Posts Tagged ‘DSI Comedy Theater’

Feb
24

Intense Comedy Hustle

Last week Ben Snitkoff caught my #Hustle face on camera.

I was working hard for the NC Comedy Arts Festival and, from the look on my face in that picture, some may think I started to hit a wall. What wall? I was just hyper-focused on the game, in the center of the action — in the eye of the storm. It was a crazy month. I got engaged on Jan 29th (SHE SAID YES!); I kicked off NCCAF on Feb 2nd, hosted Ignite Durham on the 9th, welcomed Eddie Brill and Emo Philips to Carrboro, pitched a major improv job and, while working around the clock, DSI may have booked another major comic with Carolina Theatre. But even when I seem to be holding everything together sometimes I still need to remind myself what I’m capable of. I like to watch The Matrix and Neo’s first fight with Morpheus:

“You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are. KNOW YOU ARE.”

I know I can handle anything that comes my way. I don’t think I can. I KNOW I CAN.

But is that a trick? What if I trick myself just long enough so the job gets done? Is that air I’m breathing?

What motivates you? What tricks do you have up your sleeves?

(even when you look like you may have reached #Hustle capacity)

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Posted in festival production, leadership | 2 Comments »

Jan
31

Charitable Comedy Takeover

As Executive Producer and Artistic Director of the NC Comedy Arts Festival, I want to personally welcome you and invite you to enjoy the largest comedic event in the South.

DSI Comedy Theater works yearlong to produce the most thrilling festival possible and we are dedicated to supporting the local comedy scene so that the very best comedians in the country want to play here. I’m enormously proud of what this festival has accomplished since 2001 and I hope everyone reading this will have an opportunity to witness the immense amount of talent we’ll have in the Triangle during the month of February, to experience the community and, most importantly, to laugh.

If this is the first you’ve heard of the NC Comedy Arts Festival, let me take a moment to tell you what we do. For the last decade, NCCAF has welcomed comedy acts from across North America to showcase improv, sketch and standup comedy right here in the heart of North Carolina.

Each week the festival showcases a different comedy genre. This year we open with sketch comedy and film. Week two boasts some of the hottest up-and-coming standup acts on the road today and week three closes with a return to our roots with 26 incredible improv comedy shows featuring acts from New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and North Carolina.

If you are returning as an audience member or participant, welcome back and thank you. Its dedicated comedy fans and artists like you that make this festival possible year after year.

And for the 2011 festival my company has decided to donate 10% of ALL proceeds to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA We Build People Scholarship Campaign.

If we Sold Out our Festival shows we could raise $10,000 for the YMCA! So buy a ticket TODAY for you and a family member, buy a block for people at work or click around the festival site and suggest shows for your friends to go see. Laugh Out Loud and help DSI make a difference in the community.

NCCAF Sketch Comedy (February 2-5), http://nccomedyarts.com/sketch

NCCAF Standup Comedy (February 9-13), http://nccomedyarts.com/standup

NCCAF Improv Comedy (February 16-20), http://nccomedyarts.com/improv

Thank you.

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Posted in business, community, festival production | 1 Comment »

Dec
4

Discrete Math and Comedy

The following post comes from the Online Notes of my current Improv 401 students.

“Zach’s brief diversion into the world of discrete mathematics last night got me thinking.” — Nick Mykins

It’s very often the case that the game of a scene can be put in the form of a proposition, which can be shown to be either true or false. This proposition can usually be put in the form “For all X, Y is true”. E.g. “For all things I do, it is true that you will deliberately screw me over” or “For all things I make, it is true that yours are better than mine”. (It gets kind of iffy for games that are based on a character choice)

Anyway, to PROVE a proposition of this form, you have to actually show that it holds for every single case. This is what we do when we’re playing the game of the scene; we just show a bunch of cases for which the proposition is true. We could technically have scenes last forever by doing this. It’s rarely feasible to prove a “For all…” proposition by showing each case one at a time because there are so many, and the rule of threes limits the number of examples we can give without boring the audience. So playing the game never actually completes a proof (which is fine, because we’re improvisers, not mathematicians).

However to DISPROVE a “For all…” statement, all you have to do is give a single counterexample. These are the edit points and blackout scenes. One counterexample is all it takes to formally show that the proposition is not true. After that, you’re done! Edit.

There is no grey area in formal logic, just as there is no grey area in comedy. And in the class of games that can be stated as “For all X, Y is true”, a proof is just repetition, and a disproof is contrast.

Repetition and Contrast, OUR KEYS TO COMEDY!

I replied that Nick had won comedy for the day and encouraged EVERY student to watch this clip.

It is possible to synthesize exicted bromide in an argon matrix.

AND SCENE! Nice work, Nick!

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Posted in Comedy, improv | No Comments »