Sessions

The past two Fridays I've been rehearsing with Jeff on his directing program improv show. It's like an improvised VH1 Behind The Music. Thankfully I don't do any singing in it, my improvised musical abilities are touch and go at best, I narrate and guide the piece dictating time jumps, locations, situations, and set up songs. Mike, Jeannie, and Alison are the band and have been creating some amazing, catchy, and stylistically different types of songs.

It's gratifying and challenging to do narrative based longform again. I haven't done it since I did HouseCo at Second City back in 2011. It has different requirements and restrictions. In this particular instance most of the onus is on me to guide the piece and create a logical, if not totally satisfying, narrative arc. It is significantly divergent than the kind of improv I've been doing recently, it's refreshing. It's also interesting working with Jeff and Jeannie in this different context outside of Schwa. I never got a chance to have Jeff as a teacher so being directed by him has been great. Working with Jeannie outside our already established patterns has been fun and freed us up to try some different characters and dynamics. I've never worked with Mike or Alison before and they've been a real pleasure. The rehearsals have been easy and fluid and fun. Kind of surprising because, to my mind, musical improv can be difficult and clunky.

We start a four week run this Thursday in the DeMaat theater at Second City 10:30pm.

I asked Jeff if we had a name. He replied "I panicked and just said Sessions."