#dave pasquesi

NOTE: In all honesty, I can’t remember exactly what happened this day in class. There were a lot of exercises that had to do with reacting genuinely, from the core of our beings, but it was all so deep and intense that I can’t remember exactly the details of what caused each breakthrough. Ken has been recording every day, though, so I’ll update this post when I get his recordings. Just know that my explanations on Thursday and Friday’s posts have bit of them in there. SPECIFICITY, EMOTION, PHYSICALITY. -- CRS

I had my ticket to TJ and Dave that I’d purchased at the beginning of the intensive, so my evening was certainly set in stone. I walked with Kevin, Alice and Matt to eat at O’Malley’s, which is apparently THE Irish bar in town. I had some sliders that tasted average and a couple of cocktails before 8pm rolled around. Matt went downstairs to see the free Harold shows and Kevin, Alice and I went upstairs to check out Felt. My old friend Seth Dodson supposedly helped start it, but he hasn’t been around iO lately according to Eric. Either way, Felt was hilarious. They got away with a lot of stuff that human improvisers wouldn’t be able to do by virtue of the fact that they were puppets. I’m okay with that, though. Besides, the best scene in the whole piece would’ve worked with humans or improvisers.

I followed Kevin quite closely this time and got a really great seat for TJ and Dave. Robert Price was sitting near me with two cute girls he was in the middle of talking their ears off. One of them, this girl named Molly, showed an overt interest in me so I had fun flirting with her until the Ike Reilly song came on again. I didn’t see TJ make a little ritual this time but I did see Dave and him congregate at the crossroads like last time. As they took the stage, though, they happened to be joined by another figure: Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tracy Letts.

Letts’ work was just blowing up hard when I was graduating from Texas State. I still remember Chris Cornwell explaining this crazy play he went to see on Broadway called Bug that he didn’t know what to make of. A few years later The Alley did August, Osage County with Emily Neves in a great role. A year or so after that Leighza Walker put on Killer Joe (which is about to be a movie) at Obsidian Art Space.

The lesson of specificity was still rattling around in my head as TJ and Dave (and Tracy) gave a perfect example of why it needs to be done. The whole set centered around Tracy’s character going to ream out his boss Chuck on a topic and then backing down from it, much to the chagrin of the rest of the office who baked a cake and made a banner. Through the whole piece, they never stated what it was the company did or what Tracy’s character wanted to talk to Chuck about. About 35 minutes in or so, after a couple of rounds of other people talking to Chuck, Tracy’s character said, “You didn’t talk about the thing I wanted to talk about?”

TJ and Dave’s eyes lit up when this happened. They fell on Tracy, begging him to tell them what it was that he wanted to talk to Chuck about. TJ was doing lunges for no reason as a way to heighten his character. It was amazingly hilarious and an underline to Colleen’s notes about specificity. No matter what it was, Tracy’s conversation with Chuck had been built up to the point that revealing what it was would become detrimental to the piece. Of course, they’re each professionals and so they made it work like crazy, but specificity is clearly the better way in general.

I walked outside to discover Robert getting nervous and bombing with Molly’s friend Brittany so I told him we should go to Dimo’s as that’s what Molly said they were doing. I ate an interesting pizza with peppers and fresh mozzarella on it and wingmanned for Robert quite fiercely for a bit before walking home tipsy at a fairly late hour. I crashed out on the air mattress and was soundly asleep until about 4:30am when I was awoken by the feeling of daggers in my stomach. I tried for a bit to get comfortable and hold things down but it reached a fever pitch and I ran to the toilet and began uncontrollably vomiting. Since I was in such a rush to get to the toilet, my stomach muscles clenched when I was in a strange position and I ended up pulling an oblique muscle.