One Last HUGE Wednesday 10/30/2024 at 7:30pm

Many a benediction has been written about the closing of HUGE improv theater at the end of this month - just two days away.  It’s been both gratifying and overwhelming to read the many testimonials spread all over social media these past several weeks - audience members reliving happy memories as they say farewell to another theater company (a regular occurrence since the pandemic hit four years ago); artists testifying to the home they found at HUGE and all the growing they did there as performers; improv comedy amateurs just learning the craft finding it hard to say goodbye to the sense of purpose and community they discovered at HUGE.  Like so many theaters, it was more than just a building, it was an ever-expanding network of artists and audiences that's going to keep spinning out through the Twin Cities for decades to come.

“She has a closet full of boyfriends.”

Around my two day jobs and work for Threshold Theater, I’ve grabbed as many different shows on the schedule as I could over the past two months. I was happy to see Star Trek: The Next Improvisation have a sold out final performance (even if that meant I didn’t get to see it), and I hung out to see the Twilight Zone improv and the Soap Prov (soap opera improv) after that on Saturday.  I managed to see the Sword & Sorcery improvised fantasy campaign, an outing for random acts in Improv-A-Go-Go, and the superhero improv of Ka-Bam at different points on the calendar as well. And every time I set foot in the place I got some merch, to throw HUGE some extra money and help clear the shelves (I ended up with three different T-shirts, a scarf and a mug at last count). I also bought two tickets to each of the last two shows I saw, because there were two other shows I wasn’t going to get to see because of my schedule, but they had the seats, so buying an extra ticket wasn’t going to keep anyone else out. (They could still use donations to help them close the books so, if you can afford to throw them a bit of extra money, please do.)

“No one’s chasing us - except for time.”

It’s cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless that the last show on the HUGE improv theater stage will be another edition of HUGE Wednesdays.  I had the pleasure of seeing this line-up of improv groups for a HUGE Wednesday last month, and it was amazing.  A great way to go out, if out you must go.

“Our bodies are prepared for the rigors of art.  It may destroy you.”

HUGE Wednesdays offers a program of four different improv comedy acts - in this case all very different from one another.  There’s “Party Slice,” which is probably the most straightforward of the quartet - a group of friends doing long-form improv comedy launched by a couple of simple audience suggestions, largely based in reality (not a concept show built around sci fi or fantasy or pirates or superheroes or soap operas, etc.).  It’s intriguing to watch a group of people working together to create something that didn’t exist a minute ago, and flesh out a whole neighborhood of characters that keep looping back in on one another.

“I’ve been a ghost this whole time.”

There’s “Love’s Labors WON?” which is two guys in period garb pretending to be a pair of great actors with storied careers reminiscing about great stage, movie or TV work they did together or separately. It’s a great gimmick and the performers clearly have a good time riffing off of one another, creating fake additions to their resumes on the fly. The night I went they recalled scenes from a CB long-haul trucker movie they did together, which turned into a meditation on the meaning of existence and connection to other human beings in a solitary profession. There was also a biopic exploring the career of Vin Diesel which took a hard turn into psychological thriller territory. There was a gig doing motion capture for a Scooby Doo video game, as well as a fake commercial, and each of them got a closing monologue - again, all of this was conjured out of nothing.  Just two people riffing.

“Call me when you’re ready to get mauled.”

There’s also “A Sketch Show,” which is three improvisers who are also artists, creating elaborate drawings based off audience suggestion, and at the same time they provide all interested audience members with clipboards, paper and markers so that they, too, can create sketch art on the fly based on the unfolding story that everyone is making up together in real time. The trio’s personas are all an exaggerated affectation of a self-important artist, clearly making fun of the stereotype and not the audience that these “artists” pretend to be looking down on.  It’s quite amusing.

“I’ve developed an immunity to embalming fluid.”

Finally, the truly stunning comedy character work of Nels and Stacey, the duo behind “When Harold Met Sally” taking a chunk of the traditional three part “Harold” improv structure and using it as the foundation for the creation of a two-person relationship over time. Two characters meet on an awkward first date.  Then those same two characters are out on a date later in their relationship (an ax-throwing venue). And the final part is the two of them, many years later, sharing a home together.

“You’re not being set up to take the fall for anything.”

Honestly, as a playwright, I should feel somewhat threatened by improv this good because they make a script seem entirely unnecessary.  If two performers like these can create two fully formed human characters as they go, just exchanging lines of dialogue made up off the top of their head, and it’s actually very, very funny, and then it evolves, and then evolves again.  And you get a complete experience to two people’s lives that didn’t exist half an hour ago.  And it’s also genuinely sweet, and touching, even moving, without veering into melodrama or sentimentality?  Just grounded, detailed character work - out of thin air?  Hell, who needs playwrights?

“Don’t poke the bear unless you want to have sex with the bear.”

The final edition of HUGE Wednesdays is sure to be a great sampler of just some of the many things improv comedy can offer an audience.  It’s a fitting farewell to a significant chapter of Twin Cities theater.

HUGE improv theater is, for the moment, still at 2728 Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis, MN. (sigh)

(However, channel that sad feeling into something positive by seeing some of the other live performance that is very much continuing: the Minne-Melange variety show regularly hosts improv acts at venues around town like the Bryant Lake Bowl, the Queer and Funny Improv Festival is on this weekend (November 2nd and 3rd) at Red Eye Theater, Improv-A-Go-Go is transitioning over to its new venue at Strike Theater starting in 2025 (and hey, while you’re at it, just support Strike Theater in general). Also, support the Crane Theater, currently hosting the Twin Cities Horror Festival (running now, started last weekend and runs through November 3rd this weekend). Off the top of my head there’s also compelling shows currently running at Six Points Theater (Just For Us, through November 10th) and Mixed Blood Theater (The Ally, also running now through November 10th)

 

 

I’m A Queer Theater Artist

Reason I voted for Kamala Harris (3 of 3)

There’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll stick to the top three.

The most selfish of those reasons…

I own and regularly wear a T-shirt that says “Leave Trans Kids Alone You Absolute Freaks”

I am a gay man.

I am a queer playwright.

I am the literary director for Threshold Theater, regularly processing and reading the new plays of living LGBTQ+ playwrights which the company platforms in a New Play Reading Series, the 4Play With Threshold Theater productions of collections of short plays, and the upcoming world premiere production of my new script “Spellbound” in April 2025.

I would like to still be legal as a human being in April 2025.

I would like my work as an artist to still be legal in April 2025.

I would like Threshold Theater to still be legal in April 2025.

And I would like my trans friends, including the one who works with Threshold Theater as a Literary Associate, to get a friggin’ break, thank you very much.

One party at the city, state and federal level has a strange obsession with constantly freaking out over what mere existence of the LGBTQ+ community means for “traditional” gender and family roles.

The other party is headed by Kamal Harris and Tim Walz and Joe Biden.

So I voted for Kamala Harris because I want politicians to mind their own damn business.

I’ve lived and created art as an openly gay man for over 35 years.

There’s not a closet big enough to hold me anymore.

We’re not going back.

 

 

1 Million People Are Dead Who Didn’t Need To Be

Reason I voted for Kamala Harris (2 of 3)

There’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll stick to the top three.

I voted for competent government.

President Biden and Vice President Harris, just like President Obama before them, have spent the last four years cleaning up the mess the previous Republican administration left behind it.

They got shots in arms.

They got the country re-opened, back to school and back to business.

They got the economy on its feet in a way that no other country in the world managed to do.

The disgraced, twice impeached, 34 times convicted felon and former social media influencer who used to occupy the White House botched the response to the pandemic.  Because he didn’t care if anyone else other than him lived or died.

Yes, the pandemic would have been terrible regardless.

Yes, people would have died.

But here’s the thing - the medical experts and epidemiologists said that, even if we did everything perfectly, made all the right decisions, 200,000 people were going to die.

Those first 200,000 were baked in.  There was nothing we were going to be able to do to save them.

And at the time, people couldn’t wrap their heads around it.  That level of death was unthinkable.

200,000 dead bodies was the starting point.   That was the best case scenario.

Every death after that was a choice.

Rough estimate: 1,219,487 people died in the United States of America from the Covid-19 virus

That’s a rough estimate, and who knows how many decades it’s going to take investigators to get a real number, we may never know because - again - the former president didn’t care if anyone other than him lived or died, and he didn’t want people even being tested, much less have an accurate counting of the dead because he felt like it made him look bad.

And he’s right, it does make him look bad.

But more people are dead because of him, and the collection of self-centered morons who ran his government and, again, were thinking only of themselves.

Independent journalistic outfits had to track the dead for the first year of the pandemic because the government refused to.  The journalists only stopped their trackers when the Centers for Disease Control finally started doing its job, under the Biden/Harris administration.

On the flip side, more people are alive today in Minnesota because our governor (and now candidate for Vice President) Tim Walz was sensible and listened to the experts, and wasn’t intimidated by people squawking and doing dumb sh*t during a pandemic that put themselves and others at risk because they didn’t want to be inconvenienced.

And the former president was indulging them because it was an alternate reality he preferred to live in.

1,219,487

200,000

Over a million people are dead who didn’t need to be.

The economy tanked.

The theater industry was shuttered and is still barely hobbling along again now.

As someone who lived through the AIDS epidemic, with another president who didn’t care if I lived or died, I thank God every day that Dr. Fauci gutted it out and stayed in service during that first terrible year that got us to the vaccines.  He’s gotten me through lethal viruses now, bless him.

I know everyone is understandably traumatized by that year of isolation and death.

I had been traumatized just the year before by my mother’s death from a brain tumor - I was primed to understand grief as I was still (and am still) going through it.

Every one of those 1,219,487 people has someone in their life who cared about or even loved them, who misses them, who grieves them.  If they’re lucky, more than one someone.

The exponential blast radius of all that grief - I’m surprised the world is still spinning.

There is a special place in hell for everyone in the previous administration who thought of themselves rather than the common good during that crisis.

So, no.

You don’t get to be president again after you f**k up that royally.

You just don’t.

 

 

For My Goddaughter

Reason I voted for Kamala Harris (1 of 3)

There’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll stick to the top three.

My goddaughter Ursula is 15, so she’s still too young to vote.

So, in part, I voted for Kamala Harris for Ursula.  And her younger sister Esme as well.

Because I thought we were giving both those girls a female president back in 2016 with Hillary Clinton.
(And if the person who got the most votes was elected president, we would have, but the electoral college continues to taunt us.  Something else for the “to do” list.)

And now, thanks to the three Supreme Court seats (two of them stolen, you could argue) filled by the disgraced, twice impeached, 34 times convicted felon and former social media influencer who used to occupy the White House, Ursula has fewer rights over her own reproductive choices than her mother has had all her life.

Yes, she’s 15.

But it will come up, and sooner than either her parents or I are probably ready for.

And I’m not putting up with this Project 2025 nonsense.

In the event it becomes necessary, I will pay for a plane ticket to Minnesota for her and put her up in my house and accompany her to the appointments.  I know someone who works for Planned Parenthood.

But part of the reason I also voted for Amy Klobuchar for Senate, and Ilhan Omar for the House is that I want a President Harris to have a Congress that will work with her to restore women’s reproductive freedom.

Because, honestly, keep your regressive laws off my goddaughter’s body.

 

 

"Spellbound" previews and Threshold Theater cabaret/fundraiser this Monday 10/7

This coming Monday 10/7, Threshold Theater’s 4th annual Coming Out Day Cabaret & Fundraiser

Curious to see a scene from the upcoming world premiere production of my play “Spellbound”?

Interested to listen to me play guitar and sing the song from that same play “Spellbound”?

Well, you could see both those things, among other entertaining acts, this coming Monday, October 7th at the Black Hart of Saint Paul (1415 University Avenue West, Saint Paul, MN 55104) at Threshold Theater’s 4th Annual Coming Out Day Cabaret & Fundraiser.

Doors at 7pm, Entertainment and Silent Auction 7:30pm to 9pm

Tickets at the door on a sliding scale from $15 to $69
(yes, that’s a 69 joke - apologies or you’re welcome)

You can also bid online right now on the individual posts for the different auction items on Threshold Theater’s Facebook page

I’ve been so busy getting ready for this event that I failed to actually tell anyone about it until now - which is a challenge if you’d like people to show up and see it :)

Or perhaps just bid for auction items online, now or later.

We had a great audition process and have come up with a fantastic cast of performers for “Spellbound,” who will be announced at the event.

Also, you’ll get to see three of the cast members (and me reading stage directions) perform the opening scene from the play - which in my opinion is the funniest scene in the play and tells you everything you need to know about the kickoff for the plot.

And since the actors haven’t had a chance to learn the song yet (which is something later in the play), that duty falls to me for now (which is what most of my recent guitar lessons have been focused on).

The other entertainment at the cabaret includes:

A drag performance from Deb U Taunt (Timothy Kelly)

Improv comedy from No Fear ShakesQueer

Bingo

Outbidding your competitors on items at the silent auction
Auction items include

A gift card to Can Can Wonderland

A gift basket from Sociable Cider Works

Crochet Art by Julia Cosgrove

A growler from 56 Brewing

Photography by Nick Mrozek

Various flavors of Absolut Vodka donated by The Saloon

A picnic basket (including some tumbler glasses and more vodka)

Tickets to the following shows in the current Guthrie Theater season:
The Heart Sellers
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Mousetrap
The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Year
and Cabaret

Also tickets to the as yet unannounced first two selections in the 2025-2026 Guthrie Theater season (in September and October 2025)

And you can also bid to give me instructions on how to write a 10 minute play of your choosing.

You can get the bidding going in advance online by posting a comment with a bid on the item of your choosing on Threshold Theater's facebook page

If you can join us in person, we’d love to see you.

And if all you can do is bid online, that’s great, too.

And mark your calendars now for the full production of "Spellbound" next spring, April 18 to May 3, 2025 at the Phoenix Theater.

And now I’m going to go play the guitar some more…