So... we're remounting Neutrino Project: the Instant Movie. We'll be doing 10 shows, Wednesdays at 8 pm, September 17 - November 19 at the ComedySportz Theatre (929 W Belmont, Chicago).

It's been three years since we've done a run of the show* and six years since we started doing the show in Chicago. We're changing things up this run by going back to our roots. Each time we've done a new run, we've tried to make the show bigger and better. And there's nothing wrong with 'better', of course, but I think we may have been making things somewhat over complicated. During our last run, especially, at the Improv Kitchen, we were seduced by all the technology they had available (wipes! fades! green screen!) and we took the constraint the restaurant had saddled us with -- requiring us to take an intermission so they could bump up drink and food sales -- and expanded the show so that we were filming 45 minutes of video in a leisurely hour-fifteen or so.

WIth this run, we have the opposite constraint -- there's another show in the space at 9 pm, so we've got to bring in a pretty tight 50 minute show. As well, we're putting the show up in a fairly short amount of time -- as you might have been able to tell from my teases, we only had things solidified a few weeks ago. So I'm taking that as a cue to take the show back to the basics. What, I'm asking myself and the cast, is the simplest show we can do that still has the magic of the Neutrino Project. We're paring the show back down to the original structure of a three camera shoot and chopping out a lot of the technical foo-frah we had added in.

And we've invited back a cross-section of the casts we've had over the last six years. Rehearsals have had a real "getting the band back together" feel. To name a few folks, we've got Patrick Brennan, Josh Chamberlin, Sean Cusick, Becky Eldridge, Jen Ellison, Lisa Fairman, Lillie Frances, Fuzzy Gerdes, Brian Goodman, Megan Goodman, Shaun Himmerick, Greg Inda, Cesar Jaime, Jin Kim, Erica Reid, Michael D. Starcevich, and Andrea Swanson. It's been delightful how easily everyone is slipping back into the show.

I'm a leetle frantic -- in addition to Neutrino Project opening on September 17, Impress These Apes opens on Monday, September 22 and I'm on the production staff of that show as well. And Shaun is bouncy around the world doing publicity for Wheelman, so he's no help. But FuzzyCo has a new secret weapon -- the production prowess of Erica Reid (though she is also also on the production staff for Apes). Erica has been wrangling cast schedules and press materials and keeping me sane.

* We have done a few one-off shows at improv festivals in those years.