Ever wonder how sketch comedy makes its way from concept to cackle-inducing performance? For a little over two weeks, Major:Undecided (M:U) has been planning and practicing for its upcoming show. The Daily follows the tedious (and hilarity-inducing) process of how a sketch moves from an original idea to a final production.
I.Inspiration
It begins in an apartment, where seven friends are hanging out and joking around — being, well, regular college students. Except that they're all members of the comedy group Major:Undecided. Strands of conversation that might otherwise be left to dissolve like any other casual afternoon banter slowly evolve in their minds into the beginnings of a new sketch.
Gilad Gray, a junior and the group's campus liaison, has an idea. He's been to enough boring meetings to have thought about what could have spiced them up. One of the best options? Getting drunk.
"It was sort of this fantasy I had," said Gray. "But then with the sketch, it turned into, ‘What if this really happened?'"
Fast forward a few hours and a script is born, the comedy child of Gray and six others: seniors James Folta, Sam Gammerman and Dan Casey, as well as juniors Anit Das, Brian Agler and Irene Richardson. It's not uncommon for a skit to develop from the quips and outrageous thoughts that the Majors so often toss around in average conversation. They think their script is funny. From here, they just have to cross their fingers and hope that the rest of the group agrees.
II. Presentation
At 9 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 8, the entire group assembles in the red hangar near Jackson Gym. It takes some time for everyone to settle down and find a seat on the floor or in one of the few folding chairs scattered throughout the room. Folta, the group's artistic director and a member since his freshman year, stands next to a blackboard that's almost larger than himself and scrawls the names of proposed sketches. There are about 28 of them, with tantalizing names ranging from "Foodultery" to "Anti-Bro" to the simple "Meth."
This meeting is lovingly nicknamed "The Death Meeting;" the daunting list on the board means that the pitches and subsequent voting last about three hours. Anyone who has been to two-thirds of the meetings — or has been in the last M:U performance — can vote.
"Drunk Business Meeting" is an instant hit, and laughter ripples through the crowd of comedians observing the sloppy spectacle. With eight characters and a riotous amount of stumbling and slurring, the sketch makes a promising debut. The temporary cast members, many of whom include the original writers, read straight from the script and crack up during their own lines when they reach them, but the potential is there. It just needs a little polish.
Everyone in the hangar votes on scraps of paper, heading home to tackle homework while the board members huddle together to tally up the bids and make a final decision.
Unsurprisingly, "Drunk Business Meeting" makes the cut, along with 10 other skits ranging in length.
III. Preparation
On Monday Feb. 15, the Majors audition for their roles. Gray organizes the "Drunk Business Meeting" tryouts, selecting a portion of the script for the reading. Most of the M:U members audition for almost everything, and the process is laid-back. One of the benefits of an informal audition, Gray explained, is that it leaves a space for ad-libs and new interpretations to shape the script.
"A lot of the ad-libs from the auditions actually end up in the final script," Gray said. "That's really where some of the best lines come from."
Afterward, the directors discuss the cuts for each sketch.
"We pick an A-team, and obviously that's who you're hoping to get," Agler said. Since this ideal cast often overlaps with the selections for other sketches, compromises have to be made. "The directors all have to negotiate, because we want to include as many members of [M:U] as possible without sacrificing the quality of the final performance," Agler added.
For "Drunk Business Meeting," the original cast from the first pitch remains relatively intact. The finalized selection includes only three swapped actors, introducing sophomore Sarah Soffer, junior Michael Motola-Barnes and senior Shea Sullivan, while Folta, Gray, Das, Agler and Gammerman round out the rest of the cast.
Sullivan represents one of the unexpected but eagerly-adopted changes to a "Business Meeting" character. She auditioned for the male role of Jim, but her wild interpretation of one swashbuckling speech convinced the writers of "Drunk Business Meeting" to include her.
"It wasn't even a girl's part at first, but Shea just blew it away," Agler said. "She just nailed the pirate lines; her accent was outrageous." After a character re-naming ("Jim" becomes "Jane" in the final script), Sullivan is in. "If you make a bold choice in auditions, sometimes that just gets you the part," Agler added.
IV. Revision
At 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night, the group is navigating a maze of rooms in the lower level of Aidekman in search of rehearsal space. After passing by some students from Traveling Treasure Trunk doing their cute antics in the hallway, they eventually settle in Aidekman 9.
"This is perfect!" Agler says as the door swings open to reveal a long table lined with chairs. They take their seats and pull out scripts.
Motola-Barnes is nodding off at the end of the table with his head cradled in folded arms. After the "30 Rock" and "Dilbert" references subside, it's business time. Drunken business, that is. The eight Majors attack their scripts with pens, scratching out lines that don't work, don't make sense or just don't elicit enough laughs. After one line is cut, someone throws a balled up piece of paper and cries out, "Wait, that was my joke!"
"We're pretty brutal about changes. If it's not funny, we cut it," Das said.
"Your joke is always your baby, but we try to be flexible," Agler said. "We've got to be rational about what stays and what goes."
The revision session is actually a healthy mix of addition and subtraction. New lines replace some of the scrapped ones, and the cast fine-tunes some of the character portrayals. One point of focus is Soffer's interpretation of her character, Carol — or, at least, of drunk Carol. She's taking a giggly approach, but her cast members insist that she needs to be more irritable. "Show us an angry, sullen drunk!" Folta yells across the table.
Soffer runs her line again, this time in a grave sneer that shocks the group.
"OK, not demon-drunk!" Folta corrects, and the other actors laugh appreciatively.
This meeting, for the most part, is about gauging the reactions to ad-libs and getting a feel for what should stay in the script and what has to go. At 11:35 p.m., they're still at it, and the script is still about two or three minutes longer than it should be.
They run through the entire sketch from their seats about three times within the course of the night, and it changes with each performance. Cast members cut into each other's lines constantly and get sidetracked mid-sketch. When they reach Folta's line ("Wanna order 50 pizzas on the corporate credit card?"), someone chimes in quite seriously, "Speaking of, I'm starving!" while Motola-Barnes still nods wearily from the corner of the table.
"Let's crank it!" Folta says. "No interruptions this time!" They run the script once more, and it clocks in at six minutes, an acceptable length. They're ready to call it a night at almost 12 a.m.
V. Experimentation
The following Sunday night at 10 p.m., the cast of "Drunk Business Meeting" is back in Aidekman. They're ready to plot out the positions and physical motions for their characters — a stage of the rehearsal process called "blocking." Das takes the piano and pounds out a jaunty tune while the rest of the group arranges chairs and argues over who should sit where. Once the chaos dies down, they begin.
Agler's almost climbing out of his chair, balancing on his toes, while Gammerman and Das share a missed high-five. During a part in which Gray's character confesses his love for Soffer's, Sullivan (who is seated between them) decides to grasp their hands and bring them together with a giddy smile on her face. Some things stay the same, like the way Agler's voice always hits a pitch higher than the others when they contemplate whether or not to start slamming down shots, or the jaw-drop that Motola-Barnes delivers when he's fired without explanation.
"If you think you're doing something that's funny, just keep doing it in future rehearsals," Agler says to everyone. "And tell someone if something they're doing is funny."
Motola-Barnes decides to puke into Soffer's lap instead off to his side, which makes her burst into a fit of giggles that she has a hard time disguising. "I'm gonna lose it when you do that during the show!" she laughs. Das and Agler improvise a bit where they lock eyes, lean toward each other and come almost close enough to kiss. It's hysterical, so they keep it.
"This sketch is great because it's extremely ensemble and extremely physical," Agler said.
VI. Tedium
Things get serious (relatively, for a comedy group) the week before the performance. The group meets every night of the week to practice the entire collection of chosen sketches, meaning that the rest of M:U gets to see how "Drunk Business Meeting" has progressed since pitch time. At this point, the script needs to remain relatively static, and the focus is on making the performance crisp and clean.
Some of the most critical suggestions they receive after the first "Business Meeting" showing encourage the group to find a balanced level of drunkenness that doesn't overshadow important lines.
"We need to work on our speed and on not upstaging each other," Folta said.
At the next night's meeting, their performance is decidedly less drunk. They've cut down sufficiently on the slurring and have more choreographed responses, but the sketch still successfully manages to crescendo into hilarious drunken chaos.
"At this point, all the ad-libs are no longer ad-libs, so it's about doing it right," Das said. Members of the ensemble explain that by the next rehearsal, they'll be sick of the sketch and will have to resist the urge to alter their jokes.
"Someone will change a line and it'll kill, and we'll be like, ‘We have to change this!'" Folta said. "But we have to resist."
"A lot of the funny [sketches] aren't getting laughs because we've seen them so many times," Agler added. "We have to trust that they're funny even if we're not laughing anymore."
Tonight, rehearsal takes on a strict no-script policy in preparation for this weekend's show, and props come into play.
VII. Production
To see the final product, check out Major:Undecided's show "Don't Look Bacow" this Friday at either 7:30 p.m. or 9 p.m in Cabot Auditorium. Both shows are free.
