History of The Talented Talent Bros -- Chapter III

After months of preparation and rehearsal, The Talented Talent Brothers’ first show was finally going to open. People, albeit only a few, would finally see what we had worked so long and hard on. Yet I couldn’t help but feel under-prepared. Very personal tensions had been vying for my attention and now I was expected to lead our little group into battle with an audience that we outnumbered. The pot was no longer on the stove … it was time to serve some Abnormal Stew.

Opening Night

Things would be a little out of the ordinary right off. As we were booked as a weekly show, we were required to load-in prior to each and every performance. This basically meant that just an hour before curtain we would bring in all of our sets and props and get the theatre ready before we opened the house. There would be no pre-show relaxation. Instead, there was a little manual labor.

It began with the cast meeting at my office on 42nd Street where I stored all of our set pieces, costumes and props. We had purposely designed the show to be simple. Our set consisted of four folding chairs, a television that sat on a number of blocks or a rolling table, a Playstation we used to play the DVD because nobody owned an extra DVD player and … well, actually that was about it.

We did, however, have a ton of props and costumes. Most of these were housed in a giant suitcase that JB found in Queens. The most noticeable, and largest, prop was Battlecat … a giant stuffed green tiger. I didn’t buy a green tiger, I bought a white one that I assumed we would be able to dye green.

Battlecat

About a week before we opened, I gave the tiger to Jillyn to dye in her bathtub. The dye didn’t take and the result was a tiger that looked like he had been living in the street for the past six months. I performed a green paint test on his belly and it clumped up and appeared muddy and grey. On a lark JB and I tried using a green highlighter pen and the result wasn’t too bad. With that discovery JB spent an entire evening and eighteen markers to completely color the cat.

He was the hit of the show … and a hit during our weekly caravan walking all the props and costumes from 42nd Street to the theatre on 36th.

Curtain ... Well, There Wasn't a Curtain Per Se

Jillyn’s husband Chad was promptly recruited to run our lights and sound for that opening night performance and everybody gathered at my office to make the first haul. Tensions were quite high from our final disaster of a rehearsal. Some were concerned, myself included to be honest, that JB wouldn’t show. We had very minimal rehearsal with Tammy who would be stepping in for Kat during our first performance, but Tammy was a consummate professional and was better prepared than any of us expected.

Nothing was said about the conflicts that had arisen recently as we made the trek to 36th Street. As fate would have it, a light rain was falling that we were not prepared for. Everything was slightly moist when we arrived. We set up, Chad had a quick go with the lights and sound, the house was opened, a handful of people arrived and The Talented Talent Brothers officially made their debut.

The show opened with a “Legal Disclaimer” played on the television. That is, after I fudged around and figured out how the damn Playstation worked. I then launched into something of a prologue (mostly improvisational) welcoming folks and pondering the meaning of humor and “what makes people laugh.” Then we opened with a tried and true piece of material, She Said Maybe.

She Said Maybe was originally written as part of a sitcom pilot script that I had toyed with around 1998. I would later shoot it on video with the North Carolina Film Workshop and then, in 2002, stage it at the Brooklyn Lyceum with Renee Ashcroft, Rachel Macklin and my hometown pal and protégé Hayden Hooper. It was tested, it was sweet, it was … not wacky. I thought of it as an easy way to open our show … didn’t want to bash the audience’s head over with a hammer yet. That would come later.

Next we would meet He-Man (me again) at a cocktail party in a piece originally written by Greg Sandquist. This would be the first of several appearances of He-Man. In fact, we did a good job of having our characters frequently reappear, giving the show some cohesion. The next recurring characters were played by Andy Jacobs and Giselle Hyland as a couple with serious marital problems … stemming from her having slept with the waiter, Socko.

As the night continued we would meet JB’s characters Rev Balki and Dr. Cockburn, we would see short (not as short as they should have been) films, be treated to Laz doing Tony Montana doing Mr. Rogers, see Matrix-style combat done with no budget and wonder just what the heck that sock monkey was. It all ended with a mass murder and news report putting an all-points bulletin out for our dear little Socko.

One Down … How Many To Go?

A final applause and a return trip to the office and we had put our first show behind us. Laz and Giselle would help me store the props while Jillyn confronted JB about his recent behavior. The rest of us were just relieved to have survived the experience and chit-chatted about what worked and what didn’t. Only JB and Jillyn were aware of their conversation and, to this day, I don’t really know what was said. I don’t really care to know.

But what I do know is that it started a chain of events that would seriously endanger and alter Abnormal Stew before we even got to a second performance. The fallout would result in a reduced cast size, a restructuring of the show, an even more prominent role for me, a bonding of comedic minds and the most exciting, nerve-wracking second performance of my life.