Sophomore Jinx but still great.

Improv at a bar. It was fine. We were "The Mistakes" which was fun. It was the second time doing this show. The first time was magical. Tonight was the expected sophomore jinx. And also, the room seems a little dead. But all in all I think we did a great show. Chris Churchill, Chris Hauser and F. Tyler Burnett. (Special phone call appearance by Scott McNulty.) We know it's a weird fun show but we don't know how to explain it yet. People tell us it's a middle finger to the "rules" of improv. There's a lot of calling stuff out. There's a lot of purposefully being distracted. There's also a lot of completely organic (and I mean more organic than I've seen before...like people sitting around a campfire telling stories to their friends organic) changes from scene to scene to real life to monologue to experiment to real life to scene. We use our surroundings and the audience as much as we use each other. Instead of saying, "Don't call that out. Don't waste too much time doing stuff other than the show. Don't do non-theatrical things. Don't, don't, don't." we see all the possible distractions and emprace them. "There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents."-The late painter Bob Ross.
We got our suggestion about seventeen minutes into the twenty-five minute show. Then we didn't use it too much which is completely the right thing to do. The real barprov furniture, real darts, real foosball, real celphone, real discussions of real things made their way into our scenes. Not too many "characters"... although not completely devoid of characters. Where were the relationships? There was only the real one that the three of us really have that was consistent throughout. And that was intentional.
The point is: when you really like each other (which can't be taught), when you're really intelligent (which can only have already been taught) and when you trust that you all are part of and enjoying the same overall game regardless of what the game is (which is barely even conceptually understood by most improvisors) there can be no mistakes...just fun distractions on the road trip. And as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." Apparently so it good improv.
We've got another show at "The Playground" on Sunday at 10:30pm (part of something called "Overstock"). Then we go up at the cornservatory on November 26th. We should get a director who hates improv as much as we do to direct us and we should do a run at IO or someplace like that.
Oh, for those of you who were looking for funny blog, here goes:

Belly button.