into the explanation, where it will eventually lead. But that's not the point. The point is: This is a journey. And, somewhere along the way, it became quite clear that I didn't have the stuff to excel as a serious dramatic actress. After a stint at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse, and a fuckload of soul-searching, I found out that I had a natural idiom all along, an idiom I've just been ignoring and ignoring for five whole years. This is going to take a lot of self-reacquaintance to fully comphrehend.

Admittedly, when you transplant from the Midwest, move to New York City with a Bachelor of Arts tucked firmly under your arm, and live on the East side, you're starting all over again.

So, I'm broadening my definition and going back to rebuilding those fundamental blocks of what got me interested and engaged in theatre in the first place. I'm training again, I'm learning new things, and I'm coming up with stories to share. I'm on a path. After all, I could have majored in film instead, and been even more depressed, unknowing of who Ethel Merman was, or why Stephen Sondheim even mattered. Or why I was ever happy in the first place. Today, I can't fathom ever being bitter or resentful.

Today, I study at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and practice with a musical improv group. They haven't really known my whole story, and, frankly, neither has anyone else in the creative community. Hopefully, this blog will clear up some misunderstanding about who I am, where my interests lie, and why I do what I do with my life. I have found a remarkable support system, I feel completely in my musical-comedic element, and I have never been happier.

And, yes, I'll explain every reference. Remember, this is a reacquaintance. In some ways, I'm finally getting back to doing what I love: And, yet, I never really gave up on it anyway. It has been exactly five years since I saw Nathan Lane in The Producers, and, watching the DVD tonight, no matter how scary-plastic the medium of film makes his big, funny face out to be, it still resonates. Sure, I'm too old to play Annie Warbucks now, but, then again, there's always Maria Von Trapp!

Hello, again. It's great to be back!

[Blog title taken from the brilliant Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Perhaps either this or Sweet Charity was the first real musical I ever saw...it was a local production. I don't remember who played Mama Rose. Definitely wasn't Merman. Although, it was my mom who reminded me that the college kid who played Tulsa went on to star in a Broadway musical version of Little Women. And he was Jewish! Killer.]