I’m taking an acting class right now I’m really enjoying called “Basic Technique” at HB Studio with a woman named Jeanne Kaplan. I am really enjoying the class and feel like I’m learning a lot for my comedy from it and that my comedy informs it as well. I figured some of my friends would like to know a bit about what the class is or what it would be like to take class there, so here are my notes since week two (the first week I started taking notes). Perhaps I’ll post them every week.

Enjoy.

***

Acting class notes

Sensory assignment- close the door/window room
Decide what overall sound in room is, smell,
We exist in a sensory world: touch, smell, hear, taste, sight
First lesson, if you have something to do on stage, you’re not concerned with the audience, you’re concerned with your task.
We do everything in life specifically, unless we want to get killed (hit by a car)
You listen as yourself, you alway do things as yourself in the theater.
Simply and truthfully, listening for yourself/not the audience
You make the attempt even though its difficult because very often the attempt is the nature of the believability.
If you try, it will seem as if you’re doing it for the behavior.
With just a minute’s touching on a particular experience, you gain emotion.
If you try to cherry pick a moment, you don’t connect with a specific emotion/feeling.
With barely remembering, you experience emotion.
In thinking about theater and choices, break convention if you can
Sometimes that boldness and bravery gives you a rich inner life.

Week three

Sit in your room in the place where you usually sit and see something that you’ve seen for a long time but see it anew.
It’s very important to be able to relax as quickly as possible
You need something that’s fast when you’re going on stage or going an interview
Breathe in through nose, out through mouth, relax into your chair
Sensory exercise about what is it like to be on a beach.
Some exercises are for craft and some are for learning about you
You can use your sensory exercise to create inner life for your characters, feeling like you’re taking hot shower on stage, no one has to know, the more complex you’ll get the better you’ll be
Say whole sentence then finish it for learning about you
My biggest fear, regret exercise, spoken to everyone, eyes closed
Self-betrayal magnified to suit the optics of the theater is the whole art of acting. -GBS
The pure unselfconscious revelation of the gifted actor’s most inner and private being to his audience.

This upcoming Monday 1/28, I am captaining a Kaleidoscope team at the Creek in LIC, which means I get to pick people to do a 20-minute Armando/ASSSSCAT improvised set off a guest monologist.

I do not take opportunities like this lightly.

Thus, I have asked a crew of the most talented, coolest, funniest people I have ever worked with to join forces with me for one night.

Also, the women I asked said no.

So, presenting to you a team of men so amazing, so spectacular, so great that they deserve a name befitting them.

Announcing, for one night only:

EPIC DUDE TEAM

Featuring:

J.D. “James Deen” Amato (Rocks)
Matthew Brian Cohen (Spooky Ghost)
Sebastian Conelli (Flower Girl)
George Kareman (The Regulars)
Connor Ratliff (The Stepfathers)
Ben Warheit (Spooky Ghost)
Philip Wolff (Bloomer)
Andrew Yurman-Glaser (Upstate)
and me!

This Monday, 1/28 at the Creek LIC, 7:30pm, EPIC DUDE TEAM is going to ROCK. YOUR. WORLD.

BE THERE AND BE. SCARED.

jonbershad:

beigeucb:

These three gentlemen as well as that dead body on the table spent all morning rehearsing the Best Of Beige show just for you! It’s going to awesome and we really hope to see all of you there tomorrow!*

*Literally tomorrow. Like 24 hours from right now as i’m posting this.

The Best of Beige
Monday, January 21st @ 9:30 PM
Upright Citizens Brigade Theater
307 W. 26th Street, New York, NY

ps. The UCB’s website currently has the show listed as “Sold Out,” but don’t jump off a bridge in agony just yet! The theater always leaves a large number of seats available for those without reservations so get there a little early, get in the “Stand By” line, and you’ll have a really good chance of getting in!

Woo! Let’s do this!

I fully endorse The Best Of Beige because that team is awesome and full of people I enjoy like Marballi, Bershad and McCarthy. Enjoy their show tonight.

Hey guys!

Got three shows this week you should check out!

MONDAY 1/21

Doing a sketch with Matthew Alston (Matt+Nick) and an improv set with David Guzman (David and Nick) at 9:30 at the UCBEast’s B.Y.O.T.!

WEDNESDAY 1/23

Doing my man-behind-the-plant-ing thing with The Chris Gethard Show at 11pm! (Email zerolaughs@gmail.com for tickets!)

THURSDAY 1/24

Doing Inspirado at the Magnet Theater with my indie team Orange Augustus (Michael McLarnon, Charles Rogers, Phoebe Tyers and me) at 11pm!

Come check it out!

***

Also, always looking to do more with my two-person team Feitelophone (me and Sebastian Conelli), my midsize team Orange Augustus (Seb Conelli, Michael McLarnon, Charles Rogers, Phoebe Tyers and me) and my large team 85 BARES.

So, consider booking me for something at nicholas.feitel at gmail.com

Thanks!

Like some are connoisseurs of wine or women, my sister is a connoisseur of MK+A movies. In response to the recent Buzzfeed article, here is her top 5:

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve not seen switching goals or when. In Rome. Nonetheless my personal top 5 ranking is as follows:
5. You’re Invited to Mary-kate & Ashley’s sleepover party :: featuring sing alongs about putting every single food in the pantry as toppings on their pizza; getting sucked into a videogame realm, and pulling all-nighters!
4. Passport to Paris:
MK & A have some diplomat uncle they go to stay with at the embassy in Paris. As soon as they move in, they put up wyclef posters and twerk all over the house. Then they meet two ridiculously goodlooking French boys on motorbikes and do a musical interlude fashion show montage with a supermodel they happen to meet in the park. Who ends up being a perfect companion for their lonely but well-meaning Butler.
3. Winning London
The girls r going to compete In the model UN competition or something. I really dig their outfits, all tweedy and scarves, and even an homage to the Mod years. Plus , has a legit awesome soundtrack filled with French pop and garagey stuff.
2. NY minute
Mary-katez first role after she became a fashion icon, she’s a notorious truant being hunted by Eugene levy and sporting a perfectly tattered Metallica shirt & jeans. Awesome fashion show montage of ghetto weaves n bling blang threads in an African Hair place in Harlem. Jack white plays the manager of MKs band, for which she is the drummer. The films final scene is her band recording a cover of Suffragette City. When she has to do a classic twin-switch and give a major presentation for Ashley, all she can do is recite Avril Lavigne Lyrics.
1. It takes two
The classic of classics! They’re just two little girls, identical, but unrelated? Separated at birth? I. Don’t remember. But this was a career peak for both romantic leads, the lonely wealthy widowman Steve Guttenberg, and the tough talking, big hearted social worker Kirstie Allie (thin at the time). Excellent script. One of the girls is adopted/kidnapped by a family that fosters children as slaves in a junkyard and wants to rename her Betty Butkiss
To prove her identity one of the twins proudly displays a scar on the sole of her foot. “4th of July. Rusty nail. Right. Through. My. Shoe”

“In Harold, we must say yes to bad ideas immediately, while good ideas can be resisted a bit.”

This is a Michael Delaney note (one I am paraphrasing a bit) and it’s one that didn’t make sense to me for a while, but now I think I get it and I think it’s even another deep one for life.

First, the not getting it.

Wouldn’t we want to not do things that seem stupid or hateful or racist or cartoony in a scene? Wouldn’t we want to say yes to the good idea immediately and just dive into that? It seems counter to having fun with improv.

Then, the getting it.

When we are improvising, we are playing with the “yes-and” developed by Neva Boyd and Viola Spolin as a way to get people on the same page, to create a reality that everyone can accept. In that reality, the “yes-and” we build can be physical (you open a refrigerator and someone opens the freezer later), it can be relational/contextual (you call someone your brother, they ask you how your son is doing) or it can be about the world. It’s a forward movement, a “progression” as Delaney would call it.

But then there’s this idea of “game” if you’re a UCB-trained improviser. And when we are “yes-and”-ing to build a world, which we should generally be doing, we only really have two tools with which to create game, which are:

-repetition or restatement of something that is funny, unusual or important to the scene (some UCB teachers I’ve had like Gavin Speiller might call this “exploring the logic of a certain statement”)

-saying no to something. saying we won’t do it.

The reason the first is a tool is obvious, the two people on stage are circling a statement to give it emphasis and explore it, like in the Will Hines exercise where you literally restate every statement someone says until you frame something in a way that seems unusual.

But the second example, the “no” is also making something important because it is breaking the macro-game/pattern of the “yes-and” we have improvisationally.

When you say “no” to something, it means you have a good reason, that the moment is so important to your character that you have chosen to break the macro-pattern of yes-and, which sticks out to everyone, your scene partner and the audience. And because it is obvious to the audience, it must be spoken to.

This in itself is not terrible, a “no” to a “good idea” is what Delaney would call “struggle”, which is people communicating about something they care about (in terms of drama), or something they find comedically worth exploring (in terms of comedy).

So if one person gives you a big silly gift, like that you’re the dude who used to be Barney the Dinosaur even though you now work at a Cracker Barrel and you, like me, think that’s pretty silly to explore, you can give a soft-no on that, not a flat denial like (“Nope, you’re wrong. There is no way that could be true.”) but maybe like a qualified-no (“That person is dead now and even if he was alive, no one would remember how great he was and how many children’s lives he affected).

But the real problem with the “no” lies in how often we the improviser as opposed to the character say “no” to ideas because we the improvisers are scared of them or are not listening, so we end up lending that power to things that are not comedically inspring or juicy to us. And the sad thing is that when you say no to something small that is not worth your energy, your scene becomes about that thing. You actually give it more power.

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” -Obi Wan Kenobi

I’ll give you an example:

The other day in Delaney’s workshop, a person came in with a piece of information off an opening about playing golf on a plane. This was pretty ridiculous to me and I decided to “play it real” mostly out of fear and just not really join in. So the scene just stayed at golf on a plane. We didn’t find out anything, other people did walk-ons to heighten that we were playing golf on a plane and we never got to a reason, who we were really, or anything else. Because I didn’t say yes to an idea I thought was stupid or scary, the scene sunk. Because even though I didn’t know I was doing this, by not fully yes-ing my scene partner’s idea, I gave emphasis to it, whereas if I had just played the golf on the plane and kept communicating with him (talking naturally as myself or my character, sharing opinions, discovering things in the environment) we might have found something fuller.

So I think this is going to be something I focus on in my play now: the more something seems like a bad idea the more it has to be embraced (not emphasized but “yes”-ed and built on” so that we can move on). If someone says something racist or objectionable or stupid, maybe you talk to them after the set, but for now we’re all characters who believe that, because to say no to it is to give it more power by breaking the “yes-and” pattern. Whatever we find within that world worth our emphasis will be the thing that we play by yes-ing and moving on.

Because in improv just like in life, it’s when you say no to people that you cause struggle, emphasis, someone who wants to hang out, a date, a party, when you don’t acknowledge people directly, you can egg them or lead them on. If you say no to the things you are feeling yourself, emotions, don’t let yourself experience them, you elevate them further into your subconscious and they gain even more power.

Be in the moment, accept offers, allow yourself to be affected. Yes.

Until you find that thing worth struggling for and then repeat, say no and commit, struggle like hell.

“If something isn’t working once it’s established,” Neil Casey once told my class. “I want to see you struggle like rats to make it work and maybe in that struggle it will become funny again.”

Like love, a life in comedy, or just being a person itself.

This Week So Far:

MONDAY:

-Did Kaleidoscope Tourny of Champions with Phil Jackson, Corey Brown, Mike Kelton (AWESOME PEOPLE) at the Creek LIC

-Did a sketch with Hodgepodge (Matt Alston, Austin Rodrigues, Seb Conelli and me), Did an Improv set and a sketch with Orange Augustus (Seb Conelli, Phoebe Tyers and me)

WEDNESDAY:

-Did TCGS as The Man Behind The Plant w/special guest James Adomian!

THIS WEEK STILL TO COME:

THURSDAY:

-8pm Show at the Triple Crown with REBEL ENEMY SURPRISE! (Me and Kim Parker)

-11pm Show at the Triple Crown with ORANGE AUGUSTUS (Phoebe Tyers, Charles Rogers and me).

SATURDAY:

-8PM Show at Improv Boston with The Chris Gethard Show! Tickets here!

SUNDAY

-7:30pm Hosting Indie Cage Match at the UCBEast w/pals Amey Goerlich and Evan Altshuler!

-9:30pm Show at the Triple Crown with ORANGE AUGUSTUS (Seb Conelli, Michael McLarnon, Phoebe Tyers, Charles Rogers and me)

COME CHECK ME OUT!

ratliff2016gold:

A BRIEF PROMOTIONAL VIDEO for CONNOR RATLIFF’S OLYMPIC WORKOUT

This video contains INTERACTIVE CONTENT designed for your TOUCHSCREEN DEVICE or COMPUTER MONITOR!

Come show your support for Connor’s bid to win at least one GOLD medal in the 2016 Summer Olympics!

WEDNESDAY • JANUARY 16 • 7:00pm • UCB Theatre NY (Chelsea)

Click here to make a reservation!

Go here to join the Facebook event!

(NOTE: this is NOT a Comedy Show but a genuine athletic workout intended as preparation for the Olympics. It is being filmed for reference/historical purposes.)

Connor is one of the awesomest dudes I know. This show is tonight and will be mind-blowing I am certain.

I have a tendency to overshare through the internet (and other mass media) as those of you who know me know, so let’s try this, friends.

I do weekly goals and reflections. They’re usually not terribly personally revealing in a way, but they might help people who want to know what my methods are for trying to achieve things I want/stay productive in a self-motivated community.

This is all taken from the PATH class that I did with Betsy Capes, which I highly recommend.

To start my “ultimate career vision” is to make my living writing or performing in a way that is expressive and satisfying to who I am.

My one-year goal, started at the end of June is:

-To book 5 national commercials (I’ve counted 3 so far)

-To put up a sketch or one-person show at the UCB Theater

-To start auditioning for comedic television shows.

***

Here’s what my week’s reflections look like for action ideas I had, things for my mind or body that work towards increments of the aforementioned goals:

(R means Reflection, a hopefully brief non-judgmental assessment of what to take away from what you did toward that weekly action idea. FUA means a follow-up action, an optional thing you might be inspired to do based on that)

R- When I make time to work in my body, I feel good about myself and empowered to tackle other things in my life.

R- When I follow though on things like rewrites that might be difficult for me, I feel like I’m more capable of doing things that scare me. FUA-> Keep it up!

R- Even if I don’t get what I want, I should thank myself for the diligence to do what I set out for. FUA-> Find more time to smile, feel thankful.

This week:

1. Yoga 4x a week (Mon 11am-1215pm, Wed 4-515pm, Sat 1230-2pm, Sun 1230-2pm)
2. Write a sketch to throw up at BYOT!!! (Mon 8:45-9:45am, 9:30-11:30pm)
3. Do my check-in with Betsy Capes (Thurs 6-7pm)

***

So, to give perspective, I had things I wanted to do this week, action ideas. You try to be honest with yourself and find positive things to do. The most important part is the reflection, because it involves your capability to grow, change and adapt to things that might be interesting to you or overcome obstacles along your way.

For instance, the “two rewrites” action idea was a follow-up to an idea I had had about writing a sketch and doing a rewrite. I didn’t end up doing the rewrite even though I wrote the sketch because I didn’t allocate enough time for it, rewrites are tough and I need to focus on them if I want to get better at them. I reflected on that and forwent my usual “essential action idea” of writing a sketch to do two rewrites to flex that muscle. Through reflection, I was able to get better at something that was difficult for me to do.

Also, you’ll see things are scheduled like a doctor’s appointment and not just things like “write a sketch”, but things like yoga, which helps my mind/body/spirit, all of which are essential to my craft. Some weeks you have tons of things that “directly” relate to your career and some weeks you make time to clean your room, clear your closet, make space for yourself to grow.

I even scheduled a half-year check-in with Betsy (my first since the class) to just take stock and see what advice she could give.

These are the things that have helped me to organize my life and ambition from a maze of infinite and infinitely daunting possibility, to a focus over a certain amount of time, a discipline and some structure in which to grow.

***

I also wanted to include here something outside my career, because people who talk only about their careers are well, boring.

(If you really wanted to tie this back in, it’s referred to in career-speak as “clearing”.)

***

It was Friday, I had just gotten done with my job temping for the arts organization where my mom worked and had gotten out of some yoga and good halal food, down Broadway. I walked through the underground Rockefeller Concourse because it always gives me that sense of Manhattan ownership, that feeling of being somewhere people don’t know about, passing the hidden Canadian consulate and looking in, trying to discern what Canadian matters people were tackling today.

I went in my underground journey past Ben+Jerry’s where I stopped in, guiltily (kids scoop, Choc. Fud. Brow.) and over to Nintendo World, where I took out my 3DS in an attempt to do something called “StreetPass”, where you trade virtual selves with other people on the street, visiting each other’s systems with a high-five and participating in each others’ games, all without ever having really interacted, a gamer’s way to feel “social” without having to leave their shell.

To my surprise though, I found myself engaging in actual social activity. The automated store 3DSes were already full of their 10-person quotas of people they could meet, so I walked over to the people sitting by the giant circular table in the middle of the store, a bunch of multi-ethnic high-school kids and some nerdy college-ers.

“Yo, you!” One of them shouted. I looked up from my system, closing and unclosing, trying to StreetPass. “Yeah, you!” 

I pointed at myself.

“Wanna race?” A kid in a hoodie was looking at me and smiling.

“I don’t have a game.” I told him.

“Don’t need one.” He replied.

The game was Mario Kart 7 and anyone with a 3DS could play. even the store ones wired to the table could play, it part of the ingeniousness of the system. So I said yes and became part of the group.

It was there, all of us standing around a silly table, racing. I was and am always terrible at racing games and came in last in all the races except about 2/3rds of the way through when one of the store attendants asked the kid to leave who had invited me to play, since he’d been in the store for more than an hour.

Then I lapped the stationary Shy Guy as I raced around a volcano, a rainbow, and a mushroom-filled landscape, trying desperately to get the hang of these mushrooms, golden mushrooms and giant bullet-men I was using, while inevitably falling off the track, with a cartoony womp-womp.

I was terrible. I was having fun. For those 20 minutes, I was part of a solitary group round a Nintendo World table bonding with people I never knew as they made plushie Pokemon dolls have sex with each other in rather innocent fashion.

“Yo, when Mew gets it up, he looks like this.” One dude exclaimed, taking a Mew dolls and flying it around the sky until it fell into the back of a watery-whale-type Pokemon.

“Ew, you are perverted.” The girl next to him said, eyes still on the system.

“This is why I love playing Mario Kart with real humans.” The college kid said. “You can always mess with them.”

At the end the college kid shook everyones hand. Some of them knew each other. Some of them went on to another game. I had got my 10 streetpasses.

I had dinner and shows to see and friends to meet and my day.

But for 15 minutes, I was part of something strange and wonderful and real round that pokemon-fucking table.

And as I looked later as their virtual “Mii”s hi-fived my virtual-self, I felt a little extra, or maybe a little sad.

aapruzzese:

‘ALLO, FRIENDSHIP!

The quest for the beloved kaleidoscope cup of champions ends on January 14th, in the year of our lord Gooselbutt, 2013. Here are the BRAVE SOULS who will be competing:

House of Mike Kelton (originally the house of Morgan Miller):

Corey Brown

Phil Jackson

Mike Lane

…

God knows how I ended up in this but please come out and take a look!