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New Workshop: Chair Work for Advanced Improvisers
Chair Work for Advanced Improvisers - Instructed by Dara Katz
8 weeks
Sundays 12am - 3am
$350
Will you ever be the best improviser you can be? Do you have a shot at being the best improviser in the room? A crowded room? A house packed with very important agents, managers and decision-makers? To get to that point, you need to know how to perform with the toughest scene partner you’ll ever have: Mr. Chair.
Prerequisites:
To enroll in Advanced Chair Work, student must have completed my previous workshop, Chair Work for Car Scenes, or a reputable improv theater’s advanced studies program. Students with recommendations from an improv instructor who performs regularly at ticketed venues for an audience of strangers or has an IMDB page may also be considered.
Course curriculum:
Perhaps you understand how to improvise. You know how to communicate through character work and solid acting in order to create something beautiful, heartbreaking and at once knee-slapping funny. Without any pre-planning, just your improviser instincts, you can present Truth (capital “T”) where there once was just empty stage.
Well, you may know how to do all of “that,” but have you ever tried to do a seated improv scene without a chair? It’s hard. You have to have crazy strong quads. It isn’t like, oh let me open this improv cabinet and grab an improv glass type of object work. It’s nearly impossible. So, for even the most advanced improviser, using real chairs is a must. Don’t believe me? Go see a Second City main stage show. They use chairs.
In this workshop you will study how a chair affects a scene and how you can affect the chair. You will wipe the slate clean of what you thought you knew about chair work and recalibrate your mind to think about chairs in a whole new light. We’ll start with the basics like sitting in chairs and how to bring on, position and strike chairs in a way that can provide hearty laughs from your audience. If the point is to get laughs, good chair work can be the piece you’ve been missing—the piece you need to land your next commercial audition.
Finally, depending on how advanced the class proves itself, we will hopefully concentrate mostly on advanced chair work. This includes understanding how to throw chairs at people on stage without them fearing you or never wanting to play with you again; how to throw chairs at audience members without them needing stitches; and how to make your chair into a horse.
Course materials:
Chairs and the Advanced Improviser - an E-book authored by me. You can download once I give you the URL and password and pay a small E-book download fee of $59.
*Limited class size since the space can only fit so many chairs.
DOUBLE HEADER TONIGHT!
The Era will be performing sketch comedy at
The Playground Theater 8pm - $10/$5 student discount
Belmont & Halsted
Holy Fuck Comedy Hour @ The Annoyance Theater - 12am FREE
The Era Debuts at 2012 Chicago SketchFest Saturday, Jan. 14 at 6 pm
“No, not heavy metal! It’s crabcore!”: A two-woman sketch comedy show where you forget there’s only two performers @ Stage 773
Come!!! Tickets are $14 here.
FINAL ERAS SHOW TONIGHT 8pm
The1950s are alive and well in the bomb shelter that is The Upstairs Gallery.
Come sip on a martini as we present some of the hottest acts off the Hollywood blacklist:
Kellen Alexander
Sit Still
And we, The Era.
We’d love to see you there.
$5 suggested donation.
“The drama is not dead but liveth, and contains the germs of better things.”
“Ew, Dad. Stop talking about your theatrical sperm.”
Entry from our sister (who’s more streamlined and organized and prettier than us) blog. We’d love if you’d follow!
Spec Script for The Real Housewives of Orange County
by: Dara Katz
As many of you know, The Real Housewives franchise is my favorite thing on TV right now, and my dream job would be to write for them. So if Andy Cohen is reading, please consider my great story lines and character development.
INT. VICKI GUNVALSON’S HOME OFFICE
SUN POURS through the windows making Gunvalson’s WAXY SKIN more apparent to cameras. Desktop COMPUTER SCREEN simply says INSURANCE.
FOOTSTOPS are heard down the HALL. Gunvalson quickly SHUTS DOWN COMPUTER.
VICKI
I’m almost ready, Don!
DON appears in doorway, NODS, GROANS, LEAVES.
Gunvalson quickly TURNS BACK ON computer.
EXT. TAMRA’S BOYFRIEND’S EDDIE’S BACKYARD
Tamra and EDDIE are BONING. Some of her NIP makes it ACCIDENTALLY into EPISODE.
INT. STUDIO
GRETCHEN ROSSI is FILMING a COMMERCIAL
GRETCHEN
And what’s extra super amazing— amazing? Is that how you pronooonse that?
PRODUCER
Yes.
GRETCHEN
Did you just call me a gold digger?
PRODUCER
No.
GRETCHEN
I’m not a gold digger. I don’t want to get married ever! I just want a lease. Get what I want when I want it and turn it in when I’m through. Even though I was engaged to Jeff, I knew all along it was just a lease.
PRODUCER
We’re wasting studio time. Can you just say your lines?
Gretchen picks up MASSIVE PLEATHER PURSE with MASSIVE GRETCHEN CHRISTINE hideous EMBLEM.
GRETCHEN
This thing is amazing. Who doesn’t like an amazing thing to put things in? With this thing to put things in, you will always be organized, and you will always be a fashion-I-sta.
EXT. Park
Ex-housewife LYNN CURTIN sits on a bench INJECTING BOTOX into her arm like HEROIN. Curtin’s TWO DAUGHTERS sit Indian style on ground BITCH SLAPPING each other.
LYNN AND TWO DAUGHTERS (repeatedly)
I’m over this.
Ex-housewife LAURI’s STEPDAUGTHER MCKENZIE (George’s daughter) appears in background doing CARTWHEELS
MCKENZIE
Believe. (repeatedly)
INT. SHOOTING RANGE
PEGGY TANOUS SHOOTS at TARGET
PEGGY
I suffer terrible postpartum depression. I would get in really, unimaginably low places and just wonder if I should end it.
[pause]
I own this gun for protection.
INT. ALEXIS BELLINO’S HOME—we mean HER HUSBAND’S HOME
Alexis reclines on a chaise longue with SERVANTS FANNING her face. She sips on a SKINNY GIRL MARGARITA.
She looks out the window. Her CHILDREN are surrounded by a CIRCLE OF NANNIES.
ALEXIS
Jim, my lord, I’ve prepared myself for your taking.
JIM enters clad in JESUS robes. Alexis bows and kisses his hand. Jim SLAPS her face.
INT. Interview Room
VICKI is being interviewed.
VICKI
Life is good.
QUINN FRY enters carrying SLADE SMILEY’S children.
QUINN
I’ve found these orphans!
VICKY
Life is really, really good.
END
You must watch the video of Amanda Bynes above. She is not only adorable, but so so so funny.
If you haven’t hoyd the news, Bynes is retiring from from Hollywood. Did I care when I first saw her tweet?:
”Being an actress isn’t as fun as it may seem… you heard it here first, I’ve retired.”
The answer: No. I cared very little if at all.
Then I came across this video, and I was honestly laughing out loud and smiling. When her stand up routine abruptly ended after three short minutes, I wanted more! She was this little darling bundle of laughs, irony and cuteness. She GOT comedy. You can tell.
So what happened?
The fun went away for her. Or maybe it never really was fun. She went from this energetic sugar-highed little pistol to just another tween trying to be sexy. That’s at least the image I got from her. I confused her a lot with Michelle Trachenberg in that they both look awkward dressing up in those bandaid dresses, hair extensions and a little too much MAC makeup. She got caught up, or was forced into, the Hollywood Image of young, dull starlets the likes of Paris Hilton, Lohan and Audrina Patridge, all those stupid girls who are famous for partying and wearing slutty clothes and having no personalities.
Amanda obviously has a great personality. Wish we actually got to see her use it after her kid years on Snick.
Not that Amanda Bynes isn’t a cute girl, but now that I weirdly care about her career, I wish she had stuck with the comedy. And not the kind of comedy where she’s the hot sister or girlfriend, but a leading lady comedy. She had the talent to do it (WATCH THE VIDEO!). Maybe she still does.
Get back to stand up Amanda. I mean that as a compliment. But, only if you have fun doing it.
-D.
Cameron Esposito, one my favorite Chicago comedians is making waves people! Her hilarious—I know because I was at the recording and you might just hear my laugh!/or Sarah’s!—NEW and DEBUT comedy album, Grab Them Aghast
Her comedy is so fresh and new and funny. You’ve probably never heard anything like, so I highly suggest you check it out! Support Chicago Comedy! (and good comedy…)
Want to know more about Cameron? I interviewed her a couple months ago. Here’s the link.
The Era
We are Dara & Sarah!
We are Chicago comedians, students of improv, commentators on life, liberty and the eclectic quirkiness that is this time. We are THE ERA.
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