Rance Rizzutto

Want to know a little bit about my relationship with Deanna? Check out our feature story in fart.com!

It happens every year. Did you know about it? Let’s go back a step, do you know about ComedySportz? Team based, family-friendly, competitive improv in over 20 cities across this fine planet.

Unfortunately, some in the Chicago community seem to look down on shortform improv, even though when it comes to doing corporate shows, every major theater in the city uses shortform in their shows.

ComedySportz is great not only because it keeps the pace quick, but because it incorporates the audience and keeps from getting blue. I’ve been performing in one city or another since ‘99. One of the crown gems of performing for this institution is the yearly World Championship. Last year was in Philadelphia, this year was in Indianapolis…a scorching hot Indianapolis.

Let me take you behind the scenes.

MONDAY- Starting the Monday of Championship week, players slowly start arriving. Monday is usually managers and owners conducting business meetings.

TUESDAY- ComedySportz has plenty of games to choose from (well over 100), that doesn’t stop us from coming up with new ones. One of the main Tuesday events is the New Games Workshop: any cities with new games present their gem to the assembled ensemble members. A lot are fairly good, some are awful, and a few make every improvisor drool in anticipation of playing it in their city.

There will also usually be some hang time involving karaoke.

WEDNESDAY- I didn’t actually arrive until late in the day on Wednesday this year. I think the new games workshop might have even been on this day. Most of the players will have arrived by Tuesday night, with another small cluster of arrivals today. This is the first night of shows. Each night from here to Friday will have two shows, each of those shows having two teams in the first half, and two new teams in the second half. Saturday is a little different…more on that later.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY- There is an early morning meeting to go over any needed info about the day, and any newly arriving players get introduced. Then there are workshops in the morning and afternoon. The nice thing about having a lot of players from different cities is that there are plenty of veterans offering workshops. I have my Improv Rehab workshop that has become quite popular so I offered it twice.

SATURDAY- No one gets up for anything on this day. Generally, improvisors are getting about 7-20 hours of sleep total over the week from late nights of hanging out and games. The shows on this night are a little different in that the first show is earlier, and one half is the hosting team vs the All-Stars (players from random cities voted on by all players). Then another show. Then the late show being the hosting team vs the best team from the series.

That night is the closest thing an adult can experience to being a kid at summer camp on the last day. Lots of new friends bidding fond farewells. Hell, there was even a proposal at 2:00am.

Here are just a few highlights from my week:
-reffing for a fun crowd and having one of my bits repeated three times over the week.
-teaching my Improv Rehab workshop two times and watching everyone melt their brains and then pull it together.
-participating in Open Source.

Open Source was the highlight for me. It may not make a lot of sense, but I’ll give it a shot. In the Friday afternoon workshop slot there was only Open Source. There were various rooms reserved in two time blocks. When the leader explained it and said “go,” if you had an idea for a workshop you wrote the name down and where it would be, and your name. No one signed up for anything. You then took a few minutes to read all the offerings. From there, you would walk to where your feet took you. If you felt like it wasn’t for you, you simply followed your feet out to another thing. This is the rule of two feet.

If you were hosting a workshop and no one showed up, you were asked to wait 10 minutes in case people’s feet didn’t take them to the right place and your’s was next.

Why did I like this so much? A few reasons. I offered “Nappin’ of the Opera” where we would go up to one of the boxes in the theater and lie down. It was a jokey idea, but I was also a little tired and wouldn’t have minded just chillin’. I didn’t really expect anyone. 7 people showed up. A few more after them too, but the space was limited. We didn’t actually sleep, but it was fun to be in a pile and do bits. There were also some deeper scenework workshops, some philosophical discussions, and game specific workshops…all with attendance. The cool thing about it was that everyone who showed had no idea what would be offered, and yet the thing they needed was provided.

Round two I didn’t offer anything, but joined Minimally Intrusive Pranks On Other Groups…silly fun, and just what our group needed.

Way to go, Open Source!

It is always fun looking forward to the Championship, always sad to see it end.

You know what is nice about 2012 though? CSz Championship: Chicago. Be Ready!

Ever heard of the Assassin’s Game? Years back there were a couple that were run amongst improvisors in Chicago.

I’m thinking about running one…soon.

Interested? Comment here (or on my facebook share of this link) so I know who is interested.

What is it? Listen to this Stupid Nerd podcast:
http://mysterycove.libsyn.com/stupid-nerd-23-assassins-

Here is a fun little summary as well (that I grabbed the photo from)
http://www.whatmightycontests.com/2011/03/assassins-game.html

Nearly two years ago I got to perform with an improv group in Istanbul. We were spending one night in Istanbul, and it all just seemed to work out that we got to perform with them.

Last weekend I got the second chance to do so, but on my home turf. Istanbulimpro was in Chicago for the Chicago Improv Festival and I got to play with them.

It was so great to see them again. It is amazing how much of a bond we made over one night in Istanbul. It felt like we hadn’t seen each other in just a few days.

Next time I’ll see them in Istanbul. It’s only fair, right?

I was recently interviewed by Sarah Terez Rosenblum for the Chicago Suntimes’ Our Town blog about the Chicago Improv Festival.

The festival officially kicks off TODAY! Get out there and see some improv!

In the interview I poke fun at Rebecca Black and her song Friday. If you’re not a teenager you probably agree that Friday is an awful song. Don’t let that stop you from viewing the Bad Lip-Reading version: Gang Fight.

How am I going to show that cowboy I’m alive.

It isn’t everyday you find out a bad choice you made had no opposite. While neither of the options nor outcomes were particularly terrible, they definitely weren’t good.

Just over a year ago I was starting a contract performing on an NCL cruise ship in Hawaii. This is the one rare ship where casts overlap for a week while the newest members go through training. During some free time some of us decided to go see a movie on land.

Choices were limited. We were deciding between Men Who Stared At Goats and Pirate Radio. Goats won. As we sat through the movie it became more and more apparent that it was awful. Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but awful enough to be remembered a year later.

I always felt a little bad about that day because I was one of the supporters of seeing Goats. One of those moments where you realize the number of minutes you’ll never get back, and wonder how the other movie would have been.

It wasn’t until just recently that I finally got around to seeing Pirate Radio.

I can safely say we would have been screwed either way. Both were awful in their own way, and the only way to truly find that out was to go through two times the torture.

Sometimes you’re screwed no matter what.

UPDATED

We got a little bit of snow here in Chicago. Blizzard of 2011, storm of the century, Snowpocalypse, SnOMG, Snotorious B.I.G. (I didn’t come up with any of these).

It is still coming down and so far we’re at 3rd largest snowfall in recorded weather history. So, bronze. I mean, you know? We tried. We really tried. I think we focused a little too hard on coverage and not enough on depth. Depth is what matters. Sure, this storm is going to hit 30 states, but…bronze.

The big news to me is this is the first time schools have been closed due to snow since 1999. That blows me away. If you’re a High School senior, AND you were going to Chicago Public Schools in 1st grade, you are getting a second snow day. In Oregon, over .5″ usually meant snow day, and definitely if we got an inch or more.

The most intriguing thing about this blizzard…thunder snow. There was thunder and lightning amidst the heavy downpour. Awesome.

photo by Ron Prokaski

After initially posting this we decided to take a walk down Morse to the lake. We bundled up and headed out the door. Almost immediately we were forced to make the decision of “sidewalk or street?” and it was an easy choice. The sidewalks on the south side of the street were fairly clear, the north side…opposite. But the street, it had been plowed a couple times throughout the night and there weren’t many cars on it. Plus, just down the road we saw two buses just stopped.

As we got closer (and visibility cleared) we noticed right in front of the two buses was a third bus…sideways, spanning across the entire road, and another bus on the other side of that.

Other interesting adventures include continuing down Morse to the lakefront where a huge snow drift waited at the end of the road. It blocked in about six cars, one of which the only thing visible on it was the antenna. Past that, out by the lake it looked like a desolate tundra of dune after dune with low dark clouds and swirling wind-driven snow. For all my bundling, this was the first time I felt the cold. There were a few other people out. Another couple was about 20 feet in front of us on a dune when we realized it wasn’t a dune. It was a wave. We were standing over the lake and they were as well.