Yes (by Brett)

"yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds"

That's part of a poem from E. E. Cummings. He also said "I imagine that 'yes' is the only living thing".

Guess what? Michael Pizza just realized that we say "no" a lot in our improv. That sucks. When you realize that you are bad at something and you have been doing it, in front of audiences, for a while... that sucks. I'm not against explicitly saying "no" in a scene but there are times when you can say "no" but imply "yes". Here's what I mean...

Michael Pizza has been taught to always support each other in scenes. Somehow that manifests itself into always trying to be friendly. So, if Ben tells me that we're roommates and he's tired of me always being a dick and leaving my towels on the floor, I always end up saying "I'm sorry, I'll quit leaving towels on the floor". I said "yes" to the scene but, in a different sense, I just said "no" to a huge gift he just gave me. I'm a dick. I don't care about towels on the floor. At very least, I'm an oblivious roommate who will never pick up my towels. The second I start picking up towels and saying "I love you," I've denied the thing he just told me. I'm a dick roommate.

It probably sounds pretty obvious. And I like to consider myself a pretty savvy improviser, but these little gifts always seem to slip past me. So that is what I'm working on right now. Accepting and playing with the gifts that Ben, Eric and Josh give me.

I'll leave you with one last quote, because that's what I do. My ex-girlfriend always wanted to be a singer but she never had any clue where to begin. I tried and tried to help her but she was always too scared to take any step until she was completely sure of a course of action. So she never went anywhere. Anyway, here's a quote I like about that...

"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." -FDR

My Favorite Michael Pizza Moments

After nearly every show we do Michael Moments. The moments usually focus around improv moments that were too fun not to mention, but sometimes we celebrate team victories such as; packing the Playground during Michael @ Midnight, getting our first iO run, or an idol of ours commenting on how great our posters are. We celebrate these because we know that if we really boil it down we're just a couple of guys on an improv team who take it really seriously. Improvisers are usually on a bunch of teams, they perform here and there and do this and that. I think we try to rebel against that. We're almost to protective of our improv team. We talk endlessly about sit-ins and what is the best move to make for the team. We really treat it like a business and that I love.

Its impossible to pick which is the best MP moment because they all hold a special place in my heart. Here's a good one that hasn't been mentioned. There's only been one or two shows where all four of us were there and we had a sit-in. We had Erica Elam sit in. Boy oh boy was that a fun show. Erica is great! Erica, Eric, Brett and I were all girls talking about getting a man to take care of us and finally we had gotten Ben to go to Erica's house with her. Eric, Brett and I went home with them and we hung out in the kitchen. Here's how the scene went. Ben and Erica are in the front room and we're listening to them behind the kitchen door. Suddenly we get distracted by all the food in the kitchen and just start eating various food items. Every so often she'd check back on us and we'd have nothing to comment about what she had in her pantry. It was loads of fun. In that same show we did another scene where Kass went to jail for something ridiculous. I popped in as a hardened criminal and then Eric popped in as an executioner and revealed I was sitting in an electric chair. He then electrocuted me. It all happened in the blink of an eye and was outstanding!



That was a fun show and I really thank Erica endlessly for playing with us.

Josh

My Favorite MP Moment

by Kass



My favorite Michael Pizza moment comes from the tail end of the show that made us Cagematch champs. This story does end, and it has a happy ending.

The first major goal for Michael Pizza was to win the 2009 iO Cagematch. We rehearsed for months to achieve a tight 20 minute show. The Cagematch was a bracketed tournament of two improv teams performing whatever form they desired. Then the audience voted for one group to move on. MP made it all the way to the finals! I can still remember how nervous we all were that night, but we channeled that energy into my favorite show we've ever done.

Toward the end of our 20 minutes on stage, there was a scene with Eric as an old man. I don't remember exactly how we arrived at a reference to Neverending Story, but all four of us quickly cut to Eric's old man character riding the dragon-dog Falkor (played by me, Brett and Josh) through the sky! We explored the whole stage like that as the crowd erupted in laughter and then applause! Two noteworthy details: this called back Josh riding Brett as a horse toward the top of the show, and Falkor turned out to be deathly allergic to carrots just like said horse. This scene was done with pure joy and complete acceptance as all four of us created something together. We won the iO Cagematch that night, and it was one of the best nights of my life.

My Favorite MP Moment

by brett

Eric's blog got me thinking about some of the best MP moments that we've ever had. Man, there have been some pretty fun times onstage but one moment really stands out to me.

In our 5b performances, Eric and I used to play two characters backstage called Huck N Shuck. We were like college frat guys who always did secret handshakes. Well, during our "Michael At Midnight" run at The Playground, we finally had a chance to use those characters. We were messing with some girl in the high school hallway when we got a call from the commissioner (Josh). Apparently the mayor's wife had been kidnapped and he needed Huck N Shuck to save her. So these two douche bag jocks (who are also super heroes as we find out) fly all the way to England to stop a sadistic killer who is driving with the mayor's wife (Ben) all tied up in the car. We landed, punched through the car window and then threw the car across the stage. It was the first time in a show that we actually got cheers and applause from the audience!

That was also the moment that I realized that team work is always better than just "being funny". Nobody really did anything that funny in that scene, but because we all played together and everyone was involved, the audience loved it. In Michael Pizza, the "whole" is greater than it's "parts". What I mean is that the things we are capable of as a group are leaps and bounds better than the things we are capable of individually.

I can still clearly see the look on Josh's face when I lifted up the front of that object work car and he pretended to be flying away. Funny.

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.