Craig Cackowski 4/2/06 Part 2
JF: Is that the first time that the Movie and the Deconstruction had been done?
CC: I think they were things that were kicking around in Del’s class for a while, but I think with the Family he solidified both forms. I think the versions that are taught and done now are pretty much inspired from the things that the Family learned doing it with Del.
JF: So, what was going on with you after Mr. Blonde?
CC: There were actually two incarnations of Mr. Blonde. About halfway through we kind of kicked some people off the team and reshuffled. [laughs]
JF: You guys did this yourselves?
CC: Yeah, we did, which was kind of a big controversy at the time. Charna was not happy that we did it, but she gave us kind of her mixed blessing. She was like ‘well, if this is what you want to do, I’m not going to stop you from doing it, but you should know that I’m not happy about it.’
Actually, the second incarnation was even better. We had Tina Fey on that version, and Laura Kraft, Rich Talarico, Myself, Rob Mello and Michael Jeffrey Cohen. That was the team. It was a six person team. We weren’t as good as the Family, but similar to the Family in that we all brought something different to the table. It was just a good blend of personalities, then Charna broke that team up eventually.
JF: Why?
CC: I think Rob Mello who was one of our strongest players left the group. We had sit-ins but we never had that same chemistry. Tina was also on Inside Vladimir with Amy Poehler, so she had another team as an outlet. Charna just wanted to …you know …who knows why she breaks teams up. [laughs] It’s the great mystery. So, me and Talarico joined a team called Faulty Wiring, which was one of the better house teams there. I played with that team for a while.
JF: Peter Gwinn was on that team, right?
CC: Peter Gwinn was on Faulty Wiring with us. I did that until Faulty Wiring had their last show. I think they consciously decided to retire as a group. Teams didn’t last as long back then. Now in Chicago you have some teams like Deep Schwa and Carl and the Passions that have been together for years. Deep Schwa has been together for like 10 years and are still playing regularly. That was unheard of back then. Even the Family didn’t have a run of probably longer than 3 years.
I think around the time Faulty Wiring was ending I first was hired as an understudy to the Touring Company at Second City. I started doing Touring Company stuff.
JF: What year was that?
CC: 95. 95 was also the year that IO opened the permanent space on Clarke St. Later in that year, I joined the Armando cast. That show opened when the theater did, probably April of 95.
JF: What was it like improvising with Tina Fey, Rich Talarico, Peter Gwinn, people who are well-known now, when they were younger?
CC: Well, they were pretty much what you’d expect. [laughs] They were really brilliant and talented, but just younger and either thinner or fatter depending on who we’re talking about. [laughs]
JF: So, they were brilliant from like …day one?
CC: Yeah. [laughs]
JF: Sometimes you hope to hear ‘this person just kept getting better and better with age, you know, [laughs] to inspire younger performers.
CC: Well, they’re all better now, of course, than they were back then. Everyone grows exponentially, but the difference in talent between them and a typical improviser at the time was noticeable. So, yes, of course, even the most talented performers paid their dues and had a lot of bad shows and made a lot of mistakes, but talent is talent. It can’t be denied.
JF: What role do you think talent plays in making a great improviser and what role do you think training plays?
CC: I think it’s equal amounts of both, because I’ve also known talented people who didn’t work as hard as those people, as Tina and Rachel, or Peter [and didn’t become as skilled]. TJ Jagadowski is another person who was a student of mine in Chicago and it was immediately apparent that I had nothing to teach him. He could have just glided by on talent alone, but he just worked so hard at it and was so passionate.
I think seeing as many shows as possible is really important. It’s no surprise that the students that I see at a lot of shows usually end up being the people who stick around longer, and make it to all the classes, and are forming their own groups independently outside of the theater. So, it’s commitment to your training, commitment to getting on stage as often as possible and finding as many outlets for it as you can. So, it’s a combination of talent and dedication and training.
JF: You got hired by the Second City Touring company? What was that like?
CC: It was great. When people find out I did it, they’re like ‘wow, where’d you go? Were you constantly in a van seeing the country?’ It wasn’t like that at all. Most people still needed day jobs. I was also teaching for IO and would occasionally do voice-overs or corporate theater, something like that. So, I always managed to just scrape by. It wasn’t a great job money-wise, and there weren’t nearly as many gigs [as people might think]. The best gig we had was we went to Vienna Austria for a week and that was amazing. The second best gig we had was a week in Kansas City Missouri. [laughs]
Now I think they tour a lot more often. They see a lot more of the world. They have a partnership with Norwegian Cruise Lines. Some people do that. They’ve got the theater in Vegas that people can go to. There’s more outlets now. We mostly saw a lot of Iowa, Ohio and Indiana. We did the colleges around there.
You do Second City ‘Best Of’ material for the most part, classic sketches, some games. Occasionally, you get a bone thrown to you and you get to perform a scene that you wrote yourself. It was great to perform these hilarious scenes and find a way to make it your own, while preserving the intent of the original sketch. Like I said, I was a Theater major in college, but until I started improvising and doing sketches over and over I wasn’t really a good actor, I think. You really learn comedic timing, and how to adjust to different audiences. You learn how to make the same material work night in and night out. I would say I learned some of that in the Touring Company, but I really learned it when I was on the ETC or the Main Stage in Chicago, then you’re sculpting the material as you do it. You’re improvising it, honing it, until it becomes a sketch. You learn through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. That was a big factor in me growing as a performer.
JF: So, you were on the Main Stage of Second City as well as the ETC.
CC: I did three shows on ETC and two on the Main Stage.
JF: Wow, so you’re kind of Mr. Second City.
CC: I am Mr. Second City. [laughs] No, there’s many people who have done more than that, but yeah, I was there for a while. I was hired in 95 and left the Main Stage in 2002, so 3 years of touring, 2 on ETC and 2 on Main Stage.
JF: So, what was the experience of being on the Main Stage like? Were you writing a lot? Who did you work with as a director?
CC: Most of my shows were directed by Jeff Richmond, who’s Tina Fey’s husband.
JF: Is he an improviser? I thought he was just like a musician?
CC: He’s a Renaissance man actually. He’s an actor, writer, director, songwriter, pianist. He’s a brilliant guy. He was the piano player for the first three years that I was at Improv Olympic. He accompanied all the Harolds. Eventually he was hired by Second City as a piano player for them. The first show I did on ETC he was our musical director, then the next show he actually came in as the full-fledged director. I pretty much exclusively worked with him.
He also wrote and directed his own musicals. He did ‘Hamlet: The Musical,’ which was a long-running hit at IO, and he starred in it as Hamlet. He did a lot of musical theater and children’s theater. He really knew how to put together a show. He really knew to have a good variety of moods within it. He really kept things moving. He added a lot of cool physical bits and transitions, so he brought a lot of theatricality to the productions as director.
Horatio Sanz was in the first show I did. Noah Gregoropoulos was our director. Some of the other people I worked with were Martin Garcia, David Pompeii, Sue Gillian, Angela Shelton, Ed Furman, Rich Talarico, Tami Sagher, really good people.
CC: I think they were things that were kicking around in Del’s class for a while, but I think with the Family he solidified both forms. I think the versions that are taught and done now are pretty much inspired from the things that the Family learned doing it with Del.
JF: So, what was going on with you after Mr. Blonde?
CC: There were actually two incarnations of Mr. Blonde. About halfway through we kind of kicked some people off the team and reshuffled. [laughs]
JF: You guys did this yourselves?
CC: Yeah, we did, which was kind of a big controversy at the time. Charna was not happy that we did it, but she gave us kind of her mixed blessing. She was like ‘well, if this is what you want to do, I’m not going to stop you from doing it, but you should know that I’m not happy about it.’
Actually, the second incarnation was even better. We had Tina Fey on that version, and Laura Kraft, Rich Talarico, Myself, Rob Mello and Michael Jeffrey Cohen. That was the team. It was a six person team. We weren’t as good as the Family, but similar to the Family in that we all brought something different to the table. It was just a good blend of personalities, then Charna broke that team up eventually.
JF: Why?
CC: I think Rob Mello who was one of our strongest players left the group. We had sit-ins but we never had that same chemistry. Tina was also on Inside Vladimir with Amy Poehler, so she had another team as an outlet. Charna just wanted to …you know …who knows why she breaks teams up. [laughs] It’s the great mystery. So, me and Talarico joined a team called Faulty Wiring, which was one of the better house teams there. I played with that team for a while.
JF: Peter Gwinn was on that team, right?
CC: Peter Gwinn was on Faulty Wiring with us. I did that until Faulty Wiring had their last show. I think they consciously decided to retire as a group. Teams didn’t last as long back then. Now in Chicago you have some teams like Deep Schwa and Carl and the Passions that have been together for years. Deep Schwa has been together for like 10 years and are still playing regularly. That was unheard of back then. Even the Family didn’t have a run of probably longer than 3 years.
I think around the time Faulty Wiring was ending I first was hired as an understudy to the Touring Company at Second City. I started doing Touring Company stuff.
JF: What year was that?
CC: 95. 95 was also the year that IO opened the permanent space on Clarke St. Later in that year, I joined the Armando cast. That show opened when the theater did, probably April of 95.
JF: What was it like improvising with Tina Fey, Rich Talarico, Peter Gwinn, people who are well-known now, when they were younger?
CC: Well, they were pretty much what you’d expect. [laughs] They were really brilliant and talented, but just younger and either thinner or fatter depending on who we’re talking about. [laughs]
JF: So, they were brilliant from like …day one?
CC: Yeah. [laughs]
JF: Sometimes you hope to hear ‘this person just kept getting better and better with age, you know, [laughs] to inspire younger performers.
CC: Well, they’re all better now, of course, than they were back then. Everyone grows exponentially, but the difference in talent between them and a typical improviser at the time was noticeable. So, yes, of course, even the most talented performers paid their dues and had a lot of bad shows and made a lot of mistakes, but talent is talent. It can’t be denied.
JF: What role do you think talent plays in making a great improviser and what role do you think training plays?
CC: I think it’s equal amounts of both, because I’ve also known talented people who didn’t work as hard as those people, as Tina and Rachel, or Peter [and didn’t become as skilled]. TJ Jagadowski is another person who was a student of mine in Chicago and it was immediately apparent that I had nothing to teach him. He could have just glided by on talent alone, but he just worked so hard at it and was so passionate.
I think seeing as many shows as possible is really important. It’s no surprise that the students that I see at a lot of shows usually end up being the people who stick around longer, and make it to all the classes, and are forming their own groups independently outside of the theater. So, it’s commitment to your training, commitment to getting on stage as often as possible and finding as many outlets for it as you can. So, it’s a combination of talent and dedication and training.
JF: You got hired by the Second City Touring company? What was that like?
CC: It was great. When people find out I did it, they’re like ‘wow, where’d you go? Were you constantly in a van seeing the country?’ It wasn’t like that at all. Most people still needed day jobs. I was also teaching for IO and would occasionally do voice-overs or corporate theater, something like that. So, I always managed to just scrape by. It wasn’t a great job money-wise, and there weren’t nearly as many gigs [as people might think]. The best gig we had was we went to Vienna Austria for a week and that was amazing. The second best gig we had was a week in Kansas City Missouri. [laughs]
Now I think they tour a lot more often. They see a lot more of the world. They have a partnership with Norwegian Cruise Lines. Some people do that. They’ve got the theater in Vegas that people can go to. There’s more outlets now. We mostly saw a lot of Iowa, Ohio and Indiana. We did the colleges around there.
You do Second City ‘Best Of’ material for the most part, classic sketches, some games. Occasionally, you get a bone thrown to you and you get to perform a scene that you wrote yourself. It was great to perform these hilarious scenes and find a way to make it your own, while preserving the intent of the original sketch. Like I said, I was a Theater major in college, but until I started improvising and doing sketches over and over I wasn’t really a good actor, I think. You really learn comedic timing, and how to adjust to different audiences. You learn how to make the same material work night in and night out. I would say I learned some of that in the Touring Company, but I really learned it when I was on the ETC or the Main Stage in Chicago, then you’re sculpting the material as you do it. You’re improvising it, honing it, until it becomes a sketch. You learn through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. That was a big factor in me growing as a performer.
JF: So, you were on the Main Stage of Second City as well as the ETC.
CC: I did three shows on ETC and two on the Main Stage.
JF: Wow, so you’re kind of Mr. Second City.
CC: I am Mr. Second City. [laughs] No, there’s many people who have done more than that, but yeah, I was there for a while. I was hired in 95 and left the Main Stage in 2002, so 3 years of touring, 2 on ETC and 2 on Main Stage.
JF: So, what was the experience of being on the Main Stage like? Were you writing a lot? Who did you work with as a director?
CC: Most of my shows were directed by Jeff Richmond, who’s Tina Fey’s husband.
JF: Is he an improviser? I thought he was just like a musician?
CC: He’s a Renaissance man actually. He’s an actor, writer, director, songwriter, pianist. He’s a brilliant guy. He was the piano player for the first three years that I was at Improv Olympic. He accompanied all the Harolds. Eventually he was hired by Second City as a piano player for them. The first show I did on ETC he was our musical director, then the next show he actually came in as the full-fledged director. I pretty much exclusively worked with him.
He also wrote and directed his own musicals. He did ‘Hamlet: The Musical,’ which was a long-running hit at IO, and he starred in it as Hamlet. He did a lot of musical theater and children’s theater. He really knew how to put together a show. He really knew to have a good variety of moods within it. He really kept things moving. He added a lot of cool physical bits and transitions, so he brought a lot of theatricality to the productions as director.
Horatio Sanz was in the first show I did. Noah Gregoropoulos was our director. Some of the other people I worked with were Martin Garcia, David Pompeii, Sue Gillian, Angela Shelton, Ed Furman, Rich Talarico, Tami Sagher, really good people.
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