I did an audition for Madcap Theater today. It was fun, but i was somewhat surprised by how it went. Each person only got to do one scene. That’s not very typical for an improv audition. When I auditioned for Mouth Off, and when we did our later round of auditions, there was always an effort to see each auditioner with a few people, and in a few scenes. Oh well. For the Madcap auditions, we were called into the theater in groups of four. Each of us four got on stage, introduced ourselves briefly, and then we were put into pairs. The other pair went before I and my partner went. Their’s was the only scene I got to watch. They were told to do a flat scene with the suggestion of dough nut. They didn’t have very interesting or distinct characters. The guys running the audition asked them to make a few changes to the scene to try and get some more character work, but there wasn’t much there.
My partner initially wanted to do the scene as a one word story. This was logical enough, trying to demonstrate knowledge on scene game structures, but I knew that Madcap tends to focus on zany character work more than trying to impress folks with knowledge of structures, so I told him we should just do a regular scene. When I saw that they were doing changes to the scene in front of us, I was thankful that he didn’t argue with me, because it would have been impossible with one word story. So, I told him we should be a logger and a hippy environmentalist trying to save the forest. This seemedlike the most obvious way to have distinct characters and conflict in a tree scene. He was the logger and I was the hippy who showed up late and chained myself to a tree that had already been cut down. He chopped off my foot. My foot being chopped off was an act which I deemed “uncool, man.”
Since the one scene was all they saw, they have no idea whether the idea was mine or my partner’s. Even assuming they liked it, I’m not sure how exactly they plan on picking who they like best. I shouted loudest during the scene, when my foot was cut off, so I guess my zaniness level was higher than my partner’s. I suppose that would be the prime differentiating factor. Of course, I have no particular reason to suppose that they liked our scene best, as I only saw the one other scene. Apparently, I’ll know by Tuesday, which means I’ll probably blog by Wednesday, if you want to know how it went. Rick was there. Rick was also at the Mouth Off audition I went to. If arbitrary symbolism has any merit, then I guess I’ll be likely to beat out Rick again, and he is my lucky angel or something. It also means he’ll probably be inspired to kill me.
After the audition was done, I went to the avenue theater, because the taping for Radio Avenue was happening. Apparently, it broadcasts on Monday. I read a few lines from a movie for a “stump the listeners” movie quotes quiz game. I have officially made it a month since I stepped away from my day job. I guess going from having no idea what to do, to being on local radio is acceptable progress for a month.