THEIR REVIEWS OF US

Having finally cleared away enough time for a Sunday afternoon, I decided to work on my script for this Saturday’s upcoming BERZERK!!! show. The premise behind the show, co-presented by DIY outfits Insurgent Theatre and Alamo Basement, is a program featuring a bunch of shorts with scripts that were all written in ten minutes. The playwright receives a line drawn from an established work of fiction—sent by email from Alamo Basement co-founder Mike Q. Hanlon. Having read the line, the playwright has ten minutes to crank out a complete script. The finished work is presented at the program.

Hanlon had some difficulty getting in touch with me at first, so the short I was to write was simply a back-up for this week’s program, guaranteed to show up in the March BERZERK!!! if it doesn’t make it in this month. Having received a press release from Insurgent Theatre co-founder Ben Turk, I know in advance that the lines for this month’s BERZERK!!! are all drawn from Shakespeare. Feeling that this somehow taints whatever I’m about to write, I decide to make the BERZERK!!! writing experience a bit more complicated for me. I’ve chosn to place Hanlon’s email on a Microsoft word document assigned a random number

Then I chose lines at random from a much more contemporary work of pop fiction I’d written about for an entirely different piece of writing and placed the lines on other word documents, assigning them all random numbers. Having shuffled the documents thoroughly, I will work on a ten-minute script for each line of text hat comes up until I finally arrive at Hanlon’s email. This’ll give me some warm-up time, but I won’t know how much. Hanlon’s email could come-up first or tenth. A worst, this’ll take me some two hours to finish. Here goes . . .

4:00pm
I get a line from the novel—“I think I’ll eat now.” It prompts an image I’ve had in my head about a couple of guys back to back with guns . . . nothing really develops, but it DOES give me some kind of idea what to expect from the ten minute time frame . . .

Bob and Rob is the resulting short. The end is pretty clear . . . the end is the line I’ve given myself to work with.

4:30pm
The line I get reads like this: "No, you don’t." Okay, so it’s vague, but it sounds good. This time, my mind is clear enough that I manage a really fresh interaction between two people. Like much of the rest of what I’ve written in the past, it’s a simple dialogue between two people. Wouldn’t’ve expected the yo-yo to show-up, though.

4:45pm
Hanlon’s emails till hasn’t popped-up. This time the line is “your hair looks like a haystack.” This time, the short is considerably darker than the last one. I’m getting more of a handle on how to crank out a ten minute script with beginning, middle and end, but by now I’ve spent over a half hour working on these things and I’m starting to feel something of a creative fatigue . . .

5:00 pm
Another line from the novel, which I remember being more than a it repetitious. This one is, “I shouldn’t have to run away.” I’m hoping to try something a little different with this one . . . and it ends up being quite a bit darker, This may very well be the first soap-opera styled bit of writing I’ve ever done . . .

5:15pm
The Hanlon e-mail finally comes-up. The line? “Nothing will come of nothing,” which strikes me as something of a pseudo-religious mantra of some sort. The resulting bit is kind of weird, but fun. I find out later on the next day that In Darkness will, in fact, make it to the stage next Saturday night, as a couple of scheduled writers had failed to make the deadline.

Insurgent Theatre/AlamoBasement's BERZERK!!! arrives at the Alchemist Theatre Saturday, Febuary 21st.

I’d arrived at the Alchemist Theatre with a little over an hour to spare before this month’s Berzerk!!! program. I’d us seen the emotionally-touching domestic drama at Next Act staring Manni and Truschinski. Not more than four hours after I watched a father’s inability to articulate feelings for his son’s happiness in the theatre district, I was watching Liz Shipe sink her teeth into the neck of a mindless drone at the Alchemist.

LEAVING THE MOUSTACHE BEHIND

Prior to the show, I found myself talking to Tyler Kroll of the Gentlemen’s Hour.
He had shown-up at the theatre to pick-up some props that he’d left behind at the Alchemist. (The Gentlemen’s Hour does a regular show there.) He had come back from the basement with plastic meat cleaver, a false moustache and a few other things. Tools of the trade for a sketch comic probably would seem pretty strange . . . he talked with a degree of excitement about a false moustache kit that he’d gotten as a gift. Evidently, the best place for costume and prop on a budget is a second hand store . . . the only difficulty there being the fact that you can’t go back for a replacement if something gets lost or damaged . . .

LEAVING THE STAGE FOR RICE-DWELLING MICRO-ORGANISMS

Not too long after Kroll left with his large plastic knife and other assorted props, I ran into Insurgent Theatre co-founder Tracy Doyle. She had picked-up a few additional roles fort he evening due to a few people who were unable to show-up. The weather had been dreadful earlier in the day, keeping some from making it to the show. Nevertheless, the Alchemist was nearly packed by 8pm when the show started . . .

I hadn’t seen Tracy in quite some time. She had picked-up the role of Authority for my little short, which was due at the end of the program. Evidently she has been accepted for a doctoral microbiology program. They’ve to9ld her she won’t have much time for the stage, as she will be spending a great deal of time in a lab with a small civilization of rice-dwelling micro-organisms. She’s doing genetic work with them. She seems really excited to be working with an entirely different kind of audience . . .

THE SHOW

As stated before elsewhere, Alamo Basement/Insurgent Theatre's Berzerk!!! is a series of shorts that were all written in ten minutes. Many of them are strange, incomplete fragments of comedy and drama. Having been to a numb of these shows, I’d seen enough to know each show is quite a bit different from each of the other shows. Here are some highlights from this month’s show—

Fool’s Daggers--A piece by Peter J. Woods. Alamo Basement co-founder and Berzerk guru Mike Q Hanlon, Tacy Doyle and Josh Berg ran through a surprisingly accessible piece by Woods which involved a lot of implied offstage stabbing. Intereting piece with an interesting end.

Misfortune Cookies was not what I might've expected. Elliot Gould played a food critic in the afterlife on TV in a Twilight Zone with a title like this, but this piece didn’t have anything to do with that. It was a bit written by Kurt Hartwig involving three people eating Chinese food and having a conversation. Oddly disturbing for no real reason.

Count Orloff was John Manno’s entry. It felt surprisingly complex for something written in ten minutes, but this strange little Dark Shadows-like piece had an elegantly cheesy plot that fit the format perfectly. Considering many of those old Dark Shadows episodes were probably written in roughly ten minutes, it was perfect. Everyone involved was brilliantly over the top. Nice to see something with a complete plot arc.

14 ½ Scenes On Unnatural Deeds by Alisa Rosenthal was a bit odd. Hanlon and Carrie Masse did 14 scenes written by Rosenthal complete with attempts at quick change. Each scene consisted of a pair of lines or less. Fun, but a bit silly.

Whatever Rex Wants To Title His by Insurgent co-founder Rex Winsome. Winsome was trying to sketch a serous conversation between people about intimacy. It was an interesting fragment.

Xenomorph Ballet was a bizarre little bit of drama by Jeff Gygny. Tracy Doyleand Carrie Masse addressed the audience lying on their backs with heads raised to speak in inverted symmetry with as an evidently symbiotic pair of xenomorphs. The language was lost in what sounded to be pseudo-authentic biological chemistry. Fun stuff. The piece involved black light and strange costuming.

Sex In God was a simple bit with a punch line. It was a Tam Nguyen script about a prostitute who turns out to be having sex with a priest. Short, concise and to the point. It was a one-liner for the stage.

The best transition had to be the Hanlon-fest that happened towards the end of the show. In Dave Hanlon’s Packing Up, Mike Q. Hanlon and Tracy Doyle played a couple that was breaking-up. The scene ended with Hanlon (Mike Q.) getting comically angry, overturning tables and generally making a mess of the stage. This led directly into Amy Hanlon’s Unmerry Wanderer of the Night featuring Hanlon taking a call from an insurance salesman amidst the wreckage. It was probably the most coherent moment in the show and a lot of fun.

Alamo Basement/Insurgent Theatre’s next Berzerk!!! will make it to the stage of the Alchemist Theatre on March 22nd.

February... Russ Bickerstaff writes two blog posts about BERZERK!!! One about writing for it and one about seeing it.