Let's DCM XI!

Another thing I did from that list o' fun was attend and perform in the Del Close Marathon, held this past weekend.

Truth be told, I'm not a fan of the DCM. It's always on a super-duper hot weekend, and it's even hotter in an underground theater that's packed full of millions of sweaty people. Someone described it as a "beer sauna," and that's pretty much right.

Even on the best nights, after performing a show, I usually get so claustrophobic that I have difficulty breathing and have to leave, so if we up the temperature and the number of bodies exponentially, it's sort of a nightmare for me.

But I resolved myself to at least do the DeCoster show, since we're a house team at the hosting theater. But as I descended into the thick, steamy green wasteland, I thought, "What the heck am I doing to myself?"

The important thing, though, is that I performed, and then, as an added Year of Yes surprise, got asked to sit in with Oscarbait, a the improvised Movie show that I directed for several months.

It's weird that instantly I was like, "Hell, yeah, I'll stick around for another hour and do a show that'll make me sweat off a pound!" but the Movie has always been my favorite form of improv, it's my one true love, and doing it again after 2.5 years was pretty darn special. There's no way I would turn down that opportunity.

Before the show I was jumping and fidgeting around and someone asked if I was nervous. "No," I said, "just psyched." Doing a Movie! What fun!

And we had a terrific show. It's a lot of work doing a Movie, even more doing it under a tight 25-minute schedule, but damn, it was fun. There was a moment when I was helping to lift one of our biggest, tallest members off the ground (in order to show an overhead shot), and I just started smiling manically at the sheer joy of it all.

And that's what the Marathon is all about, Charlie Brown.

Here's a poster of the Movie, as designed by Jessica Stickles (and a synopsis can be read here). I played the Chinese kid.