Going Blue 2

When I first started doing improv and sketch I never went blue. I never used sexually explicit language or situations and I tried to keep my swearing down to a bare minimum. Initially I did it because I knew it could be a crutch, something new performers use because they don't know what else to do. After a while it was a badge of pride that I never went blue. I looked down on people that did, I thought it was cheap.

Over the past year playing with Timmy and Stoltenberg on Schwa and seeing Holy Fuck consistently my thoughts on the subject have changed. And from time to time I find myself gleefully engaging in the grossest/sexually offensive content I can. Sometimes it feels like the five years I spent holding myself back from that kind of subject matter built up a lot of sophomoric creative steam which bursts out every once in a while. Coincidentally most of those outbursts occur during Night Shift shows and tonight we were in rare form.

We've been doing a mono-scene for the past couple months, meaning our 20-30 minute set is just one continuous scene. Tonight our show was six girlfriends on spring break in Cabo in their hotel room. It started off relatively innocent each of us establishing who we were- the religious one, the prude etc. We started off talking about hooking up with boys at the "Blue Men At The Beach" performance and making innuendos which became progressively less innuendo and more straight forward. The show took a hard right turn when Damian told us about the local "pussy ghost" which carries a lantern and hunts down other pussies. From there we shot into the inappropriate stratosphere. Afterwards I really wished we counted how many times "pussy" was said. I estimated around 200.

It was a real fun show and we were all possessed with this manic giddiness which can come with playing fast and loose with things taboo.

Going blue can be fun for the people doing it and can be really funny for the audience. The trick is not to do it too often, be original with it, and to throw yourself into it so hard you surpass surprise, hurdle past shock, and land on something totally new and titillating.