Get Curious!

The weekend before last, Brandi and I gleefully took a few days off and headed out west to Portland, Oregon, to see Bob and Stacey. A bit of backstory on those two: Bob and I started working together years ago... a number perhaps measuring as high as a decade... when we both took classes at the Annoyance Theatre. Bob later joined the cast of my children's show, "Kid Mystery," which alarmed director Fred Mowery and I due to the fact that after we had cast him as the insatiable eater Tad Huff, he revealed he was a diabetic and shot up insulin three times a day. He also said it was okay, and that he wouldn't eat before a show, which in retrospect should have shown me just how dedicated Bob was to the art of performance.

Later on, I would have the pleasure of performing with Bob on iO's longform improv team, "Space Mountain," in ComedySportz, and forcing him to both sing and dance in my other children's show, "The Paper Spaceship," during which time he took his first tentative steps towards a relationship with his now-fiancée, Stacey.

Much to my regret, I would not have a chance to hang out with Stacey much until the formation of the movie making group, Monday Pictures. Time wasted! Stacey has a rich history in theatre, improvisation, animation, film making, production, and, oddly, credit history. She gave me good advice on everything. Stacey also performed with Bob's Playground improv group, International Stinger, and with the all-ladies group Firecracker. A woman of talent, Stacey had an extraordinary dream:

TO BUILD A THEATRE

So when Brandi and I went off to Portland, we felt a bit of trepidation as to what we would find. Would we have to "ooh" and "ah" after some two-bit shopfront operation, knowing that our amazing friends would some day turn it into a viable operation? Or would it be some seedy establishment, the burned out husk of a former porno theatre, abandoned after a developer's halfhearted stab at condo renovation? Or would there be nothing at all, an abandoned hobo's hat on the ground next to a cloth where seven wannabes performed their interpretation of Julius Caesar via an hour-long game of Freeze Tag?

I'm happy to say we saw none of those things. Curious Productions is going to be amazing.

The theatre space is enormous, as you cannot tell from this picture of Brandi with Bob, exposed steel studs behind them forming what will eventually be the coat room and part of the bar. With seating for 120 people, perhaps more with the balcony, the buildout has so far taken months and the time and efforts of many talented volunteers, all coordinated by Bob and Stacey, and all of which you can watch from the safety of the web, here. When we saw it, everything was wood studs and exposed drywall, but Stacey, who somehow holds all of this more or less in her head, hauled the architectural renderings out for us to show us how the footprint of the finished product would look. At the time when we first looked at it, we hadn't seen the space, so the stage looked a bit small to us, so we just nodded and smiled. Then we saw the space. The stage is normal sized, with a few steps up and a foldout handicapped ramp to accomodate wheeled humans and heavy sets. There's a classroom on the second story, a restaurant space, Men's and Women's handicapped bathrooms, a coat room, and additional bathrooms and showers in the back to accomodate bicyclists, of which there are many in Portland. In front, a water flows across a peaceful rock garden. It's THAT classy.

All of this would be meaningless without productions to put inside of it, which, to Bob and Stacey's credit, are numerous. There will be a sketch show, a musical, improvisation, and much, much more. Bob and Stacey are nearly tearing their hair out getting everything done, and yet they flattered us with not just their presence, but their company and conversation. It was one of those trips where I felt slightly guilty relaxing with (and occasionally without, as when Brandi and I took a short trip to the Portland zoo) my friends because I could tell there was always something MORE to do.

(By the way, the photos above are from a fancy restaurant Stacey took us to that, true to most fancy-schmancy restaurants, served amazing food with portions large enough to please a small cat. Brandi and Stacey had the tortellini with flavored foam. FOAM! I ordered and then gulped down glorified spaghetti with meat sauce, and Bob had the monkfish, which you can recognize because they shave their heads and live in oceanic cloisters. Afterwards, we went out to Ground Kontrol to play video games and try to talk amidst the general chaos of a Rock Band party, then over to Hobos, where we met friends and more or less ate dinner again. It was an amazing time.)

I can't wait to see what Bob and Stacey put together, because if it's half as good as what we saw in the pictures, it will be a million times better than anything we could have anticipated. We look forward to helping with that, as much as we can, stuck in this podunk Chicago neighborhood. It's going to be awesome.

If you would like to donate to the theatre, and I suggest you do, click here.