So.. crazy thing, It's been over three years since I posted to this blog.

Good Lord.

Funny thing, not a lot has changed. In fact, our next resident company rehearsal at Go Comedy! will bring with it - "performance reviews." I use quotes because I gather that it's going to be more of a discussion about how we feel with the Showdown, where we want to go and how we're doing.  Go! will celebrate it's 5 year anniversary in November, and for the most part the All Star Showdown has remained incredibly consistent over that time. The cast is quite different now but a few of us from the original cast remain.

Over the five years I've been at Go I have yet to be in a "postered" show. Posters are made for the original comedies at Go! Be they fully scripted or improvised, the shows in the Thursday-Friday 8pm slot and the 10pm Thursday slot have been posterized since the theatre's opening. I'm not sure of it, but I may be the only ResCo member to never be in one of those shows. Why? Good question.

The first answer from probably anyone at Go has to do with "pitching." The art of putting an idea out there for a show and getting it ok'd for a run.  I unabashedly SUCK at this. I have pitched one show at Go and one show way back in my old Second City Detroit days. 

My pitch at Go was for a gay sketch show. Several of us have kicked that idea around but no one's ever "green lighted" it, but no one has ever sat down to write it either. I think this is because the 3-4 of us who happen to play for the rainbow league are rather disconnect outside of Go. We're friends but would probably only "hang" together if we ended up at the same bar or event at the same time. We certainly aren't on each other's "everything" facebook feed. So for us to get together to write a show would actually take a lot of scheduling work, work we just haven't committed to without the knowledge that said commitment would result in something more than some scenes we have tucked into a portfolio somewhere.

My pitch at Second City was just AWFUL... it was well done and exceptionally thought out, but now that I'm old-er, I know that it was the mother of all terrible ideas.  It was probably 8 months after 9/11 and I pitched a brilliant idea that we should do an improvised disaster show. The audience would choose their own disaster and the improvisers would improvise a world immediately after said event.  What THE HELL was I thinking??  Er, well, I KNOW what I was thinking.  You see I firmly believe in the beautiful power of the human spirit to overcome surmounting obstacles in amazingly incredible ways. As a young, excited and enthusiastic improviser I thought - this is a GREAT way to show that.  AND that's TRUE... if you're Steppenwolf Theatre Company with a history of producing gripping powerful DRAMAS. Not so true if you're known for your kick-ass comedy.

For these two pitches, I never heard a word back.
And when I don't get positive feedback, I stop. I don't push. I assume the idea is unpalatable and I table it.
It's a good thing that disaster idea got tabled... Eee Gads that would've have been terrible.