Week of Touring

Suddenly, it’s warm in Amsterdam. And I have assumed the voice of a traveling journal-ista.

The Leidseplein is cluttered with tables, chairs, and unfurled Coca Cola umbrellas. The wind no longer cuts through clothes – instead, its a cool and welcome draft that breezes lazily along the canals in time with newly untied paddle boats.

The new show posters are up. Boom Chicago Saves the World. I’m guessing that the opening of the show is the official start of Spring. Regardless, it’s creeping in nicely.

And last week, while our Singapore crew reclaimed the rehearsal process, five of us went to Seville to teach millionaires how to improvise. For four days, I was in Spain with Brendan, Jordan, Jim and Ken. Now, Seville was supposed to be the sun’s city, but we fearless Boom actors found it only cold and grey. Only on Monday was it sunny at all, or nearly sunny at least. I had Tapas for the first time, and Sangaria – all on the first evening, at a café hidden down some cobblestone side street.

The second day in Sevilla was begun with a show at eight in the morning, for a room of Basell employees. We won them over, as we always do, and then met in the lobby to walk the city. We saw the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world. We got lost in alleys that were closely framed with the most vibrant, yellow buildings. I took 6 pictures before my camera ran out of batteries. Jordan bought a Dungeons and Dragons game at a tiny comic book store, and learned how to play it while the rest of us took naps and showers. We closed off the evening with a game of Dragonlance – because all improvisers are dorks – and then went to bed early.

The next day was the Bus. My favorite part of the entire week. We drove for an hour and a half into the Spanish countryside, and Jordan and I talked about Action Movies and Anime as orange orchards passed by in thick clouds of green. We stopped at a Bull farm (complete with small arena), and taught the aforementioned employees how to do Word-At-A-Time stories. Our boots got muddy – I don’t think Boom teaches classes outside often … Pheasants walked around while Italian men did scenework. The Improv Championship show was held in a farmhouse, and then we took taxis back to Seville and Brendan listened to the Aresenals game on Spanish radio.

This weekend, I walked Amsterdam with Sophie Michel, and found a new café along the Prinsengracht. Strange to find myself 2 hours away from her – it will be very nice to carve out a new friendship with an old friend.

Every day is wonderful, emotional, exhausting, and above all, critical.

And the new show is going to be pretty funny.

18

A year a and a half. That’s how long my contract will be.

To give you an idea of how long that is, Tuesday marked a year and a half since Sept 11.

A lot can happen in a year and a half.

The Thick of It

I know I have no right to complain, being that I do what I love and make money from it, but a 14 hour day is a 14 hour day whether you’re filing papers or running around on stage. I would *rather* be on stage, but both will make you tired. And we’re working from 11am-1am these days … so I am tired. It’s difficult to come up with new sketch ideas when you’re learning 3 new sketches a day (get them at 3pm, learn them by 7 to be performed in a show) and not getting any sleep. I’m *always* at Boom.

But next week I get to take a break. I’ve been scheduled to go to Seville, Spain for 4 days. We’ll do 2 shows. One will be in a Bull Arena. Seriously.

So, again, I have no right to complain. In fact, I’ll take it back. I’d rather be doing this than anything. 14 hours is fine by me. And tonight, two of my sketches are in the show. They’re far more topical than is my instinct; we’re given writing assignments as opposed to just bringing in what we think is funny … so one of my sketches was written with Suzi and it’s about an Asian kid working in McDonalds and asking the customers to abuse her, and then the other is about Tom Ridge (Homeland Security) trying to convince america that Pants are a threat to national security.

When I write it like that, it sounds like both of the sketches are right up my alley.

I turned in WereChair, but it was declined. Oh well … just forces me to write more.

Scavenger Hunt

I realized something today that made me a little sad: I haven’t the patience nor the vocabulary to articulate the profound change Amsterdam is affecting in me. I wish I could write it out — I’m sure it would be valuable to me in the future. And perhaps it would make for a good read. Unfortunately, I’m just too damn impatient to figure it all out, so I’ll just have to keep writing down events in the hopes that their details will imply how overwhelming this experience is.

Yesterday was the Boom scavenger hunt. Pep spent much of the last year and a half planning a full day event for the cast and immediate tech crew, and it all came to fruition over the course of 6 hours on Sunday the 2nd of March, 2003. At 14:00, we all checked into the irish pub “Hole in the Wall” and received our team breakdowns and first clue. By 18:00, I had biked all over the city. I had taken mysterious envelopes from waitstaff at cafes I had never been to before. I had followed photographs to a swamp where a bottle floated on the murky surface of black water — which, once retrieved provided a digital code to a cellphone message that sent me to a man sitting at a booth in a restaurant across town. I had traipsed through a dutch jazz club looking for old medicine labels. I had used the internet in a basement at a coffeshop near the Leidsestraat, and pulled envelopes out of a tree in an unmarked park whilest a homeless man looked on with inebriated amusement.

I may spend all of my time with the same 20 people, but it’s such critical play time that it’s hard to believe I’m paid for it. Yesterday counted as a rehearsal — we get Friday off because we had a treasure hunt.

I don’t see how I can come back the same person.

I’m at boot camp. I’m in a comedy war. I’m in a sensory deprivation tank. I’m on paradise island. I’m in a foreign country, and I don’t speak the local language very well. I’m growing comfortable with 20 new personalities, and no one I know at home will have access to them or understand it when I say, “Colton and I hung out at Haagen Daaz today.” It’s as inaccessible to you as this was to me before I arrived, and I’m not looking forward to the loneliness that will come when I move back some 15 months from now. I know I have things waiting for me at home — and that much of life is in small pieces that form a much larger mosaic — but it still seems such a shame that I can’t share this with everyone at home in such a way that it will be more comprehensive. No amount of photos or entries or ticket stubs will submerge you in the atmosphere of A’dam the way that I’m drowning in it now. And once I leave, there will be no way to get back to it again.

Oh, right. I forgot to mention that my team won.

Today we started rehearsing and writing the next show, “Boom Saves the World.” Here we
go …

P.S. Check out Boomchicago.nl (click on reviews) in order to read the article about Jim, Suzi and I getting cast in the 2003 show. It’s funny how a whim can change a life. I owe many thanks to Devo and Derrick.