Author: John Hanus

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a performance hangover. I’m betting a lot of you from last night’s After Dark audience have actual hangovers, but that’s beside the point. This is the second month we have doubled up performances at Urban Yeti and it’s both awesome and exhausting. The long form mentality of Love is Blind combined with the intensity of After Dark is like drinking liquor after beer. Once again the Anchorage improv community has amazed me and I’m happy to see ticket sales are not dipping. Even though we still have more seats to sell for both of our performances, we are proving the two show concept to be a good foundation for our future work as a troupe. There was a lot of genuine positive audience feedback after the show as well (in addition to some sweet web traffic ranging from facebook likes to written reviews!). The post Bodega-fest audience could at times be a little talkative throughout the show, but that is sometimes the ambiance of After Dark and we are more than capable of handling it for the benefit of the show. Thanks to those who came out to see us, we hope to see you again very soon.

After creating Love is Blind, I set the goal that this season would not only challenge the ensemble who typically perform with Urban Yeti, but most of all I would challenge myself.  I’ve been spending a lot of time creating this business, helping developing our performers and getting people in the seats. This doesn’t leave a lot of time to improve your own performance skills. By shifting the focus a bit internal this season, I’ve given myself a lot of insight for future directing and understand my strengths and weaknesses in the scene. For example, I still have a lot of work to do in the character sphere (including a natural tendency to be a deer in the headlights with accent work) but I have also made a lot of progress in having a clear mind, nothing pre-loaded when entering scenes. In previous blogs you will have heard me talk a bit about getting into quick sand when a scene needs to be elevated. Directors performing is a good reminder how much focus is required to get in a place of control to avoid just that. It’s challenging, especially when you want to feed on the audience energy.

Given the increased focus on myself and diving in as a performer to both sets last night, I don’t have the best perspective to fully critique both shows, so I’m going to need some help. Aneliese and I recently had the pleasure of rehearsing with a group of UAA students who formed a troupe called the Ad-Lib Alchemists. It is always refreshing to play with new people and see improv in the community outside of your own ensemble. Several of the performers in their group came out to see the shows last night, including Shawn, who stayed for both of our performances. I asked Shawn to provide me his thoughts this morning and he didn’t disappoint. He provided the following:

• Really good presentation, clear understood conventions and generally very clean (good edits).
• Very professional. Fun, but a lot of control.
• Love the “no fear” attitude, but refreshingly not crude. You are clearly very comfortable with each other.
• Also, the guy from Service (Erik) has excellent physical humor. I was constantly excited with what he was going to do.
• Mime could use some improvement, don’t talk through doors, open them all the way.
• Clearly get rid of objects and remember what does and does not exist.
• Edits could get more creative.

This does an excellent job of capturing some overall themes in the show and I’d like to expand on some of the points made. I’m particularly proud of Shawn’s assessment of a ‘no fear attitude’. We want this to set us apart from other groups. We want our formats, our scenes, our energy to show we are fearless in what we do. I also enjoyed several areas of physicality in our show, ranging from the cuddling scene to the Jack in the Box drive through.

On the opportunities for improvement, I think Shawn’s comments build an overall note of control in a high energy event. As After Dark evolved, it got a bit sillier throughout the evening and I think we as performers need to find more opportunities for creativity. Ultimately, our silliness resulted in a chair thrown, which I’d like to avoid. One performer did not throw that chair, we all did at some point. I love the product Parsi has created through After Dark, but it is up to us as performers to ensure we still differentiate this product as great improv in a high energy short form environment throughout the whole show, not just parts of it. Some of this also applies to the second half of our Love is Blind set. We relied too much on fouler language towards the end and less on creativity.

In the upcoming Love is Blind rehearsals, we will emphasize our monologue work. I don’t think they were lacking, but I would like to move from a casual conversation monologue to a strong storytelling monologue. My initial reaction for After Dark was to say more scene based games, but my initial reaction is wrong. The answer is rehearsing the scene in every game, regardless of guessing. There needed to be more scene work in Dead Celebrity Diner, Late for Work and other guessing games. There also needed to be more emphasis on scene work in games like Half Life. This is something Parsi has been working in his rehearsals and something we need to continue.

We are growing stronger, but more importantly we do this together. We are finding more opportunities for performance, so make sure to swing by our Facebook page every now and then to see what we are doing outside of first Saturdays. Look around you ladies and gentlemen, the Yeti is everywhere.

This weekend Urban Yeti took on it’s biggest challenge yet:  Two nights of performances at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.  We revived our show formats from the first two seasons on the Sydney Laurence stage.  There are a lot of thanks to give out for an adventure like this.  The first, I’ll give to the the ACPA and house crew, in particular Cindy Hamilton, for having faith in the show we wanted to bring in to the big house.  The second is to our wonderful stage managers, Shiela and Rick, for taking a group of improv misfits and helping shape it into a professional show.  The final one I will give to the community of Anchorage, who showed strong support for both of our performances.  We had over 100 in the crowd for each evening and they left loving the art.  More than numbers and acolades though, I was particularly relieved to see that hard work with promotion and talent was rewarded.  There is no single silver bullet or secret ingredient.  If you work hard in rehearsal, come together as a team and put determination into the way you do business and promote, it can pay off in the long run.

Some people might read this and say I am overhyping things for the purpose of promoting our group.  However, if you go back and read previous blog entries, I’m confident the tone that shines through truly represent our shows.  Sometimes you’ll see excitement, other times you’ll see a lot of focus on opportunities for improvement.  The blog is not just for our audiences to get a behind the scenes look at our art, it serves as a platform to improve our performers.  I want to emphasize this to bring further strength to the following statement: Our PAC performances took us to a new level of improv comedy in Alaska and the shows were so good I’m left exploring what we need to translate from the PAC into our work going forward.  I’m truly sorry for those who missed these performances as they missed something special that will remain with us at Urban Yeti for a long time to come.

I would like to provide insight by highlighting my personal top five of the overall experience:

1)  The staging in our scene work was phenominal.  The ensemble pulled the audience in to several worlds through the simple act of where they stood and how they transitioned.  We had a scene focused around NASCAR (don’t care if that is not single speed bikes) and a beautiful constant transitiong between a pit crew on stage right and driver/inspector on stage left.  It culminated into a really fun moment where there was a transition into a car crash that brought the two parties together.  We had a scene focused on online dating where the performers were switching back and forth between two different users.  The performers then decided there was no reason to keep jumping in and out, why not split the scene into the right and left sides of the stage and play the scene together.  Beautiful connection and truly unique scenework.

2)  It’s no secret there is strategy behind doing performances at the PAC.  Challenging our performers and trying bigger things is important, but building relationships is what builds businesses.   Behind the scenes was going just as well as on stage.  Our house crew had a good time, our house managers were fun to work with.  Learning more about the craft from our stage managers was enlightening.  To have a conversation at intermission, back stage, with a very experienced stage manager telling you the ensemble has true talent is revitalizing.  We hope to continue building this relationship to even more performance opportunities and exposure to the Anchorage community.

3)  In previous show wrap-ups, there is always a segment that didn’t go as well, had more content for improvement.  However, throughout both of these shows the story work in all of our segments was strong enough to continue on, whether it be voted forward in Frigid Affair or lengthened for another hour in Debauchery.  I wanted more Point Waranzof ranger training, vinettes on Jansport backpacks or scenes involving Buffalo.  Time to vote which story moves on?  It doesn’t really matter, I could have taken them all.  I want more Men’s Health articles!  Strong transitions and scene wipe timing helped the performers keep the audience engaged from curtain up to curtain down. 

4)  There was even more humor and great scene work in our warm-ups.  I laughed really hard from a seat in an empty theater two hours before the show even began on both Friday and Saturday.  A team firing on all cylinders is one that is keeping things fresh even when the audience isn’t around to validate.  It also helps validate there was no luck or fluke with this experience.  Two solid show run throughs with two amazing shows over two days breaks the notion it can be anything but great talent. 

5)  Allow me a more emotional observation for a moment.  After it was all done, three months in the making, promotional pushes all throughout August, rehearsal preparation emphasizing strong scene initiation, projection and enunciation for a bigger venue, there was signing the wall in the hallways of the PAC and toasts throughout downtown Anchorage.  I have directed several groups and worked with a lot of people.  What a lot of folks don’t realize is the payout is not in the crowd numbers or ticket takes.  It’s in that handshake that is particularly strong tonight or that hug that is held a bit longer after the show is done.  It’s in the moments where performers don’t have to break down a show or talk about it because they all know they just went through something special.  It’s been a long time since I felt the way about a project or team as I did last night.  I am no fool, I know it can all go away in an instant, but with Urban Yeti Improv, it doesn’t matter, we have now had so many wins it will hold a special place in my memories for a long time to come.

It is now time to head back to our awesome partners at the Alaska Experience Theater and debut our two new shows:  Love is Blind and After Dark.  To keep up the momentum, we need to continue with hard hitting scene initiations and not getting lost in dialogue and character introductions.  We need to continue watching our work from the wings with an attitude of getting in their and doing what needs to be done to maximize audience engagement.  We need to treat every show like we are going on under the lights of the PAC.  Time for reflection is pleasant, but I’m already back on the boards hungry for more.  We have broken through so many walls up to this point, it would be a waste not to keep unleashing the beast.  No more apprehensions, game on.  The Yeti is on the prowl.

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came out to our show last night!  We closed our second season with another near sold out crowd and this time the achievement was in even more spectacular fashion given it was a perfectly beautiful Alaskan evening.  In spending some time with our audience in the box office, a lot of our advertising methods were bringing people in, ranging from newspaper listings to Google searches and even some folks who saw us on KTVA news a couple months back.  The good word of Urban Yeti is spreading around the community and although there are a lot of stresses with publicity during the summer in Anchorage, we rose to the challenge and had a very successful run of our Debauchery series.  Usually this morning we would be heading into a relaxing week and slowly starting strategy for our next first Saturday, but that is not the case during August.  Our PAC shows are on the horizon and we need to utilize every day for the next five weeks to plan and execute for these shows.  I want Urban Yeti to be a place where we follow-up great achievements with more opportunity.  Today we follow up two strong seasons with playing in Anchorage’s ‘Big House’.  Let’s do this.

Our last showing of Debauchery was very comfortable.  A lot of appreciation goes out to the staff at Alaska Experience Theater.  Bar, box office and tech ran flawlessly which gave us more time to interact with the audience beforehand to set up an energized environment.  We had a diverse crowd of locals, tourists and even an improv guest from Boston College (raise a glass to Tabitha!).  Some notes I took away as a host for improvement were transition back from intermission and how to keep a strong flow for the second act.  Technical areas of improvement for our show.  I know I know, shut up John, we want to hear about the improv. 

Last night’s showing had some great improv and we were on the upswing for a majority of our sets.  I was happy with the product and we once again had genuinely positive interactions during our receiving line.  We are consistently taping our shows to allow our performers and staff to revisit the performance.  This will be a good set to showcase strong examples of advanced improv technique and strong character work.  This will also be a good set to pull some examples of opportunities for improvement, we’ll get to these points later on.  This show was a tale of two acts when it comes to excellent improv examples and areas we need to work.  In my opinion, the first half of our show was probably the best improv we have put up this season.  It’s also important to note this doesn’t necessarily coincide with the biggest audience laughs or hilarious themes.  I say this was our best improv because there was a lot of great natural scene builds which led to natural laughter.  A lot of our laughs came from the truth in the comedy rather than quick wins.  Each of our performers had strong examples of great instinct which showcased their talents.  Overall, throughout the first act, everyone stepped to the plate and did what needed to be done.  John Parsi had an awesome moment of introducing a scene oddity to play around with by being a cop who framed a citizen with multiple crimes.  Every time the scene was revisited, he elevated from speeding to possession of weapon to drugs to a dead body in the back, all of which he successfully pantomimed putting there himself.  Great energy, fun idea, great improv.  Mary Jo and Aneliese had an awesome moment of connection by elevating the oddity of a mother treating her 35 year old son like a teenager when dropping him off at an Eagles concert.  Oddity introduced and established, Aneliese steps in with the female factor, Mary Jo comes back in to torpedo her son’s chance as the mom (loved the condom reference).  Great sharing, great teamwork, great improv.  In our promiscuity set, two performers are in ‘Easy Park Jail’, a fun base reality to play around with.  Strong characters are introduced, but the limited cell starts getting a bit dry.  Erik walks in and introduces the oddity one of them doesn’t even have to be there and now we get to play with the idea of the old seasoned veteran ‘Easy Park’ inmate who doesn’t want to leave, the Brooks of Easy Park (Shawshank reference anyone?).    Great idea, great execution, great improv.  Eagles scene needs to get to the final line of being in the fast lane, mother and son driving home from the concert, Mallory steps in as a different vehicle with a different personality.  Her pantomime work and staging allows the audience to see a developed road conflict which also leads to one of my favorite moments of the show, when the final line in a wickedness set was modified to ‘It really pisses me off when someone drives slow in the fast line, but not tonight’.  Great staging, great elevation, great improv.  This sort of fun on stage is what connects an audience to a show and what connects performers to one another.

Other good examples worth mentioning include our short form.  We had a solid interrogation set and even though we pulled a basic suggestion of Abe Lincoln.  The guesser had a nice moment when they guessed the crime was shooting the fish in the back of the head.  Remember, a guesser creates humor when they communicate their thought patterns and dive in with confidence.  Slideshow was executed flawlessly with a strong narration and fun uses of slide transition.  This makes me excited for our upcoming After Dark series in October, where we will solidify Urban Yeti’s place in Alaska’s short form improv market. 

Urban Yeti Improv takes rehearsal and improvement very seriously, which is why we always spend some time on weaker areas needing improvement.  I think most folks know this section will be focusing on our Indecency set in the second act.  We had strong character and energy work last night which held throughout the whole show, but we found a bit of quick sand at the Loussac Library.  Rather than focus on choices made or confusion into why we felt the need to stay in certain environments/character interactions for so long with no progression of an oddity or objective, I want to focus on transition and wipes.  Over the last two rehearsals we have been working on more of a free form palette in our scene work.  The idea of taking a suggestion and then just playing, meaning our players can transition to different characters, different environments or even wipe the world entirely and start new.  But we still have further to go in this space.  I sense players are nervous to wipe out their partners work and are attempting to find glimpses of strong in a sea of mundane.  Our indecency set needed to go somewhere else.  I understand we have to get to a library and a food fight, but that can be built in less than a minute if necessary.  This also applies to our Promiscuity set, which was modified from our previous shows.  In both rehearsals and the show, there were opportunities for wipes not taken, but likely needed.  Like most good practices in improv, it comes with more time and more playing.  We will continue to work this and I suspect you’ll see a troupe in the future more comfortable with leaving an environment or even a whole world behind.

I’ll focus the last discussion of improvement on myself as artistic director.  I have learned a lot throughout our first two seasons about show formatting, especially when dealing with longer form scene work.  Throughout these experiences, I will be taking two lessons away to utilize in our upcoming seasons.  The first is to make longer form sets less restrictive.  Although I like the premise of a scene culminating into a predetermined audience objective or having to include different elements, we perform better when we can just explore and find the fun.  I would likely execute our Promiscuity and Indecency sets differently a second time around.  The second lesson I’ll take away is always leaving the audience wanting more.  The last two games or sets are very important and although I like the way our team plays Survivor and the uniqueness they bring, it is no longer the ideal closing game.  I don’t believe either of these points were detrimental to either of our seasons, but rather opportunities to create stronger formats in the future.  Our players aren’t the only people on a steep learning curve, their director shares in the journey.

We have all been putting a lot of work into Urban Yeti and I can personally say sometimes it gets stressful.  But whenever someone asks me if I’m still having fun, I never have to pause and think about it.  I have tremendous pride in what we are doing and those we are working with.  We are getting the best out of people, and no matter how hard the work gets, it is rewarding.  But the simple answer?  Of course it’s fun, because this shit is so damn cash.