Men in ShirtsMarch 1, 2005
In The Beginning
In a failing cybercafé (weren't they all?) that I frequented daily after school, there was an improv troupe. I was 14, and had seen the show all of twice. I was a fan of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (British Version), so I was already familiar with some of the games they were playing. I was quickly becoming a fan of this little indie troupe doing funny stuff in my hometown.
On their third performance, a senior member of the troupe (Lou Houchin) asked me and another audience member to play "Jeopardy" because one cast member was MIA after beating up an audience member at a different venue the week before, and another was MIA after an embarrassingly crude pick-up attempt went horribly wrong. I played "nervous", since I was, and the scene blew cock manure. However, Lou saw something in me and took me under his wing. We have been best friends ever since.
Over the next two years, we (mostly Lou at first) built a NEW troupe (everyone but two members were under 18 yrs old), to perform at the cybercafé under the name Experimental Theatre. Only the two eldest members had any improv experience. The rest of us got by with a book called "Improv Comedy” by Alan Goldberg and a LOT of ego. A handful of us began to play with the group that Lou had originally been playing with in the cybercafé. We would play as fill-ins when one of the cast was to busy, upset, or hung-over to make the show. Inevitably, the cybercafé went under and we began to search for new coffee houses to play in.
About a year later, we changed the name to Mr. Rogers Sweatshop (MRS) and began to play wherever we could find free space to charge a cover. When we met Chuck Charbeneau (who is my better half in “Men in Shirts”) we already had a massive following, and he was the missing piece of the pie. He brought structure speed & professionalism to this loose crew. The time commitments increased, we did a couple sketch shows in a 800 seat house, and although we didn’t fill it, we always made more money than we spent.
We found ourselves playing eight venues a week with that cast. We had two pizza parlors, many coffee houses, and even a soup shop. Wherever there was a struggling business you could find MRS bringing people in one night a week. We carried that schedule for about 8 months, it was brutal and wonderful. We started to break-up through-out the following six months or so. Some members went to college, some started working, one moved to L.A., one of ‘em found religion, and moved to a seminary. We still keep in touch, but it’ll never be like it was at the prime. Our last show had 400 people at it, and I received my first and only DUI, driving home from the after party. It was a crazy time.
After my court proceedings, I was 19 and had just begun commuting from Detroit to Chicago. I wanted to take classes at some place somebody told me about once. The place was called "Improv Olympic". The day I arrived in Chicago, I walked into that tiny black lobby, where the stairs are to the left, the crusty black curtain is to the right, and the empty ticket booth is between them both. That was the day I realized where the beginning really was….Upstairs, just follow the sound of celebrity stories being told by the nice lady with the blind dog…yeah that’s her, beneath the Urn and Godzilla statue…welcome to level 1.
I never looked back. Improv as I knew it was changed forever, I embraced it. It swallowed me, and then defecated so that I could continue to spread cock manure anywhere and everywhere. It took me five years to get to the beginning and another two to realize where the beginning is. The same place it’s always been, right in front of me.
Posted by Clifton at March 1, 2005 3:37 PM