Deconstructing Santa
Tonight was the first show. I can't believe this thing is finally here. It seems as if I have been working on this for years! The Cellar Dwellers present Deconstructing Santa (a Contrived Christmas Comedy) is finally opened tonight (since it's currently Saturday at 12:30am) at 8:00PM. I have been doing shows with the Dwellers for well over six years now, but this one seems so very special to me.
Maybe its because there are only four of us in the cast. Maybe it's because it's a totally original stage production completely written by the four of us. Perhaps it's because I have become closer to these three gentlemen (if any of us can actually be called that) than I have ever been. We spent alot of time together, we played alot of bubble hockey (in the pool hall next to our practice space), we spent alot of money on food and gas (driving all over the tri-county area and making numerous trips to bars, Kings, and the mall). Or maybe it's the fact that I am still doing this.
I had feared that the Cellar Dwellers were going to crumble once September rolled around. I was off to college, far from our Beaver Valley Bowl rehearsal space, two Dwellers got married (not to each other), one was a directing high school play, one was writing a screenplay and getting a book published. People were moving apart, and I feared that one of the most influential and enjoyable things in my life was slipping out of my grasp and there was nothing I could do about it. But God parted the clouds and said, "This is too good to just let die. You guys are really talented and funny, despite your sometimes off-color jokes. I think I will keep you around."
And so we talked, and we were able to organize some improv shows during the month of September. Three shows that turned out to be pretty fruitful for us, and very simple to have. We were even able to pull in our friend Mike the Tall, a Dweller who moved to Pittsburgh, to be in them. It was during this time that Joe and I talked about doing a four-man Christmas show.
When planning a four-man show, you can't really plan on doing improv (which was a normal staple of our shows. They were 50% sketch comedy and 50% improv) so we decided that we would have to write a totally new and fresh show. At one of our Friday Night Improv workshops at the Outlet for Creativity in downtown Rochester, we approached Ben and James (two dedicated and available Dwellers) to be in the show. Of course we would have gone with a full cast show, but because everyone was so busy, only we four had enough time to actually do this thing.
In October we began planning it. We held numerous brainstorming sessions, talking about plot ideas and characters for the show. One November Saturday morning we met a local bar called the Copper Dog. While we were there we planned out these four major characters and their basic plotlines. We set out to begin writing them, slowly shaping the path of the show.
The Cellar Dwellers pride themselves on ingenuity and dumb luck. We had a lot of that in the show. I am hoping that people who see this show say to themselves, "Wow, this was very well thought out. Everything goes in different directions, but ties together in the end!" We are very lucky people. Things just fell into place as we wrote. I was up at Seton half of the time, and our major mode of communication was AIM and e-mail. E-mail was for scripts, AIM was for other junk like meetings, practices, and brainstorming. By Thanksgiving break we had 70% of the show written, and the rest of it pretty much figured out.
Out biggest hurtle during the month of November was actually booking the show. We definitely booked CCBC's Auditorium, which is a normal venue for us. It's small, and not exactly an official theater, but it has wonderful acoustics, a huge backstage, and an extremely cheap rental fee. It was booking the second show that proved to be problematic. Originally we wanted the New Castle Playhouse, but they had some Christmas show going on, so we had to look elsewhere. Eventually we called Geneva College to see if they rented out one of their two theaters. Initially they agreed, but seemed picky about their light and sound equipment. It took us almost two weeks to finally secure the venue, and by this time it was the beginning of December.
During this time, I plugged away many hours working on the flier (which has gotten me a surprising amount of praise). We had a photo shoot in the middle of downtown Rochester, practically causing a scene, as the four of us dressed as our characters to take this picture at 9AM. Then I used Photoshop to create the other 60% of the flier. Our biggest wait for the fliers was getting the show dates on them. But once we did, Joe took the CD containing the PDF to the printers and said "Give me as many as I can get for under $100" They gave us 2000 fliers. The most we have ever had! Somehow, we managed to work out a deal with Chic-Fil-A so that they would put one of our fliers in every bag, and we would put one of their coupons in every program. Joe and I spent a few mornings walking the two mile stretch, in the freezing cold, that is Beaver Falls just plastering fliers everywhere. We promoted the show more than we ever had before, hoping that we would get enough people to turn profit.
Doing a show so close to Christmas is extremely dangerous. You are either going to get a ton of people or no one at all. If we didn’t get anyone, then we would be four very broken men. If we got tons, then we beat the system and further the Cellar Dwellers towards stardom.
Dave Smith interviewed us for the Times, yet again. He really does love us. And he loves to really read into what we do. But that’s cool with us. It makes us look extremely intelligent and witty. Uh, I mean… we are. The article he did about us for this show was very good, except it made the show seem very violent and dark. While it is both of those things, it’s not to the extent that he implied. Of course, he didn’t actually SEE the show, so how would he really know? Our goal, well one of them, is to make it on the cover of the Weekender (the Friday entertainment section of our paper). This week we thought we were a shoe-in to make it… but of course, thanks to the Beaver County Times’ ability to suck hard, they put the GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS on the cover. What is that?!
Anyways, so we actually began running the show during and after Thanksgiving break. Practices were rough at first, with things barely making progress. But soon we got into the groove of things, finished the bulk of the show, and were able to begin the drilling process. Since we are all busy guys, and James lives in Grove City, we had to carefully plan our practices. They occurred at odd hours, at any time of the day, and usually went a minimum of four hours. We brought in my good friend Josh (a BC homeboy who happens to go to SHU with me) to run lights and sound. He knew what was up, and actually did lights for a bunch of shows that are way bigger than this production. This show has an array of difficult music and light changes. Every skit has an intro and ending song, all of which would be controlled on my old Toshiba laptop.
We worked hard on this show. Probably harder on this show than any show I can think of in the past. We have a terrible habit of getting off track. This was very evident in our practices, which is probably why they lasted four hours. But despite this, we really did work hard. We made sacrifices, and we plugged away in our cold, filthy practice space on the third floor of an old brewery. We also were able to properly manage money in this show (at least thus far) and figured out a way that we might actually get PAID to do this (something that has never happened to us).
Tonight was the show. I won’t spend too much time talking about it. Just know that the opening performance (1 of 2) went amazingly well. Everything worked almost-flawlessly. We had a grand-sized audience (60+, which is big for us, but not the biggest we’ve ever had… that was close to 100 over the summer for our American Idle show). But I have a feeling tomorrow’s show at Geneva is going to be MUCH bigger, even though it holds much less. The audience loved the show, though, and I don’t think it offended too many. They seemed extremely receptive, and loved everything we were throwing at them--even the obscure references to Kierkegaard.
To roll this rather lengthy post into a nice conclusion, I just wanted to let everyone know how much I care about the Cellar Dwellers. These great actors, comedians, friends whether they were in this show or not are some of the biggest influences I have known. They are my mentors, my advice givers, and my bodyguards. Of course I have only allowed them to be positive influences, and they obviously don’t over-shadow my family, girlfriend, and all that jazz. But friends are friends, and they SHOULD be a big influence in your life. These people are. This show was, and I will never be able to really capture everything we did to get this thing together, but we did it, and it’s wonderful. We are booking shows throughout the next year, and I can’t wait to do them! More people are getting interested in auditioning to be a part of the cast, other members are returning to the cast, and we are all working together to bring quality, original comedy to our loyal audience. I don’t know what I want to get out of this comedy troupe, whether it’s fame or fortune or perhaps recognition. I’m pretty sure it’s none of those. I just want the satisfaction of entertaining others, the joy of hanging out this these amazing folks, and the experiences and memories that will last me forever. Because really, at this point, I wouldn’t mind doing this stuff for as long as I can.
And that’s the comedy troupe I belong to.