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Festivals

Dear Denver Improv Festival

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Thank you for having us.  We had so much fun it should be illegal. Right off the plane we felt an inviting atmosphere. The airport was so spacious and easy to navigate. You’re probably thinking who talks about an airport? Well, when you’re from Chicago and have to go to crowded, congested O’Hare, we do. We appreciate the fact that we weren’t jumping through hoops trying to find our way. Although jumping through loops would probably be fun. The people (of Denver in general) were very nice. The view was beautiful. The malls were great. It was weird. We felt like we could do anything and get away with it. Don’t get me wrong. We didn’t commit any crimes, but we felt free to goof around without people staring at us like we were assclowns. For example, when we went to the mall we walked through the Urban outfitters singing at the top of our lungs. People glanced over and smiled. In Chicago, you’d probably get slapped for singing out of place (just kidding…). While we were there a zombie pub crawl was going down. There were zombies everywhere. Apparently if you wear an X on your back they can attack you so we saw zombies jumping on people. For a second, just half a second, we thought it was real. The theaters. OHHHH did we love the theaters in Denver.  Voodoo, Bovine, Impulse. All Great.  Dave, who is from Denver, told us how great they were but we had to experience it for ourselves to truly understand what he meant.

The Show

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The roar of that crowd is something we will never forget. Ryan was so touched by the response he wrote a blog about it in the green room before the show. We were chomping at the bit to get on that stage and dance our asses off.  Some highlights of the show include: a rhyming troll, a father playing catch with his son but the mother was absent because he told her to “go long” and she never came back, a baptism gone wrong where the person had ‘too much Christ’ and instead became a demon that controlled people like puppets, a cop that made a police car siren noise with his mouth everywhere he went, a ‘Dirty Bird’ mascot ghost from Nantucket that only one guy could see, an undercover Daryl Strawberry who worked at a sandwich bag making company for 3 years, an on-stage birth, and a horrific car crash that sent all of us flying around the stage. Out of context, all of that probably sounds like a horrific dream. If you were there, you witnessed a nonsensical good time. We loved it.

The Workshop

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This went extremely well. In fact, it couldn’t have gone better. Our new friends who took the workshop had a lot of positive feedback and really seemed to enjoy themselves. We loved working with them and thought everyone was hilarious.  They jumped right into the chaos from the very start. We started it off with everyone killing one another (it’s a switch committee thing) and no one held back. People were running up and slapping us around like we owed them money. It was great! Literally everyone of the people made us laugh at some point throughout the workshop. This is a great indicator of the type of talent that attends this festival. We went over in time. It was supposed to be 3 hours and we went an extra 20 minutes. Mainly because we were having so much fun and enjoyed watching everyone perform. In fact, if we could, the workshop probably could have gone another 2 hours…. (dance break).

So, if you’re reading this and thinking “I’d like to attend a festival” we definitely recommend you look into this one. It is seamlessly run and everybody treats you so well.

Thank you Denver. 😀

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Festivals

Thank you to the Detroit Improv Festival!!!

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2013-08-09 20.15.39We went to our first ever festival this past weekend and it was an absolute blast. We went to the Detroit Improv Festival in Ferndale, Michigan and had the time of our lives. Personally (you have no idea who’s writing this but you can guess), I think we became even closer as a group after doing this festival. I know what you’re thinking, “how can you guys get any closer? You slap each other in the dicks on stage?!” Sure, we’re real close, but when you’re running around jumping off of hotel beds in your boxers screaming the Blurred Lines lyric, “WHAT YOU DON’T LIKE WORK”, it takes your friendship to a whole new level.

For starters, the ride down there was filled with screaming, singing, sleeping, and snap-chatting.  If you didn’t notice, every one of those things started with an S. Completely coincidental or was it? Queue dramatic Inception music. We didn’t know what to expect going to this festival. You never know how things are going to go when you’re away from home. However, oddly, we collectively agreed that we weren’t nervous. It was weird. We just felt like we fit in there. Our hats (if we wore them) go off to the people who helped run the festival as they were very kind and supportive and never made us feel like we were outsiders. As soon as we got there, we felt right at home. It didn’t feel like we were doing a show in another state, it just felt like another show.

We had the amazing opportunity to open up for TJ & Dave. A show that one of the heads of the festival said, “sold out 4 days ago.” Needless to say, the place was packed to the gills. As for the show, it was explosive. We were physical. We were silly. But most importantly, we were having fun. Right from the start, we could feel a warm and inviting presence from the audience. They were there to have a good time. They weren’t just sitting at a bar and happened to catch a comedy show on their way to the bathroom. They had left their house to go and see a comedy festival. They were there to laugh. And it was our job to make them laugh. We played fast and we didn’t miss a beat. Some of the characters we played included a boy with a worm arm (who was coincidentally a baseball pitcher), a Mormon hell bent on selling Christ (chasing people on a roller-coaster), an umpire that had no control over his arms and was trapped in a house of mirrors (everyone flailed their arms on stage), and an alien girl with octopus phalanges sent down to Earth by her father to repopulate her species. Yes. We know. Absolutely insane. Yet absolutely necessary.

When we walked back stage, TJ & Dave were standing there to say two words. “Great show.” Together we melted into a puddle of slime. After the show, we were approached by audience members and other groups that had nothing but nice things to say about our show and about the way we play. We were and are so grateful. The support from the crowd, the inviting “right at home” feeling we got from the people who ran the festival and the groups that attended, and those two words made this trip an experience that we will never forget. It brought us closer together as a group and more importantly as friends.

Thank you Detroit. Thank you Ferndale. Thank you to everyone who was a part of the DIF.

You’re awesome.

–          The Boys