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Press:
Clucking about for a laugh
Comedy is not pretty. Ask anyone who tries to make a living getting laughs out of a room of strangers. It can be a brutal and soul-crushing profession. The pay is dismal and the odds that you will be plucked off stage and cast as Ben Stiller's second banana in "Zoolander 2" are next to impossible. So who in their right mind volunteers for a life in funny business? The same guys who perform improv comedy dressed as chickens. Saturday night, members of the DCUP (District of Columbia Unscripted Players) Improv Theatre Company will appear at ComedySportz Improv Theatre as the Boneless Chicken Cabaret. Curious? Confused? Hungry? Don't be. Because while the prospect of skeletally challenged, singing and dancing fowl sounds intriguing (and a bit scary), that's not what you're going to get. What sounds like a fantastical Frank Perdue dream sequence is just three guys in chicken suits performing an evening of improvisational hijinks, sketch comedy, music, dance and interactive theater. Perfectly normal. The yellow-feathered trio communicates through pantomime and garbled "chickenspeak" and has a penchant for yanking "volunteers" out of the audience. The idea for the BCC came to DCUP founders Jack Reda and Todd Etter while the pair was writing "Yes And," a mockumentary about improv comedy. Like a bad taco, the idea lingered. Recently, the Boneless Chicken Cabaret emerged victorious in an "Improv Rumble" between six Washington comedy troupes. The clucking comedians earned the honor of opening for oddball comic Emo Phillips on April 6, part of the "dccomedyfest!" set to take place April 5-8. If you plan to catch the Boneless Chicken Cabaret, leave the Colonel Sanders wisecracks at home, but bring $12. And if you want to try something hilarious, pay your admission with singles and count them out one at a time: "Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck." Then again, you could always just put it on your debit card and leave the comedy to the chickens.
Coop d’Etat
Just say yes to the Miami Improv Fest. Why did the chicken cross the road? “Well, that is an excellent question,” says Jack Reda, a man who wears a chicken suit for a living. “I don’t know if I can answer it now. It would ruin it for anyone who is going to come to the show” – namely, the “Boneless Chicken Cabaret,” one of a whopping 50 presentations at this year’s Miami Improv Festival. The chicken show – presented by Reda’s troupe, the District of Columbia Unscripted Players (DCUP) – is a combination of “improvisation, sketch comedy, music, dance, and interactive theater, performed by men dressed as chickens. Without speaking any intelligible English, the chickens explore birth, art, karate, and more.” The chicken’s motivation for crossing the infamous road is indeed “one of the mysteries of the universe that we try to unravel,” says Reda. He also notes the date – Friday the 13th – and says, “It’s a little bit scary… and we will certainly try to exploit that.” The festival is the brainchild of Miami improv troupe Just the Funny. While many of their peers ran off to Chicago, New York, or L.A. to pursue comedy, only to disappear in an overcrowded pool of unemployed wannabes, the cast of Just the Funny went wee-wee-wee all the way to… well, just over to the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium, where they hunkered down and perfected their craft with weekly shows. After several years of toiling away on home turf, the group now has traffic moving the other direction, as the country’s funniest folks head south to the museum for the troupe’s now-nationally-renowned fest. For example, on Friday evening alone, D-CUP will be joined by national acts like the clever and subversive Upright Citizens Brigade (they perform at 8 p.m.) and the Groundlings (whose alumni include Will Ferrell and Phil Hartman; they perform at 9). Jupiter’s aptly-named improv troupe Gated Community goes on at 7; and a program called Inside the Out-of-work Actors’ Studio starts at 10. (“Join host ‘James Tetley’ as he re-lives [these actors’] single high, and most importantly, their multitude of lows through an in-depth interview and a look back at their very short demo reel.”) Through Jan. 15, $8 to $25, 866-468-7630. http://www.miamiimprovfestival.com Miami Museum of Science, 3280 S Miami Ave, Miami.
Laughing All the Way to L.A. Jack Reda's specialty, much to the dismay of his ears but to the delight of his 3-year-old toddlers, is musical comedy, performing loony lyrics to made-up and real songs. But regardless of how he sounds singing comedy, the stay-at-home dad's talent for improvisational comedy wowed executives with PAX television's "World Cup Comedy." Last month, Reda beat out nearly 80 of his peers to win the opportunity to audition for the third season of "World Cup Comedy," an improvisational comedy competition. Reda will fly to Los Angeles, Calif., next month to audition with finalists from major markets throughout the nation. Reda's career as a comedian started nearly 20 years ago while a sophomore at George C. Marshall High School in Falls Church. Following the advice of a theater teacher, Reda turned his eye to Theatresports, where he learned the art of improvisation. Later Reda joined ComedySportz, where he has worked and taught Comedy 101 classes for the past several years. Reda also performs with the District of Columbia Unscripted Players, known as DCUP. Presenting their acts of hilarity in the Ballston Commons Mall in what used to be a Victoria's Secret store, the name "DCUP" seemed fitting for the adult humor troupe. Leaning back in his cushy chair, Reda reflected on the differences between DCUP and ComedySportz, the groups that keep the stay-at-home dad occupied when he is not at home with his wife and children. He said DCUP is risky and examines "the darker side of comedy," while ComedySportz is clean, completely non-offensive and family-oriented. Both have the potential to offer heaps of hilarity, but ComedySportz amusement seems more of a guarantee with its laugh-tested games. Another of Reda's comedic works is the film, "Yes And," written and produced by Reda and friend, Todd Etter. The "mockumentary," as he calls it, follows the travails of an extremely untalented improv group. "Yes And," Reda said, is "a philosophy of improv," which this group tries to utilize. The movie has played at several film festivals, where viewers, both improv lovers and not, enjoyed it.
Comedy Cup Comes to DC Audiences in DC were laughing as comics competed for a slot on PAX's upcoming "World Cup Comedy" series. Soon you'll be able to laugh from your own living room. Minions from PAX TV recently were given direct orders to seek out a handful of the greatest improv comics across the land, because one of its new shows—a hungry monster waiting to make a huge breakthrough—feeds off raw talent. So it made sense that "World Cup Comedy" rolled through Ballston Common Mall in Arlington, VA, and picked one lucky contestant out of some tough competition: an improv showdown hosted by ComedySportz, an audience-interactive comedy vehicle. (Think of the event as the D.C.-area preliminaries.) The winner, Jack Reda, will be flown out to Los Angeles, where he'll audition for a final spot on the show. Contestants—in groups of three, and sometimes two—were given two minutes to rip through their own versions of zonked-out scenarios such as "a meeting of restaurant staff done to [the] theme of soap opera" and "casual Friday done as an Alfred Hitchcock movie." You get the picture. Overall, I had a good time, just sitting quietly in the back amongst the rest of the audience, observing, and realizing how difficult it must be to work improv magic. Quick wit and creativity seemed to be the name of the game. For example, contestant Jim Doyle pretended to be a superhero called "The Bellower," where he, ah, bellowed. I guess you had to be there. For more information on ComedySportz: www.cszdc.com. "World Cup Comedy" will premiere on PAX TV, Wednesdays, 8pm/7c. For pertinent details: www.pax.tv.
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