Buenos dias, Sneakers! It’s episode 230! According to Ian, the answer to a dumb joke. What dumb joke? Well, you’ll have to listen to the show to find out!
This week on the show: apologies; pre-Equinox; Ian’s steamed; realist drama; Great Casper’s Ghost!; it’s not easy, apparently; a brief re-visit to humiliation; obtuseness, the grudge; our responsibilities to each other; the Beatles’ secret career; comedians losing their sense of humour; David Brenner; Dave’s morbid question about Andy Kaufman; comedians that push the limits; Don Rickles; a strange detour; and, finally, the ghost of David Brenner.
ATTENTION SNEAKERS!!! Ian and David will be at this year’s VanCAF doing a live version of Sneaky Dragon! Our guests will be our friendly neighbour and cartoonist James Lloyd and not our neighbour, but also a cartoonist Lucy Bellwood. We often take questions during the show so have a bunch at the ready, please.
Details: Sneaky Dragon at VanCAF – 5:00 PM, Saturday, May 21st at the Roundhouse (181 Roundhouse Mews) in Vancouver, BC
By the way, Ian and David will be tabling at the show so drop by and visit and talk our ears off, please!
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I’m loosely (and sometimes monetarily) associated with the improv company of which Ian speaks. If there’s still a perception amongst aspiring performers that taking workshops with that company means they’ll get to join the company, then they should be warned. They should look at improv classes like any other acting class, or dance class or singing class and know the going rate for similar instruction in their area. Will there be performance opportunities? Will having that training help your career?
The “public education” branch of the improv company was recently overhauled by the woman in charge of it. These days, they promote classes not just to people who want to be improvisers, but also to non-improvising actors who want to expand their skill set and to non-performers who just want to be more confident and effective in the workplace and in their daily lives. (Hmm, maybe they are drifting into Scientology territory!) They say the student’s focus should not be getting to the main stage, but on getting solid improv training.
It’s true, they do promote the, oh let’s call it “The Newbie Group” as a way for students to gain unpaid performance experience in front of a live audience. It’s my understanding that they can audition for it after they take the core workshop series (approx. $550/32 hours). The Newbie Group FAQ warns that it’s not for everyone and that stronger players get more performance time. It says the group is not necessarily a stepping stone to the main company, however when space opens up they will “certainly consider” filling them with newbie performers. 7 performers from this year’s Newbie Group have been offered (paid) Guest Artist status which is one step closer to being asked to join the company.
Is that enough for it not to be a scam? Over to you!
I read recently that 70 people auditioned for the “Newbie Group” in the last round of auditions. As you said they need to take a series of workshops in order to audition. Maybe these performers wanted the content of these workshops, maybe they didn’t, but they needed to invest over $500 each to audition and that feels wrong to me. The company made at least $38,500 from these people in total. I was one of the first people in the original “Newbie Group” and if I needed to pay hundreds to thousands like people do today I wouldn’t have been able to be part of it. Lucky for me I didn’t, I took a lot of low cost weekend workshops and put in a lot of time. There was the occasional $100 workshop but not too many and they weren’t mandatory. It feels like it’s much harder for an improviser starting out today. It feels like pay to play but the odds of getting to play are very slim.
In today’s $, you probably did invest a bundle in improv training! Back then, you could see a movie for $2.50 on Tuesday! But I take your point about the mandatoriness of it. At least now with groups like Instant Theatre and Blind Tiger Comedy offering improv classes in Vancouver, the consumer has more choice.
When I started taking workshops was one way to get an audition for the company but there were others. A couple of the most popular performers (some of which did a popular sci-fi comedy show I was in and you wrote) were brought in because of their acting background without paying for any workshops. For Christmas shows people auditioned and joined the casts without taking workshops then often stuck around after those shows were done.
Now it seems with very rare exceptions that the only way to audition for the company is to have paid the company between $500-$1000 for their classes and that seems ethically wrong.
If I audition for Bard on the Beach the local Shakespeare company they never tell me to take some of their workshops first. I’m sure if they had them they’d be great. Top notch actors sharing their experiences. But they don’t. Many of the actors do teach but you don’t need to take those classes or pay anything to audition.
If I audition for the Arts Club or back in the day The Vancouver Playhouse, I wouldn’t have been asked to take their classes first (even though the Playhouse had a theatre school). Same with Green Thumb even though they teach workshops.
The audition process is always separate from the workshops. Otherwise it feels like all those acting agents that will book you as a client after you take their series of classes. Maybe the classes are worthwhile, maybe not, but it looks like a scam.
As things are now, since workshops are the only way to audition for the company it’s a pay to play situation. The Second City operates this way but with a few more loopholes to let people in who haven’t taken the workshops, but actors do take them in order to audition. The difference with The Second City is they rotate out the cast every so often so there are always openings where the local company has people that have been there 10-20-30 years and aren’t leaving.
But bottom line, a professional theatre company needs to keep their workshops and auditions apart from each other.
I have a quitting story…! It’s not the most dramatic or anything, but hey, you asked for quitting stories.
I had been working at a grocery store in file maintenance, working the whole job all by myself after the previous file person was fired. It was a hard job with long hours which I was frequently taken from to do cashier work because of lack of staff, meaning I was constantly behind on my work. Even so, my boss told me I was his best employee, and I did a great job with what I had to work with. When I finally started going back to school and I started working there part time I was replaced by two people, a manager and another full time file person, and yet they still brought me in most weekend to do the early morning ad changeovers for them.
Then, in the middle of mid-term exams and within a month of each other, my grandmother (My mother’s mum) dies and my step-father (my mother’s husband) gets gravely ill. I was only working one day a week at that point, but I was scheduled to work on the Sunday to do the ad changeover. My step-father was on his deathbed and it was my last chance to go see him, but my bosses wouldn’t give me the day off to see him for the weekend. When I asked why the two other (full-time) file maintenance people couldn’t do it, I was told that one was on vacation that weekend and another was off her feet due to back surgery.
Though I understood they were in a bind, I had to sit back and think: Which would I regret more in 10 years? Not working this weekend shift and momentarily screwing my co-workers for a day, or not seeing my step-father before he dies and not being able to be there for my mum? I chose the latter. I called up my manager and quit at that moment and was on the train out of town that Friday. My step-father died only a few days after I saw him.
I do feel bad for screwing over my co-workers for that weekend, and for leaving such wonderful people on such a sour note. They really were great people (for the most part). But it was one of the most stressful times of my life, and I needed to be there for my family. And I was so glad I was. I understand it was a crappy time for everybody, but I was tired of being used by the other FM staff so they could have weekends off when I worked every weekend for the whole year and a half I had that job to myself out of necessity. Sometimes we are put in crappy situations, but I’m glad I did what I did.
I have a Fired! story for you guys.
I used to work at a call centre, like a lot of people looking for evening work during uni, and we had this one easier job come up that was calling named respondents to ask them about the TAFE course they just completed. (To help fix any bugs, keep them relevant, etc. “TAFE” – Tertiary and Further Education, I guess is “College” here in Canada? It’s between high school and uni.)
Anyhow. The success rate for this job was 80%. We were told if we couldn’t meet that on the first pass, we were going to have to call back people who had already refused. A terrifying prospect. (All these people had already received three hard copy surveys in the mail they hadn’t filled out, thus the calling.)
So I had this one lady who was super belligerent. She started doing the survey, then got increasingly annoyed with each question, and I tried to explain to her how important her answers were to the institutions so they could re-tool their courses if need be and how we might even have to call back people who refused, that’s how much they wanted everyone’s opinions! (Admittedly, I shouldn’t have told her that. Inside information!)
She took that as some kind of threat, suggesting we were doing something illegal, and I had been given her every opportunity to hang up for ages now (we’re not allowed to hang up on them no matter what happens) and she just wasn’t taking the out. Just wanted to keep berating me. Eventually I said something that REALLY annoyed her (can’t remember what) but she lost it and was all “Right. I want to report you to your manager. What’s your name?” – “I’m not giving you my name…” – “No, what’s your name? You said it at the start of the call, why can’t you tell me again?” and I said…
…
“Well, you should have paid attention at the start of the call!”
She flew right off the handle, called me a bunch of stuff, hung up, and within 20 minutes, I was fired. She’d rung the TAFE institute and complained. Gone right over the heads of all my managers. I was to be made an example of. (I was one of their best researchers.)
Still. A stellar case of right comeback at the right time. I regret nothing. 😀
(Sorry that was so long.)