Urban Explorerer

One thing I’ve realized: the DCM is not at all conducive to regular blogging. Most shows start on the half-hour, and they frequently run right into one another. There’s barely time to tweet your thoughts on a particular show, let alone write a long-form blog post. And really, who wants to write about improv, when you can instead be watching it? So here’s a quick wrap-up of Days Two and Three (here’s Day One)…

All in all, my DCM schedule included
* Friday 7pm – Saturday 5am: watch awesome improv
* Saturday 5–10am: try to sleep (in my bed, at least) when it’s hot as hell
* Saturday 10am–2pm: check out apartments in the East Village (and find an amazing one near Tompkins Square Park!)
* Saturday 3–6pm: musical improv workshop (!)
* Saturday 7pm – Sunday 4:30am: more hilarious improv
* Sunday 5am–12pm: more sleep
* Sunday 1–7pm: even more of the improv

The one recurring theme I guess I could take away from the DCM was: it was hot and sweaty. The venues were hot and sweaty, the New York streets were hot and sweaty, waiting in line was hot and sweaty, sleeping was hot and sweaty, eating was hot and sweaty, the improv comedy was hot and sweaty… most of all, the improv was hot and sweaty (and that’s definitely a good thing).

I started Saturday evening off by catching Baby Wants Candy at the FIT Amphitheater. I lived in Chicago from 2000–03, when BWC was the house team at IO and performed every Friday night. At least once a month (and more when I could get off from my gig waiting tables) I’d spent the evening watching them stage a fully-improvised musical. They never failed to impress, and Saturday’s show was no exception.

After some dinner and drinks, I headed over to the Hudson Guild stages (the line outside UCB at this point was supposedly two hours long). There I caught an amazing stretch of comedy, starting with Big In Japan and Jessica. Both had really tight shows: interesting, intelligent, and hilarious. Almost every single scene shone on it’s own, and both shows came together as excellent wholes. (I especially liked Jessica’s fast-paced scene building style.)

Up next was quite possibly my favorite single show of the entire weekend: Drum Machine, Jill Bernard’s one-person musical with accompaniment provided by a Zoom-Rhythmtrak 123 drum machine. Absolutely brilliant and utterly amazing… the entire audience was completely awestruck. I sure hope this was caught on video, as I’d pay even more good money for a copy of her performance. (Here’s video of her show at another festival.)

Following a less-than-impressive Super CageMatch between NYC champs Death By Roo Roo and LA champs Kaploosh, I headed over to Urban Stages, where I enjoyed WUCB: Live Radio and C,C & C Improv Factory. I was also lucky to catch the ever-brilliant, LA-based Convoy (for probably the last time for another year), who were criminally given only a 15-minute time-slot.

Sunday highlights began with Scheer-McBrayer featuring Jack McBrayer and Paul Scheer and some wonderful scenes about a SlapChop. While Delta Force 2 was missing Rob Riggle, once Rob Huebel and Jason Mantzoukas interviewed an audience member about his previous night hookup in the UCB restroom and proceeded to get into a massive water fight on stage, all was forgiven. When Jason Mantzoukas came onstage again for First Date (minus Jessica St. Clair), he pulled a woman out of the audience and proceeded to go on a first date with her instead. And finally, DCM 11 wrapped up for me with an encore performance by Baby Wants Candy, though sadly in a much condensed form.

In the end this was an amazing (exhausting) weekend… and I’m already looking forward to 2010!