It Started in a Shoe Store

by eric

In case you hadn't heard, we are about to celebrate our two year anniversary with a show that is basically an excuse to party with friends and colleagues. This is the first part of a collection on memories we have all shared getting to this point.

While the date of the anniversary show is September 5th we actually had a our first great show in October, one year and eleven months ago. Prior to that team defining show we had only done a handful of "barprov" shows and an opening for Pimprov that crashed and burned.

Flash back to late October 2008, Michael Pizza had just begun rehearsing with a new coach, David Montgomery, and we were anxious to try out a new form we had been working on named "The Parlor". The show was to be at CIC Theater in Lakeview on a Saturday night and if I recall we were the middle team of a three team line-up.

The air was brisk but pleasant as we stood in a garden at the back of the theater and warmed up for the show. We did all the standard warm-ups and moved into just practicing scenes. The mood was giddy and nervous as the four of us played together surrounded by plants. David arrived near the end of the warm up and gave us some things to think about before we went on and told us to "have fun".

Walking out onto the stage at CIC in front of a crowd is a great feeling. If you have never been to this theater, it seats about 40 and the crowd is right on top of the stage. Essentially it is a very intimate environment that makes it very difficult to miss any action. The patrons were in a good mood that night as the BYOB was flowing and we had a few friends in the crowd.

Our form starts with a four person scene at the top, in this case we were a family in a shoe store. I played a young girl trying on shoes, Ben was my Mom, Josh was my Dad and Brett was the shoe salesman (that would later become a character of his named Mike Cardealer). I am not sure what the suggestion was looking back but it was most likely shoe or boot.

The show hit the ground running from the top with four fleshed out characters at the top. From there we saw the daughter at school getting hit on in the hallway, the parents at home and even a commercial by the shoe salesman. In the end, it was a tight, funny and energetic show that had a great capper with Brett addressing a camera that had been filming a commercial all along.

The crowd went nuts an when we got off the stage and back into the friendly confines of the garden we all kind of looked at each other with big eyes and grins on our faces. It was kind of a "Did we just do that?" moment. Looking back it, it is hard to say how good the show was and if it would have stacked up with shows we do now but I know we all look back at that show with a certain fondness.

Afterward, we went the a bar down the street named the Longroom and had drinks, laughed, enjoyed each others company and celebrated what was the beginning a wild ride.