#badkittenimprov

As I write this, it is Monday. By the time you read this, who knows? It may not even be 2014 anymore. You may be reading this as part of a survey course on the history of live comedy in what was formerly known as the United States that you're barely passing in 2155 AD at the University of Northern Mars, Blargstock campus. I certainly hope that's the case. The Blargstock campus, I'm sure, has the best History of Comedy department in a five planet radius.

Anyway, again, it is Monday. It is the 22nd day of the month. That month is September. Bad Kitten's Launchpad month. The month that the grand poobahs at the Philly Improv Theater allowed us to grace their stage every Wednesday at 7:30 PM. This coming Wednesday is the 24th. It is the last Wednesday of the month. It will be our final Launchpad show. At least that's what they say.

It's been a crazy ride. Bad Kitten (I'm one of them, the one you probably haven't met, the one you've probably seen only briefly and asked "who's that older, chubby dude hanging out with all my friends from Bad Kitten? why does he look so grumpy?") has been rehearsing twice a week, with two different directors. Two very different directors. At this point, we've got Improv notes coming into our brains from all angles and we have all begun leaking those notes out of our nipples. Meggles (who is a medical professional) assures us it isn't serious and that it will clear up on its own. I hope so. I've ruined several dress shirts and those are not cheap, even when I buy them at TJ Maxx. We've been swimming in a sea of Improv and it feels so good. None of us want it to end. In fact, we'd all do just about whatever it takes to continue our LaunchPad Improv ride. Whatever. It. Takes.

We're so grateful to PHIT for making us its inaugural LaunchPad team. It's been amazing. It's been amazing to get up on that stage and perform in front of a packed audience every week. Hell, it's been amazing just warming up in the Green Room, watching the House Teams sample the champagne and caviar that PHIT management provides for them at all of their shows. We are just so fucking grateful it hurts. It is this gratitude that makes what I'm about to say next so difficult. Because there is no doubt that PHIT has been good to us. But what must be done, must be done.

On Wednesday, after our triumphant "final" LaunchPad show, we will not be leaving. We, the Bad Kitten 7, will be locking ourselves in the PHIT Green Room and we will not be leaving. We refuse to cede our LaunchPad crown to Office Hours, though they all seem like very nice people and I personally know several of them to be top-notch improvisers. This is not personal. If they want our LaunchPad spot, they will have to pry it out of our cold, dead, adorable, furry hands.

Last week marked Bad Kitten’s second LaunchPad practice with Raja. The two hour rehearsal was both emotionally straining and surprisingly perfect.

The emotionally straining part was my fault. I came to our rehearsal in a malaise from the night before. The interesting part about this malaise was that it didn’t stem from alcohol or a lack of sleep but from a general (yet strong!) sense of “ugh” I was feeling about life. I didn’t have sex last weekend. Now, you shouldn’t think that sex is an overly normal thing for me--it’s not--but it’s the way I didn’t have sex that really bummed me out.

When you’re 25 years old, single, living in a big city, and you put “control cream” in your hair, there’s a certain amount of pressure to live an interesting life. If you’re not having sex with a model or a kindergarten teacher or a 50-year old divorcée, you should at least be hanging out at indie film festivals or poetry slams or cafés that offer free cucumber water.

Fast forward through my Saturday night and you’d see me at 2:00 AM, sitting on my bed eating “some” (??) amount of Reese’s. Fast forward a little more and you’d watch me slip on my shoes to walk one-and-one-half blocks to Insomnia Cookies. Fast forward past me eating two cookies on the walk back and you’d notice that I opted out of brushing my teeth before passing out on top of my comforter. Fast forward through a bunch of farts and you’d watch me wake up on Sunday morning, stare at an empty Reese’s wrapper on the pillow beside me and enter a malaise. “This is my mid-twenties.”

It was time to go to practice with Raja. I wasn’t feeling overly funny or creative or skinny and I certainly didn’t feel like doing improv. Raja wanted us to practice finding The Game (or the funny/unusual aspect) and we spent a substantial amount of time working, analyzing and reworking scenes.

The great part about being coached by Raja is that he’s smarter than we are. Raja has helped us to see the endless possibilities in how to make a scene funny. I don’t know if we’ve ever thought as hard about improv as we did on Sunday afternoon. Further, I don’t know if we’ve ever seen such quick, genuinely earned results.

The great part about playing in Bad Kitten is the innate physical and emotional comfort level between us. We have been taught by our great outside-of-Launch-Pad coach, Alex J. Gross, to heighten our emotion and physicality as much as possible. As a result, we’ve touched each other's butts, screamed, kissed, licked tongues, cried and put on, if nothing else, fun shows for audiences.

It hit me near the end of practice, the opportunity of it all. A highly-energetic, physical, intimate team, being instructed (and complimented) by an intellectual, comedically-enlightened coach. Adding to this opportunity is a supporting theatre giving us a weekly run for a month. It’s an incredible and unique and perfect opportunity, no matter how little sex you have or how many Reese’s you eat.

Well, look at this. We’ve started blogging, in a series we call “Scratching Post”. Over the next few weeks, check back here to read about our experiences with the PHIT Launch Pad series. We’ll rotate the writing duties among the Bad Kitten members and maybe have a guest blogger or two to spice things up. With any luck, it will all give you a better glimpse into who we are and how we’re growing as a team. Let’s get this party started. Our first writer is Neil!

Hey, all you cul-de-sacs and shiitake mushrooms!  

Okay, so, none of us have done this blogging-about-improv thing before and I’m a little scared to get the ball rolling without any model in front of me. So I’ll tell you a little about the practice, though I’ll mostly avoid boring inside baseball discussions, and I’ll also tell you about who I am and why I love to do improv, especially with Bad Kitten.

Sunday was our first practice with Raja. We met at PHIT and were pleasantly surprised that we’d get to practice on the stage! One thing I noticed about the stage was that the curtains that I’m used to weren’t down (out?) so the space to play in was bigger than normal. Raja taught us some new warmups and we revisited old favorites. (Warmups are very important at 11am, which is prime brunch time for most people. ) At one point I was a goth teen’s pet possum. Dan proclaimed that “family ski trips are the worst," which may or may not be true. I wouldn’t know. We later ran a few montages of scenes so Raja could get a feel for how we play with each other.  I was in a scene with Megan, where she was a French-speaking seamstress who was excited about the makeup I use on my knees. This arrangement came back in a few later scenes , and in the future, I urge all of you readers to develop close personal relationships with your seamstress or tailor. I later played a creepy cousin named Brad, who loved Avatar, in a scene that got a little… blue. Sam developed a great game of fake curse words, which was the inspiration for the greeting at the top of my post. Overall, it was a fun practice and a treat to be on the PHIT stage. Raja’s got a great head on his shoulders about improv philosophy, so I’m excited to hear him talk more about his experiences and views.

A bit about me: I started doing improv in January of this year with a 101 at PHIT, taught by the incomparable Alex J. Gross. I’d been curious about it for a long time, and came to try it this year after I saw Reasonable Doubt at Philly’s Fringe Festival in 2013, then saw some shows at ImprovBoston, where my brother plays. When I’m not playing with Bad Kitten or losing my shirt at Wednesday night jams, I help scientists, local non-profit groups, and everybody in between with presentations and social media.  I network vigorously, online & in person. I have a Ph.D. in psycholinguistics which is surprisingly handy. And for the lady Kittenheads out there, I’m a single, omnivorous, 5’7” adult human male who likes dinner parties, adventures, and accumulating used books. (Oh, yeah. I use the Oxford comma. It’s a point of contention in the Bad Kitten publicity department.) I have taken more pictures of European graffiti than anybody else you will ever meet. One October, I wore a necktie every single day.