The Rapid Response Team's first production in over a year rocked Galapagos last night, methinks. Went about as well as can be expected, 45 paid audience members, which is as big as its previous incarnation at The Red Room ever got... so onward and upward! Hopefully most of those people will come back, and those that do come back will bring friends and so on and so forth and onwards and upwards. We're trying to build this grass-roots style, and discover what exactly it is that we're doing at the same time.
Abe G. and I had a good conversation about the show, trying to pin down what exactly it is that we do. I think that it's important not to drum up too many rules for oneself when trying to discover something... the rules of the Team are very loose... the news stories must be recent and must be true, and beyond that the writer can do whatever they want. The Team then, as a group, constructs rules for how the show is to be.
But what it usually comes out being time and again is something quite close to the idea of a Revue Show akin to The Cambridge Footlights back in the 60s. I'll let Abe, who is more of an expert on this than I, expound on this in the comments if he feels so inclined. But there's a mixture of material, most of it funny, some of it silly, some of it serious, and lots of music. It tends to be "clever" and skews towards a well educated, well informed audience. Doing something based on the news is usually going to aim for people who pay attention to it.
At the same time, I think that there are deeper reasons why I do the Rapid Response Team, and I'm sure someone is going to call me a self-important jackass for writing this, but here goes: I think that, consideirng how alienating and fear-based our culture is, and considering how anti-dissent our political landscape is, and how violent and dangerous and randomly so things are and feel these days... I think it's important that there are a group of young, energetic artists out there doing a fun event for people to leave their homes, come together as a group, and enjoy themselves in an evening specifically driven by said alienating/fear mongering/dangerous current events. I'm not saying we're, like, heros (Captain Anti-Alienation and the Humanity Patrol!!), all I'm saying is that I think that what we do with the RRT has some small positive effect on us as artists and, hopefully, on the audience as well. And sometimes, I have to admit, sometimes it feels like just getting people together in a room to laugh at the news an dpolitics and this world around us is in its own way a little act of rebellion. There, I said it. And I believe it. You can start making fun of me now.
One main difference from our earlier shows i've noticed is that our material, while political, isn't as partisan as it used to be. I think that is becuase we were doing the show before in the context of an election, so most of the stories that were around to respond to were actually process stories which are easier to make partisan hay out of. While certainly political, and definitely coming from a leftist perspective, our work this time out was more laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it all. A friend of mine who is a Republican (and, I'm pretty sure, a born-again one at that) was able to have a great time at the show and not feel excluded by it while we were openly pointing out and mocking Western imperialism, Bush's environmental record, and Cheney shooting someone in the face. If I ever get a die-hard Bush supporter in the audience, I'll have to interrogate them afterwards to see what they thought.
Anyway... this is all a way of saying thanks to everyone who came out to support us, it really meant a lot. And thanks to my awesome collaborators for making this a really great night of theater, and the most fun I've had in a rehearsal room in awhile. We'll be back in March with some brand new material, so come check us out then!
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