Another opening, another show

Six writers, six actors, a director, a music director + 8 weeks of rehearsal = a sketch review, opening August 4. We're students of the writing program at Chicago's legendary Second City, and our show (title to be determined) will be the culmination of more than a year's study and hard work. We're now in the last class of the sequence, which involves producing a sketch review that includes some of the sketches we've written and revised over the previous 4 terms. We cast the show at the end of the 4th term--we've got a great cast (the photos above show most of them)--and have started blocking and rehearsing. Our director is the incomparable Mary Scruggs, the head of the Second City writing program. Laura Kessler is our music director, and will be composing the music for two songs that will be in the show.

A couple of the writers in our class have also done some acting/improvisation/stand-up, but for the rest of us, producing this show is a new view into the performance end of things. It's been a fascinating process watching the director and actors morph words on a page into some pretty zany characters. Today we observed the Second City approach in the flesh, as actors improvised on aspects of one of the sketches to help clarify the characters and their motivations as a tool for further revisions that the writer will make to the sketch.

--J.P. Stephenson

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