Latest / Theatre Life with Ben Kercheval / Kaci Beeler | Part I: Austin's Renaissance Woman Refuses to Pick a Lane

Transcript

Kaci Beeler | Part I: Austin's Renaissance Woman Refuses to Pick a Lane · Theatre Life with Ben Kercheval

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, it's Ben.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to let you know real quick that this episode with Casey Beeler is actually going to be broken up into two parts.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The first part, obviously dropping today, and the second part being released as part of our regular two-week schedule on Thursday, October 1st.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So going into this conversation with Casey, I knew that it had the potential to run long.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: She is put pretty simply one of the most accomplished performers in the Austin area over the last two decades plus.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's an incredible improv performer over at the Hideout Theater.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: She's been in movies, television commercials.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: She's a playwright, a director, a very accomplished artist on both small and large scales.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: She pretty much does everything.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna get into all of that, but it's just gonna take place over the course of two episodes so we don't drag it on with an episode that will go probably two and a half hours or so, because that's about how long our fully unedited conversation was.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So sit back, enjoy part one with Casey Wheeler, starting right now.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, and welcome back to Theater Life, a podcast for theater people by theater people.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Ben Kergival, and my guest today is one of Austin, Texas's most acclaimed and versatile creatives, an award-winning performer, director, instructor, and playwright.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: She's been a mainstay in Austin's theater scene for more than 20 years, with her improv troupe parallelogram a phonograph at the Hide Out Theater, and as a co-founder of American Berserk Theater.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Between the two, she's directed more than a dozen improvised and scripted full-length plays.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, she's an experienced scenic designer and commissioned artist of both small and large-scale paintings, with an art degree from St.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Edward's University right here in South Austin.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Her onscreen credits span TV, film, and commercials, with arguably her biggest project coming as the national brand voice of Domino's Pizza from 2021 to 2025.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, it would be less time consuming to name the things she doesn't do.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So without further delay, it is my great pleasure to introduce Austin's true Renaissance woman, Casey Beeler.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Casey, welcome to the Theatre Life Podcast.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: What a name that all in one incredible.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: What an amazing introduction.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like very I am blushing.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like whoa.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I get there like 90 minutes before we open or something like that.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got a saying.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's get your piss hot, get your energy up, get ready.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that introduction was an that was an invitation to get your piss hot.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's in my body, isn't it?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Already hot.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you gotta get it even hotter.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to start as I do every episode.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I like to go back to the beginning.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think personal stories are incredible.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: In my research about you, it seems that even at a young age, you had a clear-eyed vision of having an all-encompassing artistry and refusing to pick a lane.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that mentality come from?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what did Casey Beeler's childhood look like as an artist trying to find the earliest iterations of her voice across a multitude of mediums?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I am a triplet, so I have two brothers my age, and I feel that that did make a highlight, a spotlight on what I was interested in because I think people were constantly asking the three of us what we liked and comparing us to each other.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And my brothers were very outdoorsy as children.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: But what I did love doing was I loved being indoors, like coloring and drawing, and I loved playing with my like dollhouse or my my like dolls and r little scenarios and things with them.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I I have a feeling that it goes back to that and just really loving visual work.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: I remember being in kindergarten or first grade and really trying to understand how to draw something from a side perspective because I was drawing stick figures, I think I saw an older kid's drawing in the hallway, and it was it was a like more of a 2D perspective.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember thinking, oh, I want to do that, I want to draw like a little picnic basket with like food around it, and then loving the time in art class, and also you know, getting some praise for that, and that being a big part of my childhood, given that I was sort of in this situation to have to share that with my brothers.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I think there is something strange and competitive when you're a child with two siblings your own age.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then really it was just that I love doing art.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was getting more and more intrigued by theater.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted so badly to do more theater as a child, as a young child.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: My parents would not pay for like outside of school instruction to a certain point.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: They did a little bit with some art classes at one point.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: I remember hearing a friend of mine, like I remember hearing this one like kid's voice on the radio, and then in kindergarten when they were doing show and tell, this girl whoa just sounded so Tex and tell.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Susan Amarillo.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was born in uh Los Angeles, but but moved to Texas when I was around the age of five.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember hearing like her say, Oh, that's my dad's car dealership, and so I'm in the commercials.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember thinking, I hear that on the radio all the time.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: I want to do that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: How did she do that?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I had little moments of wanting to do more, and then doing little school plays and things and church plays until middle school when you have to pick an elective, and then the elective in in sixth grade at Chisholm Trail Mid middle school was half the year was art, visual art, half the year was theater.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thought, oh, that's perfect.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to do choir, band, orchestra, and I was so excited about it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I was always wanting to do both from as long as I could remember it, and it's been an interesting journey doing both visual and and theatrical.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: It makes more sense now that I'm 39.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know so I I know that your dad, Terry, drove you all to different high schools.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that guy was going all over Roundhock, and he was taking you to Westwood, which was I I want to say was the furthest away from where you lived.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So just with the reference that you weren't taking private classes or private instruction.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So was that just understanding, okay, if that's not gonna happen, I need to go to where the Fine Arts Academy is, and I need to be able to submerge myself into that situation just because that's gonna be the best possible outcome for me.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of the first part of the question.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second part of that is do you have memories of those early morning drives with your dad?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just okay, you're going all the way across town.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was like a 40-minute drive, which is not insignificant for getting to and from school every day.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: And originally there was a bus.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was in middle school, and they came by and brought these pamphlets for the Round Rock Academies, is what they called it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the the Westwood High School was the Fine Arts Academy.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: I originally spent because it was block scheduling, so A and B days of school.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I my first semester, first six weeks, I was at Stony Point High School near my house down the road, uh, one day.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: The next day I was across town and I took a bus.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: But uh and then very quickly though, it was not practical to be at one school on one day and another school the other day.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be in a production of a Midsummer Nights Midsummer's Night's Dream, and they had rehearsal every day after school.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: So how was I going to be at one school across town?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I ended up transferring and Brett I didn't even know you could do that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know that you could be at two different high schools at the same time.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think Brett and I tried to do this originally.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: We tried to do both of us at Stony Point on the same day, and then he was at Round Rock High School for the business academy.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: My my twin brother Brett.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, and then because we still wanted we were sad to be separated, but I will say I was happy to not be going to Round Rock High School.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: That was the feeder high school from my middle school, and I was super bullied in eighth grade um of middle school, and so I was very excited to escape that cohort of jerks, and no one knew me at Westwood, so I just sort of got to reinvent myself, and then yeah, and then the the bus system I think only lasted a year, and then my dad was driving me, and it was a really special time for us.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like my dad passed away three years ago, and huge uh Ben Ben knew my dad for you know since we were young, Terry.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing guy, and yes, amazing.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I remember that he had a six CD changer in his car, and we had certain songs and that we liked.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: One song that anytime I came on the radio, it was like our song was Werewolves of London by Warren, I believe.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was just like a song I liked that he liked.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was just very cute, and he we would use that time.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: He would he's the kind of person who like knew all of my friends and my friend drama and all of my brothers' friends and their whole deal.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think he came to really cherish that time, especially because I was like then in rehearsals after school all the time, and I wanted to be with my friends on the weekend.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Theater kids get very close, as you can now appreciate.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you I don't know if you did a high school theater, Ben.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I did, and and also high school rehearsals are still no joke.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you would you you would finish class, you know, probably what, three, it's like four o'clock.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was four o' five.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you finish at four, and then we'd have to go to because I went to Round Rock.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I thought so.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was with Rock.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were with Brett, yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And but but then we would have to go to McNeil, which at the time had the.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, the Performing Arts Center.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: We did our major plays there too.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, because Round Rock just had, I mean, to call it a black box might even be a disservice to black boxes.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: I saw that space, yes.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a converted library, it was uh humble means to say the least.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So anytime we did a large-scale production, we had to go to McNeil.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You had you would have rehearsal from probably you know five, something like that, and you know, maybe till ten.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you'd get out late, and so I from seven thirty a.m.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: thereabouts, till ten p.m.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: at night, if we were doing a major musical, that that was my that was my day.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I can understand from your father's perspective.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there wasn't it wasn't a lot of time during the week.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't I don't know that I always thought about it that way because I I the summers were endless.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't go to summer camp for the most part.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I did go to one theater summer camp when I was 17.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um but for the most part we didn't it was the Texas Shakespeare Festival has a teen week.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: I did uh two back-to-back weeks, one that was all uh stage combat and sword fighting, and then one that was all like Shakespearean acting.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's in uh East Texas, Kilgore College.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: Incredible, by the way, if you've never been.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like they have they put on like four or five plays in repertory with the same larger cast, and everybody lives in the Kilgore College dorms.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Kilgore College known for the the precursor to the Rockets.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the they they have that like kickline dancing, like that's what they're known for, is whatever that dance team is.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, but uh so most summers my brothers and I were just like in the house all day long.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um we had one car, we weren't going anywhere.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I liked it the more I I had theater friends, and then that then I was getting involved in in improv uh in in the summer when I was like six sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: That early, huh?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: What cued that up?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: I had a friend who's uh who passed away in his twenties named Phil, who we were all really into going to the hideout theater downtown.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think I started going when I was like 16 because they had this really we thought very funny improv troupe that was people who went to my high school and had all graduated before.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: My high school theater teacher was a British woman named Beryl Nifton, and she had like taught us improv games constantly, and also she had been there a while, so most Fridays, if we had class with her, it was improv Fridays, which means like we felt like we didn't have to do any real work.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: We just were like, it's improv Fridays, Miss Nifton, which means we just do improv games the whole class.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so we started an improv troupe uh at Westwood High School called the Premier Improvisational Theater Society or the Pitts.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: The Pits.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we would go watch this group called The Well Hung Jury, which I didn't even I was so like naive that I didn't even understand the double because they had t-shirts with like a little a guy watering a tree as there's a noose around his neck.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: It was mostly a bunch of dudes.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm friends with all of these guys now.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're they've mostly are in a group called the Available Cupholders.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: And they were pretty legendary, honestly, and um for their experimental improv formats.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the Chronicle loved them.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they had many, many positive write-ups, and so I fell in love going to the hideout to watch this group, and I would sit in the front row and I would laugh so hard I would fall out of my chair, and I definitely thought I could never do that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that is a bunch of like really funny people who are friends, and they are operating on another another level that I will never reach.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so when my friend wanted to start an improv troupe, I thought there's no way I'll be good at that, but I don't want to be left out, so I will do it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: What did early improv Casey Beeler look like?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I would imagine you're not good at it right away.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're not, and that's the thing I tell people now, as like having done it for 24 years or something, 25 years, is I'm like, can I cuss on this podcast?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: We we try to avoid the F-bombs if possible, but generally we'll let it fall in the back of the side.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I don't want to say enough and piss hot, so I guess we're that's true.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: You did say that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I would say I say to people, you eat shit as an improviser.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna eat shit.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're just gonna like, you're gonna face plant, and it's pretty much a part of the process.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I'm talking to newer people who I can tell are trying to avoid the faceplant, I'm like, it's going to happen.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's just part of it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: The improv gods won't let you feel too good about yourself for too long.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Your ego is gonna get smacked around.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably true of the theater gods, too.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like, as soon as you think like, I've got this, I'm on top of the world, something's gonna come around.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very dangerous to let it, you know, there's always a it's a more of a general saying, but things tend to not be as good as you think or as bad as you think.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a level of you can't get too proud of yourself.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's be and because it will you will get humbled, and particularly when you don't have the scripts to rely on, you're relying on your own storytelling.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the audience go off the rails quick, for sure.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that can go sideways that I've experienced now, and uh that you can just be like, oh, there's a heckler that night, and you're trying to use it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you get a lot of hecklers in improv?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: We have, yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like less in recent years, maybe.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's because people like caught like stand-up comedy where the stand-up comedian really lays into hecklers is making people do that less or what, but but certain late night shows will definitely get it.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And we've had people just come and they'll repeat lines that we're saying that they like, which is kind of nice, but also very distracting.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I'll say, Oh man, in the pizza shop, and then I'll hear in the crowd, oh, the pizza shop.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and like it's like it'll just keep happening.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes it's a person who doesn't realize they do that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we're trying to figure out too sometimes if it's somebody with maybe some kind of disability, and we're we don't want to like make fun of them, but often we'll be like, oh man, the window's open.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can hear the neighbor, I'm gonna shut it, or like, oh, somebody left the radio on.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: We'll try and if it gets really distracting, we try to do some sort of in-world thing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then there have been times where, especially with uh downtown at the hideout theater, I've like looked somebody in the eyes and been like, hey, I'm easily distracted and have ADHD, and I can't think when someone else is talking.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if you could just be quiet.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And even then, I never feel good about that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: I have not found the perfect approach if someone doesn't get it.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Ideally, a house manager would come over and be shut them up, but but usually the house manager is not in the room at the time, and we're just dealing with um that.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: There and by the way, to that point, there there is no good way to handle it, and it's I've had people talk in the house when I'm on stage, and it's it's almost like a feedback loop.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you can't hear or concentrate because there's just another source that's coming in.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: In a perfect world, someone tells them to shut up.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I've had I've had people have full level conversations like what you and I are having right now, feet away from me.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: At least with improv, I can do something about it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're just fucking.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a fourth wall that it's a little bit more acceptable to break.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or, like you said, you you you build it into the world where you can you can almost sort of play it off.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've come close a couple of times.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like the closest comparison would be that you do it in character, yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but still it's it would be so alarming.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm remembering what I've done before because I I've written several scripted murder mysteries for the Austin Steam Train that we then do on the Austin Steam train.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: They have a new entertainment director now, so we haven't done that in a couple years, maybe in like a year, but I had written at least six or something.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've we do these where we the the every it has to be written where every scene happens in every car in order down the train to make sense.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, multiple train train vintage train cars of people get to see the show unfold, and those people on the train definitely think for some reason because you're on the train and the train is noisy that they can just full-on talk if they don't want to hear and you cannot be heard, and you're already screaming all your lines and trying not to fall over because the train is moving.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really difficult.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we what and all my I just cast all my improv friends in it, so they're pretty flexible because we've had trains like go completely dark uh at night where there's no lights and it stopped on the tracks for many minutes or sometimes an hour.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to be pretty flexible, and so the kind of performer who's not comfortable with improv would struggle.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I cast these people, they can roll the punches, they can make up new dialogue if they need.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: But what we do often was we'd say our lines really loud to the people talking.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just get like probably two feet from their face and look them in the eyes and say my lines.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so I that's always curious to me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've paid you've paid for a ticket, you said they're not cheap.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's clearly an experience, it's not like even going to the hideout where okay, there's a black box space.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: The medium is such that okay, you you're going into this as an audience member, like, all right, I'm I'm immersing myself into this.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: What where where along the line are you going, oh, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna talk.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's so crazy because it's like also in this show, there were many times where no one's in the car with them where they do get to just talk to their people they came with.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, in that case, they have brakes.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, why are they talking when we're in there?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think some people you can tell want to hear everything, and they're like looking at the other people like, what the hell?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Especially if they're younger.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's honestly older people I've noticed that are mostly badly behaved.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like these boomers are and I'm like, you should know better.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like they're so used.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: To their TVs and talking and leaving their TVs on 24-7.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: That is not how I am in my house.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have cable or whatever.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, but I was thinking, you know, anytime I would go visit my mom who passed away last year, she always had the TV on to some degree.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I will remember that when I visit people of a certain age, I'm like, oh, the TV's just on all the time.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if they just get used to there's noise, I talk over it.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think they just forgot how rude it is and how hard it is to talk.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I we actually the most successful Roy and I were uh Roy Janet, your long time collaborator, long time collaborator of many of many sorts.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: He and I do the train plays together, and we would at the beginning of each train carve and the show starting, we started giving a little speech that was like, if you talk while they're talking, they can't hear themselves.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: They can't and we gave a whole thing, and that helped a lot, but it still didn't help completely.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like we wrote a thing in the program in huge block letters that was like, do not talk while the performers are talking, please.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say that overall the patrons to the hideout theater were way more respectful than they ever were for this murder mystery thing.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did did you meet Roy at Hideout?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's and so you're you're going to these shows.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about those early just like how you ended up getting to the point where you're then performing with it and the people that you're performing with.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I was going to see a lot of shows and I was seeing a lot of narrative improv or improvised plays, which was very rare to be seeing in like 2002, 2003, uh, 2004.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of it was at the hideout theater.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Then my improv group, my high school group, we would perform very rarely, but we were rehearsing all the time.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: We would rehearse for hours uh at my friend Phil's house that was near Westwood High School.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we thought we need to get really good at this before we do it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, one way to get better with it is to perform earlier than you're ready and to do like games and then build up to like scenes and then stories.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: But we didn't, we had nobody really helping us, and so we had input from our theater teacher when we were in her class, but we mostly did this outside of it.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: I remember we performed at like a a couple of things where we were off to the side doing something at like in the assembly room while other stuff's going on.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we did a couple shows in the black box at Westwood very explicitly, and that was that was great.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, that was huge to like have a captive audience looking at us, I think leveled us up.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then why why does that help?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you feel like you're not very polished and you're trying to get there, what is it about an audience that helps you get there faster?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've worked with a lot of people and made a lot of different work, and there's most people come to life in a different way when a crowd is there.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: There is some people who do better at in a rehearsal setting than they ever do in front of a live audience.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: There are some people who are almost dead energy-wise in a rehearsal room and a completely different person in front of a crowd.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's also people who are the same in a rehearsal room as they are uh in front of an audience, but most people bring it up another level when there's an audience there.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think there's something about, oh wow, I really need to bring it right now.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a saying in improv, like the best seat of the house is in the audience.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: The next best seat is like if you're just hosting the show and off to the side.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: The next best seat is on the sidelines watching the scene that's happening, and the worst seat is on stage because you time is moving differently for you.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're not clocking everything as well.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: The audience remembers, at least with improv, all the names.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they remember the places, they remember stuff, and when you're in the hot seat, it's really hard to remember specific key details, keep dialogue going.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think there is something though of that itchy hot seat, oh my god, that sometimes just like brings people together.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pressure makes diamonds a little bit.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like for me, I definitely I'm like nervous right before, like really, really nervous sometimes, right before.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Not as much now, honestly, with improv, but every once in a while I'll be like headlining a festival in Europe or something, and I'm like, oh my god, there's like 300 people out there, they don't know us.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: How's this gonna go?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then I think two lines in, I'm like, oh, I feel zen.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: I get nervous before shows.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't well, I don't know if it's nervous.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would probably describe it as more anxious.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's more like I I think I've if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's almost like on the horse in the Kentucky Derby, where once you get me in the stall, you have to open the gate.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can't, I can't sit there.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask me what hell looks like, it's when they call places and you sit there for 10 minutes.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to just you have to let me go.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I have I've developed a really bizarre, I don't know what I would call it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a habit, but it's not a good one.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that I'm proud of.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: It just happens.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: If if it's opening night, I flub my first line every time.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's because I'm thinking about it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then once it happens, you're like, it's over, it's out of the way.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then it's over, and I go, well, I've already messed up once.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It can't like get possibly get worse than that, so just keep going.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow that gives me like a hard mental reset.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm able to and I'm able to just go in there, and then, like you said, you're Zen, and you're just kind of going with it.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is weird when it's when it's a big scripted production, especially if you have a bigger role in it.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: I've done that a few times now, and I'd say that's the most uncomfortable place to be, is if you have a large lead role in a scripted piece.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, it felt like the times that I did it, like I was about to jump off a cliff.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was like, once I get going, I can't stop.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: There was a a piece, uh a play that I co-wrote called Subject to Control with my theater company, and it was a two-hander with my uh one of my best friends, Curtis Luciani, who's really brilliant.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: And but the most of the first uh part of this play was just me on stage, and we wrote it, and sometimes I would wonder why did I write that for some parts of it for myself?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because we wrote it to be difficult, honestly.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like there was it was supposed to be physically difficult, as like I wanted the characters if you s I didn't like the idea of somebody faking being out of breath.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no, I want the characters to be out of breath for real.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we had some things built in, like putting your hands on an actual bucket of ice, um, and not a fake bucket of ice and stuff like that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it did lead to some really interesting performances, and I really believe in that that play.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there that one it was like 90 minutes, maybe a hundred, no intermission.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt like once I jumped into it, I wouldn't come up for air.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was so I think I was on stage most of the play, and so that was that was scary to me.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Locking in with him made it easier for some of the line stuff, but I also remember thinking back having to memorize the lines, and really in most performances, it's not like we're like Broadway level where we're doing like 20 or 30 shows.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Most of us are hoping to do nine in in Texas, right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: If we're doing a run.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: More than that is a little it's a more of an ask for an audience around here.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of shows often have six performances or eight, and so that's not a lot of time to fully onboard the script to where it's completely effortless, you know, like like they have at a different level.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember looking at his face and seeing the scripted page because I'm still trying to track where I am, and of course, when I improvise, it's nothing like that at all.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: I there's no words, and I'm like, I'm I've written plays before with it in mind where it as long as you say the gist of the line, it doesn't have to be word perfect.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Then I want to find a way to do scripted work where it doesn't feel so anxiety inducing for perfection.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, you know what I mean?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because Yeah, I d yeah, I do, because there's a there's a swath of performers, and I and I put myself in this bucket where word perfect matters because that's the published piece, right?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a movie where there's a script rewrite or something where the parameters are a little bit more lax.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that somebody put time and effort into, and you want to be able to d honor it in in that kind of way.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Having been in the writer's room for a sketch TV pilot and written scripts for that that were then professionally filmed to the tune of many, many thousands of dollars.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: And uh anyway, so having written things that were then made, I can tell you, hmm, from my perspective, people are a little too precious about words, to be honest.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think they are from where I stand.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've also improvised thousands of plays, so maybe that is part of it.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: That said, there are certain lines where it's like, no, this needs to be exactly as said.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: But to me, there's certain little interchangeable small words.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was just on a film for five days, this film called In Waves that just wrapped, they shot a feature in 12 days, and I played a larger supporting role on it, and it was interesting because I was memorizing those lines.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was very wordy.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was playing this scientist character that had a lot of exposition sort of dialogue that was important.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I wanted to get it as perfect as possible, but then there were times where I started to say it and it's just weird in the mouth.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so for film, it's just like, well, it wouldn't feel it's way worse if it comes off as bad acting because it's written weirdly.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that's when you're having a dialogue with the director and the writer who are in the room the whole time of like, hey, can I say this this way or can I do it this way?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: Ideally, with a with a playwright process, and the my theater company, we always just produce our own original work.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: So the playwright is always part of the process, and I always wrote the roles to fit the actor, and I told them to change the dialogue slightly or ask me or whatever, so that it was more in a way they would say it.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: I would write it with them in mind and their cadence to try and like help with that process.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: But that's very different than when you're like, here's a Sam Shepherd play, or here's an iconic, like you said you were in anything goes.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's like iconic stuff where you're like, people might have this whole show memorized and say it along with you.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it just kind of depends to me, like what the audience expectation is.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: There is something cool to doing original work because of how malleable it could be and how it could shape to those specific performers, and even help with people who might have like certain speaking difficulties or come from a certain background where they might not speak in a whitewashed way, and I don't want to, as a playwright, put white words in someone's mouth, you know.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: As far as non-improvised, as far as scripted things go, are you then more comfortable writing, directing, creating the vision rather than maybe executing it?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think I prefer to have my hands in as much of the pie as possible is when I think it goes the best, is what I've learned.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt very sheepish about that for a long time.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, oh, that's egotistical, I guess, or like shouldn't I be collaborating more?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I do collaborate.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's certain things that I like lighting design, like I can say what I like, but I can't.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like hanging the lights and programming the board.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, execute that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's people who have a techie brain who like that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I like to work with those people, or I'm a painter, but I don't really love to fabricate the sets.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: I would prefer someone else construct it and then I do finishings, for example.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like that's where I would best put my talent and time.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's fun to just be able to pop in and only act in something and someone else does the other pieces, and then I'm like, okay, this is like more chill, and I don't have to worry about the other things as much.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: But if I'm really fired up on an idea and I have a full vision, it probably it's probably for the best that I execute at multiple levels.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Though I will say I can direct and be in an improvised like play production.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have not been able, I don't think I could direct and be in a scripted show very easily.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um why is that process different?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's because like when you're blocking out a scripted piece, you need to speak you need to be on stage and in the audience at the same time.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: But when I'm when I'm setting up parameters for an improvised production, I'm setting up a system of practices that anybody can then jump into, ideally.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I can watch it and set it up for everybody and learn from what they're doing, and then I can tell Roy or Courtney Hopkin or my friend Margaret Hunsicker or my partner J.R.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Zimbrano, all the many people I work with that I really trust that we've been working together for so long.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: I can be like, hey, you hop out, you be director right now, or you take a look at this.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna hop up there.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Especially with Roy.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we just often take turns jumping into the audience and then up on stage.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I and I just it becomes very seamless, and then it's like I make a playground that then I can play in.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: I will say that I still at times am in my have my like director hat on, and then sometimes it's very hard to get into the Zen place of in improv and enjoying it, where I'm like, oh man, everyone's not no one's being clear about names right now at the beginning of the play.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: And they're really they're really not like doing their good work um building the front of the show.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then I go, like, do I walk in and like start naming things as another character?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do I like wait and see if they've got it?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Luckily, once again, several of my colleagues have the same I the same thoughts, and so usually one of them will go in and start doing it.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we all sort of know what makes a show more potentially successful and what you have to do at the top.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So if I always will have to cast a few of my friends in a show that I'm directing, and a lot of newer performers around the improv scene in Austin might be like, that person's always just casting their friends, not realizing, I think that it's more successful when the people that understand how to build it are in the show.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're not starting off with a bunch of people who were not able to communicate well in the first 15 minutes.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as you can understand, improvising a full play from scratch is a pretty crazy thing.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: It is very difficult, it is totally doable, but it does take a certain kind of work ethic, ego setting aside, and collaborative spirit.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think I'm more able to, and especially after I spend all this time world-building in rehearsal, I want to then play in that sandbox with my people.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: But when I wrote this play, Killer Girls, in 2018, I wrote it and I directed it, and I was like, I do not want to be in this.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: I it's way too hard.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that was really fun because then I also did all the design work for it as well.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that one I really enjoyed sitting back and being like, ah yes, these pieces.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and then it was really cool just to sit in the audience every night, like kind of in the room that we were in, there was some stairs I could kind of sit at the top of and peek over and just watch every performance and just feel really giddy watching them like watching the audience react to stuff that I thought was cool or funny, and I'm like, oh, the audience is loving this.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that part was great too.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever look back on maybe something you performed or something you produced, directed, or whatever, and you find after the fact these little nuggets of through lines that maybe you didn't intend at the time, but because either you or the maybe person that you cast in a specific role playing the way they played it, that they're just they created this thing that like there was a choice or something that it just it made so much sense, but maybe at the time you didn't realize it was happening, but then you look back on it, you're like, oh, that really worked out so well, and it seems so accidental.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: Lately I've been really loving this idea that everything is this and that.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's no or that or is a is a like construct, and everything is actually and.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone said this is the character, and it's also this, and this character is also this, and it's also this, it's never like, oh, is this character finicky or are they relaxed?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, they are finicky and relaxed.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they are everything is all things.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: I that's like a weird quantum sort of thing, but it it's making a lot more sense to me in all things lately.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you ever have mantras that you just carry with you in your daily life?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: I will have something that I'm like chewing on for several weeks, and as I go through my life and making art, I'm like, oh, everything is this and that.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been thinking that lately, and this ties back to what you're speaking of, or my interpretation of it, where I won't realize some aspect of a character until I'm in the middle of acting it sometimes.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then it all hits me, and I feel that cascade of like connection to the other character, or something about like the themes of the show, and it all comes back around.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes that is intentional on the playwright's part, and other times it is just the nature of making quantum varied work, everything's quantum, so where you're finding the meaning in the moment, and that is true for the piece.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes, like the play I wrote with Curtis called Subject to Control, it's about two people in like a future world where the sun is basically destroyed or not somehow not functioning at the level it should be.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: So they're in a experimental isolated dynamic of trying to use telekinesis to bring life back to Earth.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: But they're completely isolated, and you kind of watch their minds unravel.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we wrote this play in 2016, so it was pre-COVID, but the idea of like complete social isolation from any other humans, they are only the the only two people they see, and any uh any other communication they receive about their assignment is through like papers they receive in a like cabinet that so you open the cabinet and there's more papers in there.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everything they receive is through a cabinet where you never actually see the other people.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: They can remember seeing other people, but they haven't in some time.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: So people who watch this show would tell me, like, oh my god, this is like this is a real this is like what a marriage, this is a metaphor for what a marriage is, or this is a this is a metaphor for uh capitalism, or this is a metaphor for grief.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard so many throughout the course of doing this show, and I thought, man, that's fascinating.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: And these people would say this to me like I figured it out, or I understand what you were doing.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I loved being like, oh well, you know, like it and like, yeah, I guess it is all those things because it to me what I was playing with was status, which was like who was in control, and that's part of the the name of it, but who was in control and the and the status flips, like who has who kind of has dominance over the other person is constantly changing in the play between the two characters, and I I find status extremely interesting for all theatrical work, and so I was just playing with that idea, but other people would see themselves or their their their relationship with their mother or whatever within the piece, and I think that's fascinating too, um, when you're making something and you and you have an epiphany.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's all comes back to specificity, like the more specific you can make it to yourself, the more universal it actually is.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people get this wrong a lot who are newer to this sort of work.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they think like, oh, the more broad I am, the more the more universal it will be, the more relatable.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, the more specific it is, the more relatable it is.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's true in improvisation.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: A thousand percent is true in scripted work.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: The more it is person extremely personal to you, and you know why you're doing it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: The more people in the watching it, experiencing it are like, oh yes, I get this.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: I understand this feeling.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's so counterintuitive, but it's absolutely, it's absolutely true.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of nice because then you could you could tell people like, no, no, go off of your intuition.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, whatever you really like doing, whatever is obvious to you, whatever feels real to you, lean into that.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to like grab a choice from way over here.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think people think the most interesting choice is the one they can grab that's the furthest away from them.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: But it's usually the closest to you.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: The weirder, the weirder it is to you, the better.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: The stranger it is like if you're like, ah, I'm such a weirdo that I love this thing about this, ah, that won't be relatable.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm too weird.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's perfect.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's my thing.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that that leads to another question I I was gonna ask you.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, you you can't see this, no one can see this.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have a script in front of me that has probably about two dozen or so questions.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: I probably will end up asking five.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: But that's great.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the nature of the conversation.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: But one of them being between scripted narratives and then, you know, long form improvised narratives, story structure, character development, do they follow similar linear lines or do they operate in completely different spaces?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, they're very similar.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we teach my my group, parallelogramma, phonograph or p graph.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: We've been together 20 years now.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: We just celebrated 20 years last November.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: And when we tour, but even here in Austin, we have a 12-hour narrative intensive where we sort of teach people how to do this work, like or at least the beginnings of it.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh even 12 hours isn't really enough, but it's enough to get a really good taste for it and for our take on it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we always teach something called the story spine.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the backbone of all stories.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh an improviser named Rebecca Stockley out of San Francisco taught this to Pixar years ago, and they still use it, which is which we'll just say people laud Pixar for their storytelling.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: How the story spine works is it's just eight sentences.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's once upon a time and every day, until one day, and because of that, and because of that, and because of that, until finally, and ever since that day.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like what you'd think of maybe for children's stories, but any epic story, even like even something that has multiple seasons, like Game of Thrones, you could condense down and fit it into the story spine.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's, you know, once upon a time, there's a status quo, a person, a place, uh, and every day, there's an everyday, there's a like an existence that is stable until one day the stability of that thing changes.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: So something happens.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: We're always waiting for that.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's the interesting thing.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's usually what's like presented in a trailer for a movie or in a description for a play.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, oh, well, what what's what's the status quo?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then what is different?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then what we want to know is, well, then what happens?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the end because of that.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's not and then and then it's and because this thing happens, then this thing happens, and because that thing happened, now this thing happens.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we're seeing a series of events uh until finally there's a new, there's like a climax, that thing comes to a great explosion or end or a turning point or twist or whatever.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: And ever since that day, we are in a new stability and the characters have changed in a way, and we care, we cared about their journey and we're interested about where they are now versus once upon a time.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so that basis is true for all stories, and if it isn't, it's because they decided to break that structure and choose to, you know, like tell the story backwards or tell it in an untraditional way.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think when I'm writing plays, I think of the story spine pretty naturally, but it's also just a great, it's just a really great simple tool that can then the and because of that's can be however it mini it needs to be.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it is important that it be because of the thing before it.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and there's many more analysis tools for breaking this whole thing apart, but I think they are sisters, absolutely.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's important to us as improvisers in play, is is that we're not just calling it a play as a gimmick.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like to us, we really are making it full, and there are many of them that we've made where we're like, dang, that was really good.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: It would be cool now to just like transcribe it or make it into a piece that someone else could do.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: You could totally do that with any of them.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you're doing these full-length narratives in particular styles, like I think about the one that I saw years ago with the fit uh save the world or whatever that I know the talk talk about a blast from the past.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, people love that show.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you're creating these narratives based on a particular style, and you're sitting down with PG Graph and you're you're getting the bones of it together.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I know there's a million ways that we could talk about this and break it down, but does it also just come from the research and the background knowledge of it?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we feel comfortable creating a narrative out of thin air, is just being so knowledgeable in what it is that we're doing.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is a I think that is the way to set yourself up for some success, is to make sure that the research portion has a good amount of depth to it.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: And when you are feeling it the run itself is a little stale to go back to the source material instead of thinking it, instead of going, wow, the second show we did was really successful and the audience loved it, what did we do?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: So like maybe you think about that a little bit, but it's like, oh, that's right, we had some really bombastic characters, and so maybe I need to do more bombastic characters, but it's usually that the characters were bombastic because you were pulling from something from the source material that felt inspiring.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so, what I often, when I'm like directing a show or teaching a group, I'm like, no, no, if you're an inspire, go back to the source, find something interesting there, and then pull that into your next performance instead of looking at the performance itself, because it's gonna be really hard to repeat the exact inspiration.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was about to say, re replication does not seem a recipe for success in that situation.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, what was in the room that you know, what was in the room that evening is a big part of it, and like who showed up and what energy did they bring?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so every room is different, and so giving yourself some grace when it's different each night, because sometimes it's just going to be, and we still struggle with it.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like we had a very quiet crowd this past Friday, and usually a really quiet crowd when you're you makes you put out more energy because you're like, ah, I've got to reach them, and and uh and so you're putting more of yourself out there, and then like being like, I think this is hitting, and of course, I in this past show.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: As I went out into the the parking lot of the theater, some several of the audience members were like, Oh my god, that was so much fun, we loved it.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we'll definitely be back, wow, and it's like I was like, Oh, good, like relieved, and I was and when I looked at them, I was like, everyone's smiling and leaning forward, they were just vocally very, very quiet, you know.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is a thing that I I tell m maybe greener actors this all the time that you can't use the audience like the the audible part of the audience, you can't use that as a reliable metric because one it's not an accurate indicator, they may not be vocally expressing something, but it doesn't mean they're not enjoying it.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: But even more so than that, it's taking you away from your focus and your intent.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: You might start pressing.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're not really then being true to the performance anymore.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in improv in particular, I would imagine that can be difficult because w people think of improv as like what they think of is whose line is it anyway?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: They think that it has to be constantly funny, constantly, you know, land in punch lines all the time, and that's not what it has to be all the time.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've it's exhausting if it is too long of a show.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like if it's a 30-minute set, then it could be constant laughs or jokes.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: But if it's longer, I mean think about the the TV shows you watch.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like Widow's Bay is one that's out recently on Apple TV and is a comedy that is also a horror.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: And when it's a horror when it's in its horror moments, it is truly thriller horror-esque.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: It is scary, it is playing with tension, which then makes the laughs even better.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not constant jokes, because it's a it's uh it would be hard for it to sustain its length if it were constant jokes.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: People need a break.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I love doing different genres in our improvised plays, and we will work up a style, and then and that way we can kind of decide maybe I I don't like to make my personal productions too prescriptive.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like them to be too formulaic.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: I prefer to set something up where it can unfold, and it's not like scene A is we meet the protagonist, scene B is the protagonist is at work, scene C, people will often think that that's how narrative improv has to be done well, and I find that's really, really, really constrictive.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: At first it seems like it helps you, but it actually hurts you in the long run because sometimes it's like, well, maybe scene A, we meet the protagonist.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: Scene B, we're still we're we're like now at the protagonist's weird grandma house because they mentioned something about that, and that was kind of interesting, and so we followed them there.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Scene C is actually a flashback to the grandmother's childhood because something was mentioned that was interesting, you know.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: I I would rather see how it unfolds.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: The first episode of this podcast I had Ariel Legette on.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ariel Legette does a lot of um a lot of improv with uh at Garage.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I asked her, we had a discussion about what makes good improv versus bad improv.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what we talked about on more of a surface level was the idea that you're just you're you're forcing it, that there's something preconceived that you're trying to kind of shoehorn into it.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: But also, I think just what you're talking about, maybe that's a a a more real version of that where you feel like you have to follow a specific structure rather than collectively believing in the next choice and believing in the next world that you're moving into.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's so good.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that would get at some crux that would be controversial in the improv world because there are a lot of beloved formats that are interesting to use to like learn a structure from and to practice and even to get the audience on board.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel like if you're an improviser, at a certain point, it is also nice to find the structure as you perform the piece and not putting structure totally if there's always a structure, even if you're like, oh, it's a bunch of disconnected scenes, that's a structure.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: But to choose to find the structure and to commit the group to, oh, well, we want to find it, and it will tell us what it wants to be in the room.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's our belief with PGRA.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what we've found over time is people will ask, like, well, what is the structure?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, we get a title lately for many years now, we get a title from the audience, we get several titles, we pick one that inspires us, and then it might be one long scene, it might be it might be several scenes that take place over many years, it might take place over one day, it might take place over one evening, it might, you know, it might take place across multiple eras, it might, you know, flash back and forth between two people in the past and people in the future.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: It might, you know, anything you can think of, it might do that if we're open to it.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you're going through this, I mean, at this point, you all have done it together for so long.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would imagine finding your people that you're willing to do with that that it takes it's it's a long process, you're on the same wavelength in the sense of understanding the assignment.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is it now something where you get 20% of the way through a 60 or a 70-minute set and Roy or someone comes up, there's something that it's like this is working and this is the direction, and we all, without having to say anything, collectively understand that this is the best route for us.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, there's been mini shows where it's going along, and then I can tell that somebody has a spark of something, and if anyone has a spark, I want that juice.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's the good stuff.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we want.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: We want people to be lit up.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if someone has a spark of inspiration, we want to follow that spark.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we all feel that way at this point, and we'll kind of collectively find it at times, but sometimes one person will just have the idea of, oh, this is a this is actually a wild road trip type show.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, I see, they're initiating this.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yes, okay, I get it now.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas maybe in the first 10 minutes I thought, oh, we're just staying in the diner the whole time.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, these characters this maybe is like a crime comedy.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're hanging out in this diner.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh no, never mind, we're going on this road trip now to find something.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone introduces something that they're inspired by, it's very rare that I wouldn't go along with it.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: Every once in a while, maybe if I felt like it, I might at this point knowing them, I might be like, nah, we're staying in the diner, you know.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: And well, and that's an interesting balance too, because even the most uninitiated to improv understand the idea of never saying no, right?
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that there has to be yes and.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there also probably have to be parameters on what where this can go and and what makes sense because yes, the the structure can flow, yes, it can take you into a lot of different directions, but it also you can't get so many wild hairs that you can't follow the narrative of what's happening.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's just your experience speaking.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's not saying no out of something selfish, like I'm going to do this.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's probably the opposite.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying no and like, oh no, we gotta keep it on the track.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Or like, I have a I have a vision, like I have a vision, or I'm excited about this thing.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I can tell if somebody is like throwing something out there out of just like, I don't know, this.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so if somebody's just putting it out there because they're like this, if they're not that committed or inspired, then I might be like, nah.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and really no, it's interesting to think about no and improv because it's it's confusing when you learn that because it is all about yes and, but it's about deep yes, and so deep yes is a yes to the general reality, but it doesn't mean you can't say no as a character, of course.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because it's sometimes saying a yes is saying no.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're set up to be somebody's terrible boss, then we want to hear a lot of no's from your character, for example.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just saying this for anybody who's listening who's like, what how does this concept work?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to see characters that are terrible, even in an improv situation.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't think it should all be middle ground and clean in in that case, that's why I love narrative so much, is because you can have terrible people, bad things can happen, you can have really intense contrast, which is which is so fun and rich to watch, and that's why you can watch it for 80 minutes.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: If everything is just improvised sketch comedy, it's all very fluffy, there aren't any stakes, or the stakes are very low, that is only sustainable for about 40 minutes, I think.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: Unless you're like touring celebrities, and then maybe you do a certain thing for half the show and then another thing for the other half, and then and then it's just like you have to be nonstop funny to to pull that off and and do an you know an 80 minute show or whatever it is.