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November 30, 2003

getting kicked out of internet cafe

Shows done. Rafting. Home soon.

Fuzzy

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:04 AM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2003

That's me on the telly

Well, we're half-way, show-wise, through our New Zealand trip. The first two shows went well. The house was about half-full for both shows, but the Covert is such an intimate space that it felt full.

This morning we had to get up early to go be on Breakfast at TV One. Wade told us before the show that we wouldn't need to plug the theatre name or number because they'd flash it up on the screen, but I guess they didn't. So we were charming as anything, but I'm not sure how it will translate into butts-in-seats.

Anyway, today I guess we're going scuba diving (life is hard, I know), then we have two more shows tonight and tomorrow night. We might sit in with Maestro on Sunday night, too.

Oh, and it's Friday here, but I guess it's Thursday afternoon in Chicago right now. So, Happy Thanksgiving, America.

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:06 PM

November 25, 2003

Hello from NZ!

Well, we made it. The plane flight was loooong, but we survived. We've had a relaxing start to the week, shopping yesterday and toodling around the coast in a borrowed car today ("stay left! stay left!").

Our first show at Covert is tonight at 8 pm. We did a radio interview on George FM with Peter Urlich this morning, so hopefully that'll put an extra butt or two in the seats. I froze doing "Alphabet" with Peter (what can I say -- I'm out of practice at short-form) but our friend Mark, listening in the car, said it didn't sound terrible.

Oh, and in case you've heard rumors back home in Chicago, WNEP is not closed. Not Closed.

Posted by Fuzzy at 9:55 PM | Comments (1)

November 21, 2003

Sizzler

Cinema 2.0 is tomorrow at midnight at WNEP, this month featuring "Sizzle Beach, U.S.A." Kevin Costner's first starring role. All the cheesy badness of a mid-70s T&A movie, combined with all the cheesy goodness of 6 of Chicago's finest improvisors.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:22 PM

November 18, 2003

New Zealand bound

Bare in New Zealand

It's been lurking up there in the FuzzyCo calendar for a while, but now it's the NextThing(tm): Bare is going to New Zealand. We'll be doing 4 shows over 4 nights at Covert Theatre in Auckland.

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:04 PM | Comments (0)

Word count - 187

Gah. It's embarrassing. I think it'd be better to be stuck at 0, that'd at least be just not-doing-the-nanowrimo-this-year. But I had an idea, put fingers to keyboard for a few minutes, and then... nothing. Well, plenty of other stuff, but nothing's getting written. I do have two sixteen-hour plane flights ahead of me, so there's the barest chance that I'll get a bit more done.

I did get my Nanowrimo shirt, though. I know what's important.

Posted by Fuzzy at 4:40 PM | Comments (0)

Fight Club

[This entry has been sitting on my hiptop in a "Drafts" folder since, I guess, October 28. Fight Club is tonight and next week is the last Fight Club. Dan would really like anyone who's ever been to Fight Club to try and make it next week.]

Fight Club, that Dan Izzo-created rehearsal group I've been going to, keeps trucking along. Last night was supposed to be the last night, but it's been geting such a good response that Dan extended it through November.

One great thing about FC is that there's been new people every week. This is fortunate, in part, because one of the rules of FC is that if it's your first time, you do the first scene. So far, then, we haven't had to deal with exceptions to the rule.

Fight Club has a lot of rules (Rule 1: No Egos, Rule 2: tell anybody you want about Fight Club, Rule 3: we start talking at 10:30, start improvising right at 10:45 and stop at 11:30, etc.) but really it's about the improv. I'm learning just by watching people and their choices. And the freedom to try things out is remarkable.

I saw the Incubator shows last night just before FC and I was struck, as I often am, by the excitement people bring to their first endeavors in this art form.

Posted by Fuzzy at 4:34 PM

Post-mortem

We're done!

We survived an 8 week run of Neutrino Project 30,000 at the 3 Penny Cinema. This last show was not devoid of the sort of last-minute crises that have plagued this production -- two weeks ago our tape deck had a severe conflict with Andy Eninger's camera such that the image was very jittery and there was no sound and last week the iBook that I use to do the credits and inter-tape animations had a fatal harddrive crash an hour before the show -- Ben Taylor called me a few hours before the show and said he was too sick to come to the show. Not insurmountable -- we've done the show without a musician plenty of times. It just falls into the category of "one more thing." Fortunately, Todd, the other half of the Cinema 2.0 band, was able to fill-in with his acoustic guitar and Casio Rap-man.

Giant thanks to the 41(!) people who helped out with the show during this run.

Now I just get to archive all the shows for the cast and crew.

Posted by Fuzzy at 2:29 PM

November 12, 2003

cowboy

Fuzzy cowboy

I'm just a coy urban cowboy.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:42 PM | Comments (5)

November 11, 2003

Lots of theater

This last weekend was chock-full of theater, most of it pretty good.

On Friday night, KW and I went to check out "Job Opportunity." It's a play that takes place in an actual car being driven around Chicago -- at most 4 people, sitting in the back seat, can see each performance. I found out it about from a Tribune review where the Neutrino Project was name-checked. I'm happy to report that it's great. We were the whole audience (which was nice, because I can imagine the back seat would be crowded with 4 people) and we were quickly immersed in the efforts of two friends to deliver a mysterious package. The use of actual Chicago (in fact, mostly my neighborhood) adds quite a bit to an already-good play. (The Tribune review doesn't seem to be online, for some reason, so check out the Reader listing.)

Saturday afternoon, we went with a high-school friend of KW's and his wife to see Naked Eye's "Nickel and Dimed" (a play based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich). We had a nice pizza lunch at Lou Malnati's, I had really enjoyed Naked Eye's "The Idiot Box," and I'd heard good things about the book, so I was ready to enjoy an afternoon of theater. Sadly, I was disappointed. The production was well-produced and the cast was all very capable, but I found the play preachy and clumsy, and I found the character of Barbara very unlikable (KW had read the book and said that didn't reflect the voice of the author).

So, then I was off from criticizing the work of others to seeing if I could produce some worthwhile theater of my own.

Let's just start with the fact that Saturday's Neutrino Project 30,000 was the smoothest setup we've had so far. The 3 Penny schedules us as though we were a movie, so we have a very short amount of time after the previous movie lets out to blow into the theater and get our entire, complicated technical setup going. Oh, and my iBook, which does the credits for the show, had a harddrive crash about an hour and a half before the show. Did I panic? Nope, we just grabbed a small white board on the way out of the house and did the credits the way the New York Neutrino does.

On top of that, the actual show was great. Todd Leibov joined Ben to create the live score -- Todd and Ben have done all the Cinema 2.0 shows together, which is a similar enterprise for them, so they were able to really attack the score. This was Ben's 9th Neutrino Project as musical director, so he was getting pretty agressive with the sampler -- sampling lines of dialogue and layering them over the scenes and transitions.

I was a runner for the show. I was theoretically an actor for this run, but in the end I'll only have done 4 shows on-screen. I've run twice (once planned, once to fill an emergency need) and shot twice (same thing). I think I'd love to be in the Neutrino Project as an actor if someone else was producing it -- I end up running around until the last second and it is tricky to switch gears into the mindset to be the best improvisor I can be.

After NP30K, I stayed to help transition the equipment for "Dr. Obvious". My friend Kate Parker is producing a new show at the 3 Penny right after NP30K, and she's renting a bunch of my equipment to do her show. "Dr. Obvious" is inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000. Which is to say, the show features 3 performers on microphones talking over a movie (in this run, Schwarzenegger's The Running Man). Which is to say, it's an exact rip-off of MST3K.

Given that, it's a pretty good rip-off. Kate, Dave Colan, and Bob Ladewig are all quick and clever and they've come up with a fun show. I saw it at a tech rehearsal earlier last week and I was quite amused.

I am sure that the show will inspire some marketplace-confusion between Dr. Obvious and Cinema 2.0 (unless I'm flattering myself that anyone knows about either of our shows). Here's your quick guide to the two shows:

Cinema 2.0:


Dr. Obvious:

So anyway, after I helped get the gear set up, I headed over to WNEP to catch opening night of a new run of Angry White Guy Reads the Paper. I didn't make it, but there's a plug, anyway.

I did make it to WNEP in time for Sickest Stories. For a change, I had nothing to executive produce about the show -- I wasn't in it, I didn't have to do tech, I just hung out at the back of the theater and watched. Dee-lightful.

And that was the weekend -- Sunday I had an abortive computer-fixing appointment, so I spent a good chunk of the day playing Morrowind. I... no, I don't think I'm going to try and make the argument that that's theater.

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:07 PM

November 7, 2003

Two weeks left

Two weeks left

There are only two weeks left in our run of Neutrino Project 30,000. For you, this means there are only two more chances to see this critically acclaimed show. For me, it means only two more weeks of stress and worry and concern. I love doing this show, but I'm really looking forward to not doing it anymore.

(Make your own church sign)

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:19 PM

November 5, 2003

rain

rain

rain

rain

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:13 PM

webcam

Fuzzy

Just messing around at work with a webcam (for work! really!) and thought I'd show off my Sirens shirt.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:05 AM

November 4, 2003

Name Checked

In last Friday's Tribune review of "Job Opportunity" (a play that takes place in a car driving around the city) Chris Jones writes:

"Unlike most similar projects, 'Job Opportunity' has the effect of turning the whole city into a kind of creative backdrop. In that way, it's reminiscent of the fabulous 'Neutrino Project' (which just started a welcome new run at the Threepenny Theatre), a show wherein the actors improvise and then exhibit an entire movie, all in the space of an hour or so."

I'm excited that we're a standard against other projects are being compared. And we're fabulous! And I'm heart-broken that Mr. Jones thinks we 'just started' our run.

You have two more chances to see this fabulous, critically-acclaimed show.

Posted by Fuzzy at 2:53 PM

November 3, 2003

Vegas-A-Ganza

Belmont Burlesque Revue

I just finished a poster for the next Belmont Burlesque Revue, featuring, well, you can see above.

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:37 PM

Congrats

KW
KW is part of Crain's (a Chicago business magazine) "40 under 40: Chicago's Rising Stars". Who-ray.

Posted by Fuzzy at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Bubbles

Strawberry Quick

I spent Thursday night with the lovely ladies of Strawberry Quick, working on photos for their new show poster. There are worse ways to spend an evening.

Posted by Fuzzy at 9:23 AM | Comments (1)