12/1/09 Show Thoughts (Ben)

The last few Michael Pizza shows had a strong first half and then either leveled out at the end or even dropped in energy. This week's show was sort of the opposite: a shaky, lower-energy start but ended with a crescendo. After getting the suggestion of "toothbrush", we built our movement-based opening. There was a close-up of teeth being brushed, a space port with tiny saucers taking off, and a bed in a seedy motel room (If this bed's a-rockin'...) There wasn't a wealth of information or detail in this sequence, but we definitely could have drawn more from it.

The opening morphed into a group scene. It was four young brothers sneaking downstairs early Christmas morning. We all feared spankings for doing this, but we made a pact to do it anyway. Lately we have been talking about character point-of-view, and the difference between conflicting views in a scene and distinctly different characters having the same/similar points-of-view. We used the latter on Tuesday. Sometimes it's more fun to live in the world of a scene with each other as opposed to having a plot-heavy problem between characters.

We then edited pretty efficiently to different scenes, but the variety of energy and pace just wasn't there. Having said that, it was pretty solid show. There was some great environment work, such as all four of us interacting with the balcony and peeking through its bars that resembled a prison cell.

We ramped it up at the end of the performance with a montage of "The Eli Manning Story", which was loosely based on "The Blindside". My favorite part of that was Brett as the quarterback in the final seconds of the game. Josh and I played several different linebackers trying to tackle him. Eric was at the other end of the stage as the wide receiver and commentator. Brett's fun choice was not to throw the ball and just keep eluding the defense for a while, and then finally run the ball in himself. Eric's great line was, "Eli Manning has just rewritten history!"

Thanks to all that attended this week's show! We have this iO run until January 5th*.
We hope to see you there on Tuesdays at 8PM upstairs!

*Please note that we will not be performing on December 15th due to an iO event.