David Pasquesi 11/15/06 Part 2

JF: Was there an audience for your early shows?


DP: Yeahhhh. My Dad said an interesting thing 'I understand why you do this. Why does anyone come to watch it?' He understood the challenge of the performer to try and make a story and connect some of these disparate scenes, but he didn't think it was compelling enough for an audience to come see. It might have been just that we weren't very good at it yet, but I understand that. We found that we had to somewhat educate the audience to what it was we were attempting to do, then they became convinced that 'oh, yes, this was difficult or challenging at least,' then they would be willing to give their encouragement when we started to do well, but at first they were like 'what the fuck is this?' That's one of the things that was helpful, the idea of competition at the time. We'd have a vote by applause at the end of the evening. There'd be three Harolds and the audience would vote on them. That was a way to get them involved. I don't think they do that any longer. I'm not sure.

One of Del's ideas was we don't want them to laugh necessarily. We want them to cheer. We want them to respond, more than as if this were just comedy.



JF: Has your father changed his mind at all?


DP: I don't know about group improvisation. He likes watching the show I do with TJ.



JF: So, how did the establishment of Improv Olympic effect the Chicago improv community? It sounds like before it was just Second City.


DP: It wasn't even that. Second City was just [a theater]. Then there was a bunch of improv groups. A lot of bars had stages in them. There were a lot improv groups. There was 'Friends of the Zoo,' which was Pete Barnes, Mark Nutter, and those guys. They were real good. They were doing more revues. They were a bit more refined. Rather than just doing sketches, they would do an entire show that would weave the sketches together. They had been doing that for a while before I got involved. Then there were a lot of improv groups, a ton of improv groups. They'd all find spaces and do their shows, but there was no real training. There was Player's Workshop of Second City, which is separate from Second City. Player's Workshop, as you mentioned before, those were pretty much the basics. They weren't churning out experienced, esoteric improvisers. There was a grad show after 5 or 6 weeks of session of whoever was there.

Charna, I think, was doing shows of theater games. Like a whole group would have been Chicago cops, and their name would have been The Fuzz or something, or all accountants. It was a different thing going on back then. Then Del would occasionally teach at Second City, or Donny Depollo would teach down there. And you'd go in and drop-in per class, and you'd pay $15 or something and sit in on their class. There was no organization to it. There was no cirriculum or school. Then Charna and Del started doing this thing up there and they actually offered classes. This occured after we joined, but you'd go through Charna's classes, then you'd get to Del's classes. She was doing the intro stuff, familiarizing you with the terms that were going to be used in Del's classes. And you'd stay with Del for a while. You'd start performing. You'd get on teams and stuff like that. Then they started growing their faculty a bit. Then years later Second City started a training center.



JF: Really? So when was that?


DP: Let's see. I was in it, in their first class. This would have been after... we ended up with that group, those guys I mentioned. Cross Currents is where we were performing. Charna put the groups together there. We wanted slightly different personnel in our group. We made our own group and started performing down the street at a place called Gasbar's. We did Harolds and ended up writing a couple sketches too. Then Second City came and hired everyone. There were 5 guys. Second City hired 4 of them, but not me. I stayed working with Del for another 8 months or something like that.



JF: They hired everyone but you!?


DP: All the boys. There were 2 girls who weren't hired. Yeah, they came in and hired 4 guys out of the 5. That stung. I've gotta tell you, but I ended up staying with Del, then I ended up working with another group of guys. We kind of ended up doing the same thing, working down the street and at Charna's. I stayed in classes with Del, and that was great.



JF: How would Second City get their Mainstage players if they didn't have a training center?


DP: They would hire them, like they hired those guys, and put them on the road. They'd go around town and look at them. And they had auditions. You gained a bit of a reputation [and they'd invite you]. At that time Second City was the only paying gig in town. That was the only place that paid a dime to perform as an improviser. There was a huge distinction between Second City and Chicago theater. It was not the same thing, although it was an Equity house. So, they'd look and see who was around. You'd be invited to go audition for them, be hired, then immediately go on the road and do old Second City scenes around the country, for various amounts of time. At that time there were two stages, the ETC and the Mainstage. When somebody quit, was fired or died, and they died more than they got fired, [the people in the Touring Company would be eligible to take their spot]. [laughs] They didn't fire people. There was not a lot of movement. There were two and half Touring Companies, and in those days you'd move along through that. Then that started changing.

Those guys ended up getting hired. I got hired later. We ended up on the road together. We opened up a theater that year. I ended up on the Mainstage with Joel, so we went through pretty much the whole thing together.



JF: Who ended up opening up a theater?


DP: Second City opened up an additional resident stage out by the airport. It was called Second City Northwest. Our road company opened that. That was Mark Belzman, Joel, and me ...hmm, Tim O'Malley. Tim O'Malley was in my very first improv class at Player's Workshop, and Ruth Rudnick and Fran Adams.



JF: So, the fact that Second City went around looking for people must have helped explain why there were so many improv troupes around town?


DP: I guess so. Also, Chicago was known for that, having a bunch of improv groups. It got to be a bit of a joke that anybody and their mother would be in an improv group.



JF: Were these people doing long-form improv?


DP: Beforehand? No, they were doing sketches. Some of it was good. Most of it wasn't.



JF: But were they doing improv?


DP: No, they weren't. They would maybe do games. It was mostly sketch. They would call themselves improv groups, then they would do games within the shows sometimes, but it was mostly sketch. There was some great stuff. Smigel and Dave Reynolds were in a group. Kevin Crowley and Bob Wallach had a group. It was great stuff. There was some great stuff surrounded by a lot of shit.



JF: What were the early shows like with Improv Olympic?


DP: I've done a bunch of shows, a handful of them I remember, because there were only a handful that were really truly phenomenal, and a good portion of those were from back then. Something really cool was going on.



JF: I've heard they were a lot longer than they are now. Is that true?


DP: I don't see the shows now, so I don't know.



JF: How long was the average Barron's Barracudas show?


DP: I think we were coming in at about 45 minutes or so. I remember one night Del said 'do it all in 28.' When we were done, we came right in at 28. Yeah, they used to go longer. We took our time, that was the idea. You were supposed to take your time. Then we ended up going faster and putting up 3 a night, I think.



JF: Did you eventually get into scripted theater through your experience with improv?

DP: Yes, children's theater was the first regular, repeated show I did, and that was through Josephine Forsberg's place. Her son, Eric Forsberg, had a children's theater at the Second City. They had been calling it forever in the outros 'Sunday, Sunday, little bastards' fun day.' It was Sunday afternoon. The kids would come and you'd do a show for them. Then through Second City, you learn scenes and you learn how to perform scripted scene. At that time, we improvised after every show and we'd improvise scenes with the idea they'd become the next show. I don't think they do that as much anymore. I think they write quite a bit. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it's not the same thing. So, it's not as important that you're an accomplished improviser to work there, because that's not how they generate their material any longer.

Yes, while I was working there, I did my first play at the Remains Theater, then I enjoyed that, so I started doing that and had enough of Second City, which happens. Then I did another show later, and actually Carrell was in it. I was no longer in Second City at the time, but he was in Second City. He had taken time off to do the show.



JF: What was it like working with Steve Carrell in that production? I've heard that he was a great actor in Second City.


DP: Oddly enough, I hardly worked with him in that production. Because of the way the show was structured, we didn't have any scenes together.



JF: Can you go into a little more detail about what you just said about improvising after a show with Second City?


DP: We'd do the show, which is two acts. There might be some controlled improvisation within that, if not a game, certainly a bookended improvisation, something like that. So, there was some improvisation within the show, usually in both acts. Then you take a break. You take suggestions for the scenes. This is how they'd done it all along. I don't think they do this anymore. You'd take suggestions. You'd get four categories. Someone would ask for a location, ask for pet peeves from the audience. Then you'd go back stage, have a drink, go to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, you've very briefly discussed or mentioned 'ok, we got laundrymat. I want to do a scene with you. We're guys who haven't seen each other in a long time in a laundrymat.' That's it. Then you'd go out and improvise that scene. If it was any good, you'd try it again. Usually, if it wasn't any good the second time, you'd blow it off and start over again. So, you're always improvising and looking to find a scene. It takes a long time. You run a show for six months. You only have to find ten scenes, but it takes six months to find those scenes, of doing it six nights a week.

The sketches rarely got written down on a piece of paper until after opening, so they could take them out on the road or whatever. Often times we would write it down on a legal pad just for us, as we beat it out. There was never a script, but now I think they come in with a script. I think. I don't know. I'm not there, but that's what my understanding is.



JF: How did Improv Olympic start to grow?


DP: The Harold. We started doing it, and it became a bit more popular, because it was interesting and the best improvisers in town were up there. The only other place where you could improvise and have an audience was Second City. At Second City, they'd improvise as a give away at the end of the night. We were doing improvisation as the main event. That was the big difference between Bernie Sahlins and Del Close. Bernie still believes that improvisation is not something you can bank on. There's not a good enough batting average to warrant charging an admission for it. Del did not believe that, and I agree with Del. And you know what? I agree with Bernie as well, because a lot of stuff isn't good enough to charge for, but that's not improvisation's fault. Those were the two differences.

When we started doing our show down the street from Del's, we would charge for the Harold, then do our sketch set for free, because we were cute. The Harold started getting a crowd. The house would fill up on a Saturday night. It was a fun thing to do. That place would get nuts. They would scream for it. That's what we were told we were trying to do, to not let them laugh, to not let them diffuse this energy with a laugh. Keep the pressure on them until they have to explode.



JF: With the houses filling up on Saturday nights, they must have felt the confidence to expand their operations?


DP: It became more popular. They had to expand their operations. The show on Mainstage that Del came back to direct was me, Joel, Meadows, Farley, and Joe Liss, then it was Judith Scott and Holly Wortell as well. Of those 5 guys, 4 of them were from Del's classes. We didn't call it Improv Olympic. We didn't call it IO. We were students of Del's. So, people started to view it as a way to perhaps get down the street.

By this time Annoyance is up and running. I knew Mick from Del's classes. The next group that came up was Timmy Meadows, Mick, Joe Bill, Dave Razowski, Richard Label, those guys. They came up right behind us and they were great. Mick started doing something called Metroform, which was also at Cross Currents. It was upstairs. There was always a close association. There was never any animosity or competition between what anybody was trying to do. Everybody was trying to make more work. Even when we went down the street, because we wanted a little different cast than Charna put together for us, they'd always come down the street. There was no animosity. It was just people wanting to do it more.



JF: Did you help with the founding of the Annoyance or Metroform?


DP: I did not. I was not involved in the founding of either of those. I was around and I did stuff with them, but that was those guys, not me.



JF: And that was scripted material at that time?


DP: I think the first thing they did was Splatter Theater, and that was a fucking hoot. They did a little teenager slasher movie on stage with gallons of blood, every show. It was a hoot. It was like a sleep away camp slasher movie, but at a theater. I did a couple of them. And just bizarre half time shows. I did some of those. I've done a lot of stuff at the Annoyance, but I was not one of the founding members.

...Boy, this is bringing back a ton of memories. Before the Annoyance, when we were just getting going we were doing stuff at the Roxy in Chicago. I just ran into the guy recently. A husband and wife owned the place. It was a bar with a couple performance spaces. They let us do a Harold over there, for a drinking Lincoln Park crowd, who at first were just staring at it, but caught on, quickly. We were trying to do Harolds everywhere. We did stand-up too. His idea was 'as long as you don't get me arrested, I'll let you perform whenever you want.' It was just this great place with this great feeling of 'what the hell's happening?' You never knew what you were going to see. It was always pretty interesting. It was bordering on performance art. There was some Cabaret, music, stand-up. It was really a great feeling. They stopped doing it. They closed down.

The Annoyance was like that. You never knew what was going on. They did a lot of scripted stuff. They became famous for The [Real Live] Brady Bunch, stuff like that. There was also a lot of weird stuff going on. Mick would just let you do what you thought would be good. We did a bunch of neat stuff there. All the stuff I would do was improvised. It's just what I like more.



JF: It sounds like you still have a lot of affection for it.


DP: I do. I just love it. It's the highlight of my week. We don't know was the date was that we started, but it was over 4 years ago that TJ and I started doing this again, or that I started doing it again with TJ. And it's the highlight of my week. When we come to New York, I get to do it five times a week then. It's the best time I have. I love it.



JF: You and TJ perform at the Annoyance?


DP: No, oh, affection for the Annoyance? I thought you meant affection for improvisation. Affection for the Annoyance? Absolutely, and they're opening again shortly. I'm thrilled. They're great.



JF: What was it like working with Chris Farley?


DP: He was around after I had already left Del's. He came down with Pat Finn from Marquette [Univesity]. Oddly enough, I knew some guys from Marquette who played rugby with him, but I knew these guys in a completely different context. Once I finally got put on Mainstage with Del, that's when I started working with him most. He was great. I just talked to some guy about a book he was writing about Farley. It was fun remembering.



JF: He was pretty inexperienced when he was put on Mainstage, right?


DP: Completely inexperienced at sketch, at scripted material. Also, at creating material like that. Whereas we already had to come up with shows out at Northwest, Joel and I. Timmy [Meadows] had been on the road I guess a bit longer than Chris, but also Timmy had never written a show. It used to go that you worked on another stage before you worked on Mainstage, most of the time. I guess it's still that way. These guys were kind of exceptions in that they didn't work on another stage to write a revue before they got up there.



JF: How long had you been doing improv when you got on the Mainstage?


DP: Boy, I'm not so good with years. Three or four years, something like that.



JF: Oh, so not that long.


DP: No, no, it's a young man's game [laughs]. I started very late. I took those few workshops in college, and didn't do anything for another couple years. I'm trying to think back. I think I started working downtown in 1989.



JF: So, when did you start study acting seriously and how did it affect your improv?


DP: I've never studied acting seriously. I've taken a class from a guy named Kurt Nebig [sp.?], a scene study class that was really great. I just started auditioning for shows that I was interested in doing.