Improv Journal, Numero Tres

Unlike the opening round, ComedySportz likes to keep round two as random as possible. They ensure this by using the Bucket of Doom (oooh!). Referees encourage audiences to "oooh" over the black plastic Halloween buckets decorated with white cartoonish skulls and skeletons. That's right - the "Bucket of Doom" is actually two buckets, both playfully apocalyptic in nature. One holds all of the thirty-or-so games ComedySportz plays, written on Jenga blocks but you'd better not say "Jenga", the other holds discards, games chosen too recently to play again. Referees have rather strict criteria for game-pickers...

Ref: "Is anyone here celebrating a birthday?"

If the audience stares like deer in headlights or people listening to my "185" jokes, toad adds, "Anyone celebrate a birthday in the last year?"

The first one to get the joke gets to pick the game.

or...

The referee finds someone in the audience, either particularly attractive, attentive or commanding - ComedySportz often carries its show on the road, performing for business functions, birthdays and funerals - and asks toad to pick a number between 1 and 3. When (not if) they say, "Two," the referee barks back, "That's exactly right!"

Circumstances determine the right focus - for birthdays, toad picks the birth-ee. For business functions, toad finds the highest ranking individual in the crowd - typically the one sitting at a moderate distance with a neutral zone where underlings are afraid to bump toad's ankles. Pick this person for a "Blind Date" or "Day in the Life" and you cannot lose. Funerals... well, I've never done one (thankfully). I have this theory that referees mention them only for the clever wordplay: we put the "fun" in "funeral". But I've only been around a year and ComedySportz has been doing well in that year. Some people prefer to get laughed into the afterlife.

Now, rewind a little and imagine someone in the audience had said "yes" to the first question. The Referee then informs toad that the players ("Act-letes") have a little song for toad, called the Birthday song. Both sides of the stage, temporarily united by the comraderie of song (like Christmas, 1917, when German and English forces joined each other in a brief rendition of "Silent Night, Holy Night/Stille Nacht, Heilig Nacht" before returning to their respective bunkers and bombing the shit* out of each other), converge on the lucky soul, gathering crazy props like a raincoat, a safari hat and a Batman apron to wear while serenading. They then begin to sing slowly, then picking up pace:

Cast: "This..."

Everyone swings their arms like drunken Irish revellers or lumberjacks with a permanent state of "sawing elbow".

Cast: "...is..."

Eyes lock on the lucky celebrant or celebrants.

Cast: "...your..."

The word hangs suspended in the air. Something great is about to happen, you can just feel it. Even the piano player, whom we've been told knows every song ever written looks about ready to burst.

Cast: "...birthday song, it isn't very long."

And everyone goes back to toad's respective corner, casting off props willy-nilly. The joke-grenade sits in the audience for about three seconds before going off. Then they laugh. Those act-letes actually fooled us into thinking we'd dined at T.G.I. Friday's! For a moment I thought we'd ordered potato skins from a woman in a striped shirt with many buttons! Har-har!

The birthday song is the last ComedySportz bit where the audience takes the brunt of the joke - which helps because an audience won't take many more jabs before it loses faith in the longer stuff. After fifteen unfunny seconds, they start to fidget. Same with a show heavy on blackouts, scripted bits seen most often at Second City Level Five shows and in its classic revues. Since Second City performs shows without a referee, the lights mark the ending, hence the name. Here, try some on:

(from a S.C. mainstage show, lights up on a man an a woman in a familial setting; the man reads a paper)

WOMAN: What are we going to do about this new abortion bill?

MAN (reading paper, glancing up): Pay it.

or GayCo's scene, also cribbed from a mainstage show, but more rightfully stuck in their brilliant "Whitney Houston, We Have a Problem":

(lights up on two men kissing passionately; one breaks from the embrace...)

ONE: I'll bet you've never had been kissed like that by a gay man before.

TWO: You're gay?

or this piece of work, cribbed from my Level Five show, and intended to make fun of the introductions Second City used to do before a sketch: "We now take you to this boat in a Seskatchewan lake..."

(lights up on... me)

MATT: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Second City. For our next sketch, we'd like to show you a little something about time travel...

(eery sound usually provided by Jeff Goodman's wind chimes; lights dim then up again)

MATT: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Second City. For our next sketch, we'd like to show you a little something about time travel...

(eery sound usually provided by Jeff Goodman's wind chimes, lights dim, everything resets)

MATT: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen... (blackout, applause... sensation!)

Thus end the bits. Onward, to Round Two!

* I know what you're thinking: brown bag foul. I'm wearing one right now. I do anyway, for security.

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