Monday, May 31, 2010

Spoleto Time Again .....


FRANKENMATT sounds a little like the name of that famous monster made of spare human parts.

Or a great sandwich with hot dogs, cheese and noodles.

Actually, it's an improv team I saw last year and two guys I looked forward to seeing again during the 10th annual Spoleto Fringe.

Their 10:30 pm show did not disappoint.

Sheer energy for a solid hour of ad lib, based on a 3-word phrase "taste and smell" thrown out by the audience at Theatre 99.

I retired 5 years ago but this year I get to post reviews on The Digitel. The last two years I was a "SpoJo" for the Post and Courier during the 17-day festival of the arts.

The paper invited a large group of onliners to come down from Syracuse, NY to blog, tweet and FaceBook as Spoleto Journalists.

I have been to Theatre 99 many, many times but apparently, never on a Sunday evening. The ticket-taker was telling someone they couldn't sell beer on Sunday but there was a filling station a block away that did. I had time to go there for BYOB.


The 9pm show was by Chicago's The Reckoning.

Improv begins with an idea or theme suggested by the audience and is carried out by the creative people onstage.

The one word thrown out and accepted was "Sushi."

The bare stage was transformed immediately - in our minds - to a small Japanese restaurant.

Very small. Tiny. Cramped.

Tables crammed close together. Funny setting.

As the group performed and entertained for an hour, I noticed persons sitting nearby were glancing at my cold bottle of beer.

Plan ahead people.

[Click on the pictures to see a larger image. Thanks.]

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Back-to-back comedy fun!

My rage against the machine continues.

I just did a posting on spoletotoday.com and at first I thought "Ahah. This is simple." I was able to add photos to the entry.

When you see two Piccolo Fringe shows (8:30 and 10:00) and they are SO funny and visual, you want to add pictures.

Unfortunately I added them twice.

Could not figure how to eliminate the extra one so I canceled and started over. This time, however, there was no prompt to add photos?!

The Cody Rivers Show was visually funny (The Wrestling Team is in Town) so, I hope I can (eventually) get these onto the site.

The second show Frankenmatt channeled the hiliarious old comedy team of Abbott & Costello. ("Who's on first..").

Frank Caeti and Matt Craig romped all over the stage recreating a "road trip" down to Charleston.

There was a stop at a convenience store for road snacks, a courtroom scene in Mississippi (meet Charlemagne LeRoy on the witness stand) and a send up of how our Polite City REALLY gets into "Thank You."



Yes, that IS a talking/counting garden gnome.

These are two funny guys so ANY prop is just an added treat.

This is hardly a Carrot Top routine.

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