For those of you that enjoy improvised comedy, I’d like to mention that I’m performing both tomorrow night (Wednesday) at around 9pm at the Theatre 99 in Charleston, immediately following 99s excellent excellent improv group “Threeplay”, and also for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for the Cure, Saturday morning at 1am. Yep, 1am. I guess that’s why it’s a relay… it’s a day’s event of performances and such at the Citadel Field, on Fishburne Street here.

I’ve really enjoyed being an improviser this year. Something has sort of clicked in me, and I’m having way more fun than I used to. I can’t say that I’m always funny, but maybe I’m getting a little bit funnier in general. I’m really going to miss it when I move… I sure do wish Chicago had some improv classes. Oh well!

I’m in my bedroom, painfully learning lines for the upcoming “anti-Christmas” tale, the SantaLand Diaries, written by David Sedaris, that I’m doing with Charleston Stage in December. I’ve never had to memorize this many words, so I’m constantly in a state of low-grade panic, seeing that the show opens in exactly a month. Luckily, I have flash cards and have recorded the entire play as robotically as I could into a series of mp3s so I can listen in the car. And lots of positive reinforcement for myself. I can and will do it.

Distracting me in the next room, but happily so, is my brother’s Weezer tribute band, working towards a show in January ‘08. This yet-unnamed project includes members of Slowrunner and the Young Republicans, and they sound incredible. Today is their first rehearsal, and they’ve definitely done their homework on the Blue Album. Pinkerton is next, I hear. And they’re letting me play harmonica on a couple of songs. Something to look forward to after the new year blahs.

I’m also cooking up sort of a side-project for Kiki, maybe something more based in improv, and involving Kiki’s secret weapon, code-named “Bambi Bourdain”. At the very least we’re going to come out of hiding to do a couple of impromptu shows (Christmas Caroling with Kiki, anyone?), which should be a blast.

Yes, Amanda Mae, I am a walking talking advertisement. But hey, if you got it, flaunt it.

Come See Shining City in Charleston

Originally uploaded by macnab.

A play by Conor McPherson, about a therapist, his patient, his
girlfriend, and…someone else (my role!). Short and sweet,
surprising, and very Irish. Runs until the 22nd. www.puretheatre.org
for more details and tickets!

My friends Rob and Joy (recently seen as “Kiki” in the last Kiki show…and if all goes well, in the next one, too) are re-staging Jane Wagner’s incredible one-woman show Search for Signs, a play written for Lily Tomlin in the 70s. They put together the show about 6 years ago, for Piccolo Spoleto, here, in Charleston, and I saw it for the first time then. Joy is an unbelievable actor, and I was blown away then by her characterizations of all of Wagner’s delightful boys and girls In Search for Signs. While living in NYC I got to see Lily do the show, herself, and though she was sufficiently perfect, obviously, in performance I found myself missing some of Joy’s takes on the show…please do yourself a favor and support this brand new theater company in Charleston.