Todd Pierce

Author: Toodles

  • Rehearsal season begins with the brutal cull of darlings, shit gets real,still not off book, and still missing props.

    I’m writing this retrospectively after the show run. And out of order too as it turns out.

    September is rehearsal season. It’s crunch time. Time that shit becomes real. Prior to September, shit was just an abstract concept.

    Hey look! Shit is real. I’m in the festival program, comedy section. Damn!

    Monday nights are rehearsal nights, at the Improv Consipracy annex.

    Week one, with Tom and Matt. Still not fully off book, but better. It’s nice to perform it finally. Lots of notes. Good notes. Dramatic changes to sketch order. Partial rewrites, punching up bits, performance suggestions, additions. Some pivotal changes. Show is running to about 50 minutes without banter, so that’s good. Spending the rest of the week reading lines to Jo daily, with corrections.

    Week one is when I made the car hat mentioned two posts ago. Evenrything is out of order, dammit. And you can’t reorder WordPress posts, stupid WordPress.

    Week two with Tom. Still woefully dropping lines. Getting better though. Characterizations improving.

    Week three with Jo. Working on staging, the movement of props, the changing of hats. Still can’t read through a show once without taking a break. Still flubbing lines.

    Also week three, more medical appointments.

    Also also week three, my partner comes down with influenza A. This does not bode well.

    Week four – Monday – with Tom. I feel likes we’re getting this. Which is good, because the tech run is in a week. Note to self. THE TECH RUN IS IN A WEEK. The QLab stuff is so not finished. I hardly even know how to DO QLab. What even IS QLab?

    Also week four, worked on traffic light pitches promo with the Fringe team. Bumped into some friends too, which was nice.

    Also also week four, second last prop hat arrives all the way from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I don’t think the tam-o-shanter from Edinburgh is going to get here in time though.

    Yeah big ass week, September week four. Lots to do, lots of hustling, lots of flyering, final rehearsals, prepping.

    Also also also week four…I start to feel very sick.

    A note about this post.

    There were personal tragedies within the time period discussed in this post, as well as grief anniversaries. I have thought a lot about how to include them. Not discussing them feels insulting to a memory. But also, discussing them in this context feels cheap. So I will say here – we are saddened, they are missed, their loss is felt.

  • When you’re still on book and you’re a month out, here’s a hot tip: Go to Bali and listen to recordings of yourself beside the pool.

    I’m writing this retrospectively after the show run. And out of order too as it turns out.

    You have a choice. Get serious and learn your lines, or go on holiday for a week.

    It’s a tough choice. So yeah, why not both? Read your lines on the plane, read your lines in your room, read your lines beside the pool, read your lines when you’re out for dinner…

    Here’s a tip, cadets! Don’t run down to the pool straight after breakfast and ask your partner to help you read lines. If it is before noon it, will not end well.

    But the show is called Born Annoying for a reason. As an annoying person, expect rejection.

    Pre-record yourself reading your lines and listen along with noise cancelling headphones. You didn’t want to hear those other people anyway. Maybe it will soak into your head. I don’t know – I’m not a neurosurgeon.

    It’s an annoying podcast featuring yourself. But you get to have a Bintang with a negroni chaser beside the pool.

    A Bintang with negroni chaser beside the pool. Enjoy it, because while you’re on holiday in Bali..

    You’re going to have to get real.

  • I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches part two or how to create a stupid car hat

    Yes, I’m at it again. More props. This time it’s a car hat. Don’t ask why. Come to the show and all will be revealed.

    Step one. Take a cardboard box that is about the size of a hat and roughly shape it into something that you hope sort of looks like a car.

    Papier mache that bad boy. I had a moulded shape of my head left over from the imapala hat process, so I taped it into the underside for that smooth, smooth hat fit that you have come to expect.

    Make some cardboard wheels, and paint the whole thing. OMG! That’s so realistic!!! Is that a real car on your head? Don’t patronise me, I know what it is.

    Note: my tongue is doing that because I’m making car noises.

  • Surprise visit to emergency room affords me the opportunity to have a short staycation to recharge the batteries

    A whirlwind week of medical tests ended in a couple of days in hospital. I didn’t need the distraction or the drama, but man it’s nice to be forced to have a break.

    Went to the GP with a list of intermittent minor problems:

    1. Nausea after poopies
    2. Sore hip
    3. Unimportant occasional slight shortness of breath when exercising

    I suggested the GP choose two out of the three. He picked 2 and 3. Apparently breathing issues are existential, and poopies are just poopies. Ah well, next time, poopies! He sent me off for bloodwork, as well as a chest x-ray, a hip x-ray and an ultrasound.

    The blood results suggested clotting. Is there anything blood doesn’t know? Anyway now I needed a chest MRI. So I got one!

    Long story short, the radiologist said it’s multiple pulmonary emboli. Hang on, that’s called pulmonary embolism or blood clots in your lungs! He told me to go to emergency immediately. I was pretty sure he knew better than me about such matters, so I complied.

    Yay! Here I am enjoying myself immensely in hospital, thinking about delicious hospital sandwiches.

    So I had a lovely overnight staycation. Lots of lovely doctors and nurses put up with me for the night and sent me out with a treatment plan and a promise of improvement.

    Yes it’s somewhat serious! But not “cancel the show” serious. Some slight modifications will be required, but hopefully it will be largely unchanged. A bit less jumping, perhaps.

    It’s also not “cancel your holiday” serious. Here I am getting ready to learn some lines beside a pool somewhere.

    PS: The nausea is probably lactose intolerance. The sore hip is gluteus minimus tendonosis.

    End.

  • I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches, or how to make papier mache antelope horns

    I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches, or how to make papier mache antelope horns

    I wanted to make some antelope horns for a sketch in my show Born Annoying. So I put fingertips and rubbed the sides of my head for luck, and this is what I came up with. I think it works pretty good.

    Getting the correct shape for the horns took a bit of thinking. I tried cardboard, I tried foam, but they didn’t work. Then I figured on softening and bending taper candles. I could papier mache over the top, then melt the wax. Pictured here I have softened the candled and carfeully wrapped them around a stick as desired.

    Here I am multitasking. The hat bit is cling wrap, with layers of tissue paper and craft glue. The horns are well underway, with layers of tissue paper. I also fixed old toilet roll insides to the base for attaching to the hat bit later.

    To create realistic ribbing for the horns, I wrapped twine around the horns. Later I continued to apply more layers of tissue paper and watered down craft glue.

    As you can see, I also drank coffee. Plus I just noticed all those bottles of booze shaming up the background.

    Here are the horns glued and taped to the hat bit, with more and more layers of tissue paper and craft glue to hold them on better.

    Not pictured is the bit where I melted the wax out of the horns. I did this in the oven, set on 100 c, with a bent coat hanger holding the horn upright, where the wax could drip into an oven tray and ruin it completely. A small price to pay.

    I painted the horms with acrylic paint to look nice and shmick!

    Next I bought this fur fabric and begged my partner to stick the fur on top. I think my begging did a pretty good job.

    We decided to add the ears too to help soften the devillish vibe.

    You’ll have to come to the show to see this prop in action.

  • The first post is always about your declaration to start a blog or a diary and this post is no exception

    I decided to start a blog diary about my debut Melbourne Fringe show. It’s for my personal use, but you can read it too.

    I’m going to use it cathartically, as a thing to help me decompress when I’m feeling squished. I’m going to use it as a reminder about why I wanted to do this show in the first place. And I’m going to use it as a warning (or welcome) sign for future generations of noobs, to stop (or start) them making the same foolish mistakes that I made.

    So here we are at the start. An unfunny post about comedy.

    There was a time when dark thoughts followed dark events and led me to feel like I should not be funny, and that I should never have tried.

    I was planning for some solo guitar gigs and I signed up for improv classes, wanting to improve my stage banter.

    I don’t want to say improv saved my life, but it changed my course. I started writing again, and I was surprised. I liked it. It was effortless, and satisfying. And I started performing, without the stress and anxiety I felt performing music.

    I realised that if you feel good trying to make people laugh, you were probably born annoying and you should just roll with it.

    Ah, so that’s why I’m doing this show!