On the first weekend in March, the Hepburn Zoo will house a production titled “Mister Show with Neil and Andrew,” starring Neil Baron ’10 and Andrew Powers ’11.5, as well as Ben Orbison ’12.5, Alyssa Limperis ’12 and Wyatt Orme ’12.5. The show will consist of a series of scenes culled from the HBO series “Mr. Show with Bob [Odenkirk] and David [Cross],” a sketch comedy show with a cult following that ran for four seasons between 1995 and 1998.
Like the original, Middlebury’s own “Mr. Show” will feature a combination of live, onstage material and prerecorded video bits. The Middlebury Campus sat down with co-directors Brad Becker-Parton ’11.5 (who is in charge of filmed material) and Ele Woods ’11 (managing the theatrical side of things) to discuss this ambitious production.
Middlebury Campus: Could you describe the format of Mr. Show, and how that will translate into a stage production?
Ele Woods: Well, each episode of Mr. Show is really one continuous narrative, and we wanted to be able to pick and choose different sketches and not go through just one episode, so we wrote our own transitions between sketches. Because of that, we rely really heavily on video to create smooth transitions in between the live sketches, so a lot of it is going to move between stage time, then video time, then stage time.
Brad Becker-Parton: There’s two or three sketches that are long video sketches, but for the most part, the video essentially just picks up the action once they’ve exited the stage through the door, and then it puts them back in through the door once the filmed piece is over.
EW: And we’ve added some things to make these different sketches fit with each other.
MC: How did you decide which sketches to use from the show?
BBP: A few people, Neil and Andrew mostly, sent out an email of their favorite sketches, and then Ele and Andrew went through and pulled ones that were good.
EW: This is kind of Neil and Andrew’s child, and they asked Brad to help. Then when Brad was not here over J-Term, I stepped in, so I kind of stole Brad’s role, and Brad has ended up directing the film side of things—
BBP:—which I think is working great.
EW: Yeah. So we wanted Neil and Andrew to have their choice of sketches, because it’s really their passion project. We started with them just choosing which ones were their favorites and tried to narrow them down a lot; which ones were way too hard, which ones work.
MC: As far as the multimedia aspect of the show goes, how are you going to set that up in the Zoo, with projections and the like?
BBP: Well, normally in the Zoo, the seats are against the wall right when you walk in, with the stage opposite that.
EW: It’s normally hamburger-style.
BBP: We’re gonna hotdog it. So the seats are going to be on the right when you enter, and the stage is going to be opposite them, on the left side of the room, with a video screen to either side of the stage.
MC: Have you run into any obstacles? Because with any production like this, involving technology, that’s bound to happen.
EW: We haven’t started filming the “Pre-Taped Call-in Show” bit yet, but we already are cringing, because it’s just … essentially what it is, is a call-in talk show that airs a week after it’s taped, and so the people calling in all want to talk about last week’s topic, and at one point Neil gets aggravated—
BBP: — and he drags over a monitor that he has and says, “Look at last week!” And on that video that he’s playing, that Neil is saying, “Look at last week!” It’s like when you have two mirrors facing each other. But we’ll only have a week to film it, because you can’t make it until you have the set for it built — the set needs to look exactly the same on stage as it does in the video.
MC: That seems like a perfect encapsulation of what these mixed-media projects can be like; it’s super ambitious, and there are a lot of elements that have to come together and it could be really hard to pull off, but it could be a great, unusual sort of thing. Are there any other pieces that you’re excited about, which are really unconventional and haven’t really been done here?
EW: Well, I’ve definitely seen a Zoo show involving projectors, like Monty Python, but this one is different.
BBP: Yeah, a lot of this is actually sitting there and watching the video … the two spheres interact, but there will be stretches of two to five minutes where nothing is happening on stage, and I think that’s different. Also, I want it to come off as if we’re taping an episode. If I filmed the theater parts, then I could splice together a whole episode, with audience reactions and everything, which I want to do. And in the intro, Neil and Andrew will be sitting on the couch watching TV, and one of the channels is going to be the stage of the Zoo, empty. And they’re going to say, “We’re supposed to be there!” And they’ll get up and run around campus, and eventually, into the actual live stage.
MC: It sounds like it’s going to be very reflexive and self-referencing, and that’s very much in the spirit of Mr. Show.
EW: Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of the characters opening the door in the video, and then walking live through a door onto the stage.
MC: This is sort of a different question, but I wanted to talk about sketch comedy on campus, and there’s this core group that is very invested in promoting this sort of thing. The Otters have been around, and you guys started Middlebrow, but with Monty Python last semester and now this, it seems like this form is getting some momentum behind it. And is that just because it’s a mode of performance that you all really like, or do you also feel like there’s something else behind that which you think is important to bring to campus?
EW: Well, it’s definitely something different. I think diversity is really important in terms of theater on a college campus. And a lot of the time the theater performances here are very similar — if it’s a comedy, it’s going to be a black comedy, or maybe every once in a while you’ll get a slapstick. But I have never seen sketch comedy, except maybe in the intros of the Otter Nonsense shows.
BBP: There’s certainly a theater audience here — all the Zoo shows always sell out, which is really cool, but I think that there’s a lot of people who complain about Zoo shows always being so serious and so heavy. I think that it’s important to have that exist, because the theater department has a great style, but there are a lot of kids who are interested in doing different things that are not that style. I think recently there have been a lot more independent projects. And as far as sketch comedy goes, it’s a fun way of doing something different.
EW: I think someone needs to start a sketch comedy group here! We have two improv groups, and there are a lot of really funny people on campus — I think the next step would be to have an independent sketch show in the Zoo with original material, written by students.
The making of Mr. Show: film and theater students team up to reinvent HBO’s “Mr. Show”
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