Another angle of madness

Now, as anyone who will probably read this blog knows, My two buddies and I just finished up "The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare Abridged". When we heard that a college not so far away was performing it, we immediately jumped at the chance to see it from an audience view. Last night after work, showering, waiting out the hail storm and so forth; I went over to Joe's. He and Kristen (his date) were there and shortly thereafter Chad and his wife Rainey arrived, and a bit later Julie showed up. There was talk of others coming but no one else showed, which was sort of disappointing as I would have loved to have a few of the others who worked so hard on the show come see a different group doing it.
We arrive at the college and it's a nice intimate little theater, with probably 100 to 150 seats and a nice size stage. The setting for the show is very simple, basically a back wall with two doors, so the only noticable difference there was how it was painted. That being said the similarities stopped there. Of course the dialogue was the same, but the way it was read was different, the way they acted was different, and the things they changed were different. Some of the gags they used worked really well and we laughed at... but we felt very proud of our production. Here are a few differences (okay a lot of differences) in the shows in no particular order.
1. They had no costume changes. Our show was full of them, and it really adds to the show. These guys kept their base costumes on the whole show, and showed their change of charachters by throwing on the appropriate wig, cape, crown, etc..

2. THEY CUT OUT BUTT LOVE (enough said)

3. They sped through their lines so fast you could barely understand them at times. While the show is fast paced and you have to keep moving at all times, you also have to enunciate your words or you lose your audience.

4. In rap faster doesn't always mean better... I'm just sayin

5. THEY CUT OUT BUTT LOVE (Im just sayin)

6. If you don't play up Titus right, it gets totally lost on an audience and gets very few laughs.

7. If you do a pepto bismo jingle and mention diarrheah you get laughs.

8. A breakdancing robot is fucking hysterical on stage.

9. While the show is a hilarious show there are times it has to be pulled back to give the set up for other jokes... our director did a marvelous job telling us when we were going overboard

10. while you are playing yourself, the audience has to be able to tell the difference between you and your shakespeare charachters, otherwise it's not as funny. They didn't do anything to distinguish between charachters.

11. They got a LOT of influence from the video... we weren't allowed to watch it, I am thankful

12. You can really tell when someone is expecting to be a "volunteer"

13. THEY CUT OUT BUTT LOVE (Damnit)

14. Catholic jokes in a catholic college make for an interesting combination. It goes over much better than say a community college or a redneck town

15. The backwards scene is hard as hell, and if you don't do it right it's not NEARLY as funny... (They screwed theirs up big time.)

Overall the show was good, and some of the bits they added were really entertaining. Their mad Hamlet was hysterical. as was some of their football coreography, as well as the work with the volunteer. (Rainey thought they were mean to the volunteer; when she got on stage one charachter says, " and you said my wig was ugly. ") However they lose cool points for not having the converse high tops, (come on guys.) Also there is such thing as Karma, and this show was proof. I, even after raising my hands and participating in "maybe"" maybe not", got singled out for being "weak" and Chad got water spit on him....In our version he was the one spitting the water and I was the one alienating audience members...

In other news... I have today off and am going to hang out with my brother later. Next weekend is opening weekend for Halloween. Anyone wanna join me?