Tami Sagher 7/26/06 Part 2
JF: Did that help you grow a lot as a performer? Had you performing on a regular basis before then?
TS: I had been performing on a weekly basis at a bar in Hyde Park called Jimmy's with a group called Feelo, but yeah absolutely [it helped,] because you were onstage in front of a couple hundred people a night. When I got back from Boom and I had the Second City [TourCo.] audition, I want to say 4 months later, and I got hired, it really helped so much to have had all that stage time. It can be insulated sometimes working in Chicago because everybody's an improviser. Being at Boom Chicago where nobody in the audience is an improviser, you kind of have to expand your vocabulary.
JF: It seems like you felt really comfortable in the environment, but I know that if I were there with like 2 or 2 and a half years experience I might feel self-conscious. Did you ever feel 'wow, I'm not that experienced or whatever?'
TS: [laughs] I didn't. I don't think that the other people were than much more experienced. Everybody was pretty young. I was probably cockier than I should have been. Off Off Campus and Feelo, we were good. Off Off Campus had already put up 3 or 4 revues that we wrote ourselves. Yeah, I didn't worry about it. I mean there was some stuff that I wasn't good at. I was terrible at introducing games or addressing the audience 1 on 1. That I'm sure is where my inexperience showed. But I don't know. [laughs] I don't know where that confidence came from.
JF: So when you came back you started doing the Second City Touring Company?
TS: When I came back is when I started taking classes at IO, so I did Georgia Pacific and Jane and then 4 months later I got hired for the Touring Company.
JF: Did you stay on Georgia Pacific for a while?
TS: I did. I was on there for over a year. The people in the beginning were great then more people were put on it. TJ Jagadowski ended up being put on it, and Jack McBreyer. Then I got put on the ETC stage at Second City. So I was on Georgia Pacific for probably a little over a year, a year and a half, then I couldn't anymore because that's the ETC stage.
JF: What was it like improvising with TJ Jagadowski and Jack McBreyer right as they were starting, I'd imagine? Could you immediately tell that they were immensely talented or did they go through their like growing phases?
TS: You could tell. I remember the first time I saw TJ perform. It was in a level 5 show that my friend Dina Facklis was it. I was in Touring Company and I went and saw the show and level 5 shows are always so bad, and TJ just shown like a diamond. He was just amazing. He's always been somebody who when he's onstage you want to watch him. And Jack McBreyer has always just been hilarious. It's seeing them both gain confidence in their moves, but they were both hilarious.
JF: So what was the beginning of Jane? What brought that about?
TS: Stephanie and Katie are definitely the ones to talk for sure about that, but I think they were both on a team called The Lost Yetis, and I'm pretty sure they were the only women on it. That was a house team, and it was was a great team. I think they were curious about what it would be like to have all female voices.
From the beginning, that was a really magical experience. It was definitely a case of the sum being greater than the parts. People just made these moves and they were honored in a way that they weren't honored on different teams. There was a freedom there and a group support, and really cool shows would be weaved. It felt really magical.
I remember one time we did a warm-up in the back room on the first floor in IO which is where the kegs are. We were huddled into this room and the warm-up, and it evolved into this 10 minute improvised scene [...] that just felt so flow and so real and everybody was so committed. Those kind of things happened all the time with Jane. There was one time when Charna came in to coach us, and she had us do a Harold of openings. And it was one of the coolest things. Ever. It was one of the coolest things that we ever did. And I actually talked to Charna about it last year, and she said she tried it since with another group and nothing came of it. And that's true. We were able to do stuff together, it was definitely the power of group mind.
JF: So what do you think was responsible for that really strong group mind?
TS: I don't know. I think there's that intangible chemistry that happens. I don't know. It was rooted in the work. Sometimes teams when they form they want to do this team bonding stuff, and we ended up doing that kind of stuff, but the work came first. So we bonded creatively, and later there were kind of these fun outings. But I ended up feeling so close to these women, but it wasn't just because they were my friends, but it was because we created this cool thing together. We supported each other, and felt supported in a way that was really unique.
And you knew when somebody's playing a guy or a butch lesbian. You could tell. We just got to know each other really well that way. It's funny to me, especially in L.A., not with Chicago improvisers; at the Groundlings, I have a bit of experience with a Groundlings director, where it's just unheard of for a woman to play a man. Or you'll start playing a man and a guy will make you a woman. And it's such a weird let down in the beginning. And I never had that with Jane. So there's something about being fundamentally understood at the top of the scene that makes for a much richer scene. Or even if you're playing a butch woman and you're made into a man, that's a bummer too. But there was a patience there.
There was a woman on there called Abbey Schachtner, and Abbey's got an amazing imagination. And she was on a different team and you would see her play with her and they would just make her the crazy person. Then she would do moves on Jane and they would be brilliant. Part of it was that she was brilliant but part of it was how those moves were honored and treated.
JF: What form did you guys do? And do you have an opening that you did?
TS: We moved that around a lot. I don't remember exactly. We did a reunion at CIF 3 years ago, and the opening that we did for that was character monologues, and people in the backround acting out things in unison. We also did cool vocal stuff, like songs and stuff, but I don't know that we had a specific opening.
JF: Is it true that people from Jane were chosen like one person from level 1, one person from level 2 or whatever, and that there were really big differences in experience when you guys started?
TS: You know what, I think you're right. I think I didn't realize it at the time, but I think you're probably right. That's something else that Katie and Stephanie did that was really neat, that they did invite people of different levels. I think Molly Cavanaugh and I were both in level 2 or something.
JF: Did you guys ever get any weird vibes from anyone? Did you ever feel like people were judgemental of you because you were an all female group?
TS: No, we got a little bit of shit in the beginning, but the fact that Stephanie Weir and Katie were in the group, that gave us [credibility,] and Lily. It's funny because everybody had different names back then. Stephanie Benjamin, Katie Mahaffey, and Lily Hutcher. Now it's Stephanie Weir, Katie Roberts, and Lily Francis. Anyway, they had all been all house teams. There were the rest of us who had either been on other teams or were just starting. But people weren't exactly going to fuck with Stephanie. And I think our work made people shut up. We never really got flack.
JF: What was your experience like performing for Second City in the ETC or even in the Touring Company?
TS: I loved Second City. I was like a graduate school. I started working there pretty much when I was done with college. I toured for a year. That was great. I was in BlueCo., and I got to tour with some amazing people, like Rich Talarico, Rachel Hamilton, Ali Farinakian, and Pat McCartney, and Kristen Ford, then eventually Dave Pompeii was in there. TJ Jagadowski ended up being in there right before I ended up leaving. That was great. It was a really fun company. It was a really social company.
There are 3 different touring companies. When I was put into BlueCo., I had some people tell me you're really lucky. That's the really fun one. It was a really playful group. People were doing bits all the time. We would pull off on the road like every hour to pee and buy junk food. It was a blast.
And we wrote our own stuff. I came into the Touring Company and there was all this original material that had already been written. Scenes that Tina Fey had been in and Kevin Dorff and Ali. There was some great material that was in there, and we were really encouraged to write our own stuff.
JF: Was that unusual?
TS: No, I think they were moving towards that direction, but I think there were some particularly proflic people and some great improvisers, so it was really fun to create stuff together. Every Monday night a different Touring Company performs on the Main Stage. In our first home show, Rich Talarico and I tried a scene that we had written and it ended up being a scene that we performed I want to say for the entire year and a half that I toured called First Kiss. And it was great. We actually ended up doing a version of it on MadTV for Stephanie Weir and Mike McDonald.
JF: Do you keep the rights to any of those Second City sketches or do they own them?
TS: They own them, so in order to do stuff on MadTV or SNL you call and ask permission. In general, they give it. The tricky part is some times you wrote it with other people, but since Rich and I were both writers on MadTV it wasn't an issue.
JF: So what brought you to Los Angeles?
TS: I got offered a job writing for Mad.
JF: What was working for Mad as a writer like?
TS: It was good. I was there for 5 seasons, so a long time. The other writers are really funny, terrific people. I got to work with people who I worked with at Second City like Rich and Stephanie. There was some frustration obviously, because the stuff was written or acted better than it appeared on television, but on the whole it was a really positive experience.
JF: Why was it not as good on television as it was live?
TS: I wouldn't even say that it was better live. I would just say when you're writing it you can picture how it's going to be done, and there's no budget holes or weird staging stuff. Also, the show is edited and writers aren't allowed into the editing, which is unusual for a sketch show. At Conan, I know writers get to go in there and start producing. It's understandable and it's just the process of how things go there. There are a lot of factors.
There was a commercial [parody] that I wrote with this guy Dino Stanistopolis, and it was a commercial for Walmart and it depended on animation. And the animation was terrible. It was confusing and made no sense. And it was heartbreaking. Then at the end the voice-over was done incorrectly. It was a different read that I would have wanted. And it's such an easy thing to remedy, but when you're fighting a machine you end up with this. The final product of that commercial is, to me, unwatchable, and it was one my favorite things to write and one of the things I'm most proud of.
JF: Do you find that a lot being a writer in Los Angeles? Is that a recurring thing?
TS: I haven't had that much experience. I've only been here for 5 years, and during that time I've written for Mad. My one experience after Mad has been Louis CK for his show on HBO and that was a really good experience, but the episode I wrote would be for the second season, if God willing there is a second season. It hasn't premiered yet. I think that's part of it. When you're writing, you feel this control of how things are going to be, because other people are going to do it. At the same time, there's a subset to it where people do it a lot better than you wrote it. And I should say for First Kiss, the scene that Rich and I did, it wouldn't have worked at all on camera, the way we did it. It worked on stage. But it wouldn't have looked right on camera. It's a totally different context. And Mike McDonald and Stephanie made it so much better than it would have been, so there's also that part to it too. There are also people who are incredibly talented who take your work and make it funnier.
JF: In your opinion, what makes good improv?
TS: Really focused listening, trust and support, and strong moves, and honesty. There's still room for goofy characters, as long as they're honest to themselves. There's a way to sell out a goofy character and a way to be true to it.
JF: How do you encourage other performers to be honest?
TS: The really basic thing is eye-contact, because if you're making eye-contact with the other performer it takes you out of your a little. I'll do a lot of side-coaching. I might make people stop and ask them questions or just say 'I don't buy it.'
JF: Like what kind of questions?
TS: Like 'what do you really want?' It really depends on the nature of what's going on. Ed Herbstman coached Georgia Pacific for a while and he had us do really amazing excersizes, so whatever Ed said in his interview.
JF: In your opinion, what is 'the game?' And does it play a role in your improv?
TS: I believe the essence of the game is the relationship, which doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have a 'relationship scene.' Um, the game... I don't have a coherent answer for that. And it makes me nervous because I feel like I've heard such good answers for it. It's a matter of listening to everything that is done, not just the words, but whatever the gesture is. It's a matter of knowing absolutely everything that was done since the moment of the beginning. If you're absolutely listening and responding to it, then you're automatically in the game, I think. The less you're in your head and the more you're noticing, you'll automatically get behind the game. And if you're in a real relationship with somebody onstage that will be the game. And if you're still not finding it, it's a matter of noticing a pattern. Even the audience will cue you in to where they're reacting. There's a natural rhythm to everything, and playing the game is a matter of discovering and respecting that rhythm.
JF: In your opinion, what makes a good team?
TS: One where everyone always supports each other. They don't leave each other out there hanging. Nobody's showboating, and nobody treats their teammates like they are showboating. They're just willing to take risks.
TS: I had been performing on a weekly basis at a bar in Hyde Park called Jimmy's with a group called Feelo, but yeah absolutely [it helped,] because you were onstage in front of a couple hundred people a night. When I got back from Boom and I had the Second City [TourCo.] audition, I want to say 4 months later, and I got hired, it really helped so much to have had all that stage time. It can be insulated sometimes working in Chicago because everybody's an improviser. Being at Boom Chicago where nobody in the audience is an improviser, you kind of have to expand your vocabulary.
JF: It seems like you felt really comfortable in the environment, but I know that if I were there with like 2 or 2 and a half years experience I might feel self-conscious. Did you ever feel 'wow, I'm not that experienced or whatever?'
TS: [laughs] I didn't. I don't think that the other people were than much more experienced. Everybody was pretty young. I was probably cockier than I should have been. Off Off Campus and Feelo, we were good. Off Off Campus had already put up 3 or 4 revues that we wrote ourselves. Yeah, I didn't worry about it. I mean there was some stuff that I wasn't good at. I was terrible at introducing games or addressing the audience 1 on 1. That I'm sure is where my inexperience showed. But I don't know. [laughs] I don't know where that confidence came from.
JF: So when you came back you started doing the Second City Touring Company?
TS: When I came back is when I started taking classes at IO, so I did Georgia Pacific and Jane and then 4 months later I got hired for the Touring Company.
JF: Did you stay on Georgia Pacific for a while?
TS: I did. I was on there for over a year. The people in the beginning were great then more people were put on it. TJ Jagadowski ended up being put on it, and Jack McBreyer. Then I got put on the ETC stage at Second City. So I was on Georgia Pacific for probably a little over a year, a year and a half, then I couldn't anymore because that's the ETC stage.
JF: What was it like improvising with TJ Jagadowski and Jack McBreyer right as they were starting, I'd imagine? Could you immediately tell that they were immensely talented or did they go through their like growing phases?
TS: You could tell. I remember the first time I saw TJ perform. It was in a level 5 show that my friend Dina Facklis was it. I was in Touring Company and I went and saw the show and level 5 shows are always so bad, and TJ just shown like a diamond. He was just amazing. He's always been somebody who when he's onstage you want to watch him. And Jack McBreyer has always just been hilarious. It's seeing them both gain confidence in their moves, but they were both hilarious.
JF: So what was the beginning of Jane? What brought that about?
TS: Stephanie and Katie are definitely the ones to talk for sure about that, but I think they were both on a team called The Lost Yetis, and I'm pretty sure they were the only women on it. That was a house team, and it was was a great team. I think they were curious about what it would be like to have all female voices.
From the beginning, that was a really magical experience. It was definitely a case of the sum being greater than the parts. People just made these moves and they were honored in a way that they weren't honored on different teams. There was a freedom there and a group support, and really cool shows would be weaved. It felt really magical.
I remember one time we did a warm-up in the back room on the first floor in IO which is where the kegs are. We were huddled into this room and the warm-up, and it evolved into this 10 minute improvised scene [...] that just felt so flow and so real and everybody was so committed. Those kind of things happened all the time with Jane. There was one time when Charna came in to coach us, and she had us do a Harold of openings. And it was one of the coolest things. Ever. It was one of the coolest things that we ever did. And I actually talked to Charna about it last year, and she said she tried it since with another group and nothing came of it. And that's true. We were able to do stuff together, it was definitely the power of group mind.
JF: So what do you think was responsible for that really strong group mind?
TS: I don't know. I think there's that intangible chemistry that happens. I don't know. It was rooted in the work. Sometimes teams when they form they want to do this team bonding stuff, and we ended up doing that kind of stuff, but the work came first. So we bonded creatively, and later there were kind of these fun outings. But I ended up feeling so close to these women, but it wasn't just because they were my friends, but it was because we created this cool thing together. We supported each other, and felt supported in a way that was really unique.
And you knew when somebody's playing a guy or a butch lesbian. You could tell. We just got to know each other really well that way. It's funny to me, especially in L.A., not with Chicago improvisers; at the Groundlings, I have a bit of experience with a Groundlings director, where it's just unheard of for a woman to play a man. Or you'll start playing a man and a guy will make you a woman. And it's such a weird let down in the beginning. And I never had that with Jane. So there's something about being fundamentally understood at the top of the scene that makes for a much richer scene. Or even if you're playing a butch woman and you're made into a man, that's a bummer too. But there was a patience there.
There was a woman on there called Abbey Schachtner, and Abbey's got an amazing imagination. And she was on a different team and you would see her play with her and they would just make her the crazy person. Then she would do moves on Jane and they would be brilliant. Part of it was that she was brilliant but part of it was how those moves were honored and treated.
JF: What form did you guys do? And do you have an opening that you did?
TS: We moved that around a lot. I don't remember exactly. We did a reunion at CIF 3 years ago, and the opening that we did for that was character monologues, and people in the backround acting out things in unison. We also did cool vocal stuff, like songs and stuff, but I don't know that we had a specific opening.
JF: Is it true that people from Jane were chosen like one person from level 1, one person from level 2 or whatever, and that there were really big differences in experience when you guys started?
TS: You know what, I think you're right. I think I didn't realize it at the time, but I think you're probably right. That's something else that Katie and Stephanie did that was really neat, that they did invite people of different levels. I think Molly Cavanaugh and I were both in level 2 or something.
JF: Did you guys ever get any weird vibes from anyone? Did you ever feel like people were judgemental of you because you were an all female group?
TS: No, we got a little bit of shit in the beginning, but the fact that Stephanie Weir and Katie were in the group, that gave us [credibility,] and Lily. It's funny because everybody had different names back then. Stephanie Benjamin, Katie Mahaffey, and Lily Hutcher. Now it's Stephanie Weir, Katie Roberts, and Lily Francis. Anyway, they had all been all house teams. There were the rest of us who had either been on other teams or were just starting. But people weren't exactly going to fuck with Stephanie. And I think our work made people shut up. We never really got flack.
JF: What was your experience like performing for Second City in the ETC or even in the Touring Company?
TS: I loved Second City. I was like a graduate school. I started working there pretty much when I was done with college. I toured for a year. That was great. I was in BlueCo., and I got to tour with some amazing people, like Rich Talarico, Rachel Hamilton, Ali Farinakian, and Pat McCartney, and Kristen Ford, then eventually Dave Pompeii was in there. TJ Jagadowski ended up being in there right before I ended up leaving. That was great. It was a really fun company. It was a really social company.
There are 3 different touring companies. When I was put into BlueCo., I had some people tell me you're really lucky. That's the really fun one. It was a really playful group. People were doing bits all the time. We would pull off on the road like every hour to pee and buy junk food. It was a blast.
And we wrote our own stuff. I came into the Touring Company and there was all this original material that had already been written. Scenes that Tina Fey had been in and Kevin Dorff and Ali. There was some great material that was in there, and we were really encouraged to write our own stuff.
JF: Was that unusual?
TS: No, I think they were moving towards that direction, but I think there were some particularly proflic people and some great improvisers, so it was really fun to create stuff together. Every Monday night a different Touring Company performs on the Main Stage. In our first home show, Rich Talarico and I tried a scene that we had written and it ended up being a scene that we performed I want to say for the entire year and a half that I toured called First Kiss. And it was great. We actually ended up doing a version of it on MadTV for Stephanie Weir and Mike McDonald.
JF: Do you keep the rights to any of those Second City sketches or do they own them?
TS: They own them, so in order to do stuff on MadTV or SNL you call and ask permission. In general, they give it. The tricky part is some times you wrote it with other people, but since Rich and I were both writers on MadTV it wasn't an issue.
JF: So what brought you to Los Angeles?
TS: I got offered a job writing for Mad.
JF: What was working for Mad as a writer like?
TS: It was good. I was there for 5 seasons, so a long time. The other writers are really funny, terrific people. I got to work with people who I worked with at Second City like Rich and Stephanie. There was some frustration obviously, because the stuff was written or acted better than it appeared on television, but on the whole it was a really positive experience.
JF: Why was it not as good on television as it was live?
TS: I wouldn't even say that it was better live. I would just say when you're writing it you can picture how it's going to be done, and there's no budget holes or weird staging stuff. Also, the show is edited and writers aren't allowed into the editing, which is unusual for a sketch show. At Conan, I know writers get to go in there and start producing. It's understandable and it's just the process of how things go there. There are a lot of factors.
There was a commercial [parody] that I wrote with this guy Dino Stanistopolis, and it was a commercial for Walmart and it depended on animation. And the animation was terrible. It was confusing and made no sense. And it was heartbreaking. Then at the end the voice-over was done incorrectly. It was a different read that I would have wanted. And it's such an easy thing to remedy, but when you're fighting a machine you end up with this. The final product of that commercial is, to me, unwatchable, and it was one my favorite things to write and one of the things I'm most proud of.
JF: Do you find that a lot being a writer in Los Angeles? Is that a recurring thing?
TS: I haven't had that much experience. I've only been here for 5 years, and during that time I've written for Mad. My one experience after Mad has been Louis CK for his show on HBO and that was a really good experience, but the episode I wrote would be for the second season, if God willing there is a second season. It hasn't premiered yet. I think that's part of it. When you're writing, you feel this control of how things are going to be, because other people are going to do it. At the same time, there's a subset to it where people do it a lot better than you wrote it. And I should say for First Kiss, the scene that Rich and I did, it wouldn't have worked at all on camera, the way we did it. It worked on stage. But it wouldn't have looked right on camera. It's a totally different context. And Mike McDonald and Stephanie made it so much better than it would have been, so there's also that part to it too. There are also people who are incredibly talented who take your work and make it funnier.
JF: In your opinion, what makes good improv?
TS: Really focused listening, trust and support, and strong moves, and honesty. There's still room for goofy characters, as long as they're honest to themselves. There's a way to sell out a goofy character and a way to be true to it.
JF: How do you encourage other performers to be honest?
TS: The really basic thing is eye-contact, because if you're making eye-contact with the other performer it takes you out of your a little. I'll do a lot of side-coaching. I might make people stop and ask them questions or just say 'I don't buy it.'
JF: Like what kind of questions?
TS: Like 'what do you really want?' It really depends on the nature of what's going on. Ed Herbstman coached Georgia Pacific for a while and he had us do really amazing excersizes, so whatever Ed said in his interview.
JF: In your opinion, what is 'the game?' And does it play a role in your improv?
TS: I believe the essence of the game is the relationship, which doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have a 'relationship scene.' Um, the game... I don't have a coherent answer for that. And it makes me nervous because I feel like I've heard such good answers for it. It's a matter of listening to everything that is done, not just the words, but whatever the gesture is. It's a matter of knowing absolutely everything that was done since the moment of the beginning. If you're absolutely listening and responding to it, then you're automatically in the game, I think. The less you're in your head and the more you're noticing, you'll automatically get behind the game. And if you're in a real relationship with somebody onstage that will be the game. And if you're still not finding it, it's a matter of noticing a pattern. Even the audience will cue you in to where they're reacting. There's a natural rhythm to everything, and playing the game is a matter of discovering and respecting that rhythm.
JF: In your opinion, what makes a good team?
TS: One where everyone always supports each other. They don't leave each other out there hanging. Nobody's showboating, and nobody treats their teammates like they are showboating. They're just willing to take risks.
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