Shannon McCormick http://www.flickr.com/photos/oob_pics/230460669/of Salvage Vanguard and Get Up. 

Jonathan Morgan and Amanda Butterfield from Yellow Tape Construction Co. http://yellowtape.org/

And…Jim Hightower!!  http://www.jimhightower.com/ of the Hightower Report.   How cool!

 The shows went great.  It is tons of fun to do.  It is over before I even know it and I cannot wait until Friday after work to go do it again! 

 As expected, we knew by the end of Saturday’s show what needed some rearraingin’ and what scenes needed better takes.

 For the record.  3 sketches will be moving places in the running order.  Erika and Rachel sat down, put their heads together and pitcehd a new set list and it was great.

Fart Couple(R.I.P.) will be replaced altogether in favor of realistic Erika and Bob rrelationship scene.  I cannot wait to see what it is.  Oh, Fart Couple, we hardly knew ye…and yet we probably did.  Dodge Landgrab is getting a revamp too!  Rachel and I are super-psyched to not only alter our relationship to a familiar one and see how that feels.  We are adding back the Californians and wrote a much better out.  We also are trying to punch up the funny in Boxing Match to be a little more specific and less typical man vs. women arguments.   And Vagina Brain is getting some new blocking that I think will make it more contextual.

 The best part is that all of the changes feel right.  Sometimes people make changes right away out of desperation.  This does not feel like that. It feels like a tune up to make a perfectly fine car run even smoother. 

As you look down at the rest of the rollercoaster tracks ahead of you; while upside down in your first couple of loop-de-loops… you get a sense of not only how massive a contraption that you are on, but also how serene and quiet and undisturbed everything looks from way up above.

Everything appears to be quiet and chaotic all at the same time.

We have been rehearsing scenes with an audience of John Ratliff, YellowTape’s Amanda Butterfield (who have both been amazing and generous with their time and ideas), a small audience of cats and one adorable dog who sometimes thinks she’s our director. (“I hate the kicking.  Stop kicking.  Bark. Stop it.”) 

Most scenes have gotten at least one try out in front of an auidence thanks to Coldtowne Theater and The Hideout Theatre’s Double Barrel and Thursday Night Awesome!

Some… we are just betting that we know the joke is spot on and we can be funny enough to pull it off. 

I keep forgetting that the real fun comes in a week when we’ve done the actual show in front of actual people a couple of time… and the lines and bits are reworded slightly to get the best laugh out of each moment.
Tonight, David Welsh and George Bendele might come to watch the show.  David is in for Ratliff during week #2 on music/boxing bell/ring announcer detail.  And George has such a good eye.  He’s produced a couple of movies and I trust his insticnts.

I am so curious to see what this whole show looks like form the outside.  Kacey and David and George will be the first to see it completely whole.  That is nervewracking and joyous at the same time.  Tomorrow Mac Antigua (from Massive and Tight) stops by rehearsal and hangs and maybe watches. Mike Jastroch from Coldtowne will be there too. (He’s generously stepped up to run Lights/CD player/Projector) opening night.  And I think Little Stolen Moments’ Lindsey is coming to work on some kick ass transitions.  That will be great.

SHO’! SHO’! SHO’! SHO’! SHO’! SHO’!

 We’re excited!  We’re very excited, but this will be busy.

 We are meeting up at 9am tomorrow to get some stuff at Home Depot, rent a flatbed truck (to move the set frames from our house to the Blue Theater), rent some power tools to put the rest of it together, and then we’ll meet at the space at 10am.  We’ve got a few friends stopping by tomorrow mid-day to help paint and put this thing together, but the four of us are expecting to be there from 10 to 10.  In addition to putting together the set on the stage, we’ll be refocusing lights, hanging masking around the stage (and blocking off one side of seats), and just generally getting everything ready to start running and blocking.  It’s a little daunting to think about, but just like when the rollercoaster’s about to drop, there’s really nothing you can do but enjoy it.

We just found out that we’ll be able to use a programmable light board this time around too, which should make things a little easier for the people filling in when Kacey cannot be there.  Thank god we have Kacey — she is tops to work with and knows mucho about lighting.  She recently went to Mexico City to light a Pet Shop Boys show, so maybe you’ll see some traces of 80′s synthpop in the show.  Who knows.

 I’m going to try to get the bulk of the video stuff done today/late tonight so we are set for the show.  We shot a piece that will be in the show, but I may have to resize it so it projects above the set we are building (onto the back wall) and cut a few more/different pre-show videos.

But for now, I’m going to sit here with the dog and let this Karen Dalton record finish out…

#2 – Houston, we have a poster.  After hours and hours spent searching Fotosearch and Corbis for idears, we came up with this tonight in the space of like 1 hour.

this past weekend was chock full of improv and sketch happenings.

we have four weeks before the show opens, and we are in a good place. last round was a crazy crush, but we structured this show’s calendar to allow a lot more time to be off book and play with the scenes before putting them up. cuz thats when the funny stuff comes out, when you get to wear the scene a little – like stretching out your prom shoes.

thursday
we put up a couple of sketches, some sketches that were largely improvised, and some completely improvised stuff. i  – personally – tend to shy from overtly blue stuff in sketches (i like it when used sparingly), and our TNA show running order was this:

INTRO

SNUFF FILM

*CHEATING

INTIMATE COUPLE

VAGINA BRAIN

FLIRTING WITH THE PLUMBER

I/ADVICE

I/ADVICE was basically good/bad/worst advice set up with rachel’s dirty dirty whore character giving the worst advice. it went surprisingly well – since the set we put together was pretty, well, dirty, we decided to take sex advice questions from the audience. bob was a noted human sexuality doctor, i was lala gutierrez, high school bad ass. and rachel was a dirty, DIRTY whore. 

anyway. people really seemed to dig the show. i feel like we’ve recently been having more fun with our scene writing and ideas, and these that we put up on thursday will be a good balance to the more political/social stuff we’ve got in the show already.

friday
the frank mills had their first, scheduled social outing. we went to the bowling place 300 and bowled while watching hip hop videos and eating fried food. it was fabuluoso.

saturday
ratliff came over and we started working with him on lyrics for the show song – winning dirty. i wrote it based on the opener from guys and dolls (fugue for tinhorns), and i’m looking forward to performing it.  it’s being choreographed this weekend, and will need some spit and polish to get it show worthy, o’course. 

after all that, we went to stool pigeon @ Coldtowne and had a lot of fun.   everyone from FM played, and seemed particularly loose.  was tres good.

this week

in this friday’s double barrel (10pm the hideout), we will have a special guest!  probably two!  good times.  more deets later

if you need anything else, email us at frankmillscomedy at yahoo dawt com or call erika at seven seven three, five five one, zero one two four and we will get on it, like immediamente!

low res photo:

high res photo:

photos by Chris Allen @ Mrs. Johnson’s Donuts on Airport Blvd.

mmmmmmm. donuts.

titled “i am not tartuffe” (produced by our friends at yellow tape construction co.), it chronicles the fate of paris, tx after the small town is invaded by french mimes.  dave plays captain jesus, a rock n’ roll evangelist who helps save the town from the clutches of frenchness.

our buttons bust with pride.

he looks like he’s about to mow down bugsy malone in that photo, no?

go buckman!

last night, we stayed at the theatre for almost an hour after the show, just talking through stuff and eating a delicious bread that rach bought at central market.  from a show perspective, we all agreed that it was really helpful to see how scenes hit.   there were scenes we thought would play well, but will didn’t hit as well as they could.    there were also scenes that played well, but will need to be repositioned in the running order to better contribute to show momentum and distribution of players (gay marriage into estonia).  other scenes will either be cut, or rewritten to tighten beats, action etc. (pink puffy marshmallows, good cop).  still others were a little bit of a shocker in terms of the audience response to them (getting really big laughs in scenes we thought were strong, but not not heavy hitters (vladamir, gate 12), and those will get some minimal tweaking.

on top of all that, we’ll be putting together some new material based on the theme that we determine from the rewritten/kept material.  the workshopped show didn’t have a strong theme, which is something i prefer, vs. a broad review with lots of different scenes.

we’re meeting to go through the full show next sunday, and discuss all of the above.  i’m having an awesome time with this.

thank you to everyone who came out to see the show. i really appreciate your support and your voting with your laughter.  i hope you’ll make a point of coming back to see us in may.