Sunday Blog post

 Earlier in the week, I did some training for a new job and took my son to a couple of places to get groceries. 🛒 I was also doing some planning for an upcoming show at Eat Street Crossing called Next Slide, Please, where comedians will be doing their own slideshow presentations. 🎤

Tuesday was our Technically Funny show at The Others Collective. We did the same slideshow-karaoke-style format, with comedians getting up and giving presentations on random topics. 🎭 This turned out way better than expected and it was so exciting to see how much equipment the production crew had including boom mics and cameras.The audience feedback was amazing and there was some call and response towards comedians who did characters like motivational speakers or even the opposite:demotivational speakers.

Since the show was being streamed online through Pennant TV, I invited some of my family members to watch it. It was nice that they could actually see the show even though they weren't there in person.

Then Saturday came. I took my son to McDonald’s, and later I went to see Wife of a Salesman at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul with a friend. 🍟

Every day, my son and I have also been reading The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware together. We take turns reading, skipping over any bad parts. 📖

I also wrote some posts for Medium based on some of my experiences producing shows. It’s been fun getting back into writing and looking at some of the things I’ve been doing from a different perspective.

Look forward to a review of Wife of a Salesman on my blog soon!

Sunday Blog post

 This week was a little bit of everything.

On Tuesday, I started orientation for a new job. Orientation ran from Tuesday through Friday, so that took up a good part of the week. During one of my breaks, I was able to write some comedy jokes, a lot of which ended up being about therapy. Apparently, therapy is one of my more reliable sources of material.

The company also gave us a really nice blanket that rolls up and packs into something you can carry around like a purse. I thought that was pretty creative. I’ve never had a job where one of the first things they gave me was basically a portable blanket.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I picked up some Posca markers because I wanted to do some artwork. I’m still trying to figure out how to get better at watercolor, so I also bought some TAMBI watercolors and have been experimenting with those. I’m still very much in the “trying to figure out how to make this look good” stage.

There were also rehearsals for our upcoming shows. I’ve been talking to different performers about whether they might want to join us, so there’s been a lot of that going on too.

On September 22, we’ll be performing in Technically Funny at The Others, our improv group Waxy Comedy will be doing a portion of show that mixes comedy with presentation-style performances. Then, on September 29, Waxi Comedy will be hosting a show called Next Slide, Please at Eat Street Crossing, where we expect a lot of comedians to give presentations as part of the show. Both shows have involved a fair amount of planning, rehearsing, and reaching out to performers.

Earlier in the week, I went to Comedy Corner to watch an open mic. It was a pretty tense show because there were a lot of hecklers in the audience, and the comics had to fight their way through their acts.

At one point, the host said, “Please don’t talk to the comics unless they talk to you first.”

I loved that.

Then five of the hecklers got up and left after hearing it, which was actually pretty smart of them.

By the end of the week, I had managed to read two books: The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs. Westaway, both by Ruth Ware. I’ve been getting back into reading, so it was nice to actually make it through two books.

On Sunday, I went to Hive Collaborative to do musical improv, which was a nice way to end the week.

Random mansion in my area

So that was pretty much my week, How about yours?

Sunday blog post

 This week was a little bit of a mix of comedy, rehearsals, the library, and getting my son settled into fifth grade.

On Tuesday, my son went back to school. He’s in fifth grade now, and since he’s been at the same school for a few years, he already knows a lot of his classmates. It was nice to get him back into that routine.

Earlier in the week, I went to Acme Comedy with some of the other comics. We spent some time mingling with the other comedians and asking people if they wanted to come to our upcoming Slideshow Karaoke rehearsal. We’ll be doing a show at Eighth Street Eat Street in South Minneapolis, where we’ll be doing comedy and silly characters along with slideshows. The rehearsal will be September 29 from 6 to 8 p.m., so we’re trying to get more people involved before then.

I also went to Minneapolis Central Library to check out some of the spaces there. I had no idea they had such a large theater space. It was actually kind of fun to walk around and see what was available, especially since we may eventually use some of those spaces for rehearsals. There’s something different about seeing a space in person before you actually have a rehearsal there.

On Wednesday, we were supposed to do another stand-up comedy workshop at Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy at Mall of America. My stand-up friend Reese and I started doing these workshops last week, and that was the first time we had tried it together. I had already done comedy the day before, though, so I decided I wanted to space things out a little more instead of doing comedy back-to-back.

Last week, I brought in some jokes I had written the previous year. They didn’t really have a fluid storyline connecting them, but I got some good feedback from the other comics. They thought I had good energy, but one of the biggest things I needed to work on was slowing down and letting the jokes sit long enough for the audience to actually laugh before I moved on.

Then on Thursday, I stayed home with my son because he was sick. So instead of going out and doing everything I had planned, the day became a quieter one at home.

It was a pretty ordinary week in some ways, but I like having these little pieces of life happening at the same time: my son starting fifth grade, getting more involved with comedy, figuring out rehearsal spaces, and continuing to work on my own performing.

UPCOMING EVENT

And coming up on September 22, I’ll be taking part in a walk event. More details coming soon, but I’m looking forward to getting out there and being part of it!

Sunday Blog post

 On Wednesday, I saw A Real Piece of Work at the Minnesota Fringe, and later I saw FAST Death of a Salesman. Both of these plays really stuck with me. There was something about the way they approached theater, performance, and the process of putting a play together that I kept thinking about afterward.

Then, on Friday, I went to see a one-man play. I brought a friend with me, and the play was very personal to me because it had to do with little people. One of the things that really stayed with me was the way the performer talked about being the only person in their family with a disability, and what that experience was like for them.

There was another part of the story that was particularly difficult for me to hear. The performer talked about going to a professional acting workshop where the instructor asked the performers to depict a little person, and described little people as being among the lowest people in society, alongside people with other disabilities. Hearing that really stung.

I think it hit me so hard because I am a little person, and I have experienced moments when I felt that other people were treating me as though ideas like that were actually true. I've experienced disrespect, and I've had moments where I've wondered whether people saw me as somehow less than them. So hearing that story in the context of an acting workshop brought up something very personal for me.

Afterward, I had a conversation with my brother about what it's like to be the only person in your family with a disability, and how complex that can be when you are adopted and are able to see your other siblings with disabilities. In my family, my mother was a little person, so was my grandmother, and so was my brother.But in my adopted family everyone was quite athletic and I was the only little person and often I distanced from my disability .My brother and I talked about how that can affect us and what it means to grow up within that kind of family structure.

Later that evening, my friend and I went to Whitey's to see the open mic night. Since she's a stand-up comedian, I feel like I'm really starting to get inducted into the stand-up comedy environment. I'm getting to know the spaces, the people, the conversations, and what it feels like to be around comedians. There's something exciting about being brought into that world through someone who is already part of it.

After a week like that, I've been taking some time to slow down and let everything settle. Right now, I'm sitting at the aquatic park called Lorraine Park, where they have an outdoor pool, and my son seems to be enjoying it.

Looking back at the week, I think I'm still processing everything I saw and experienced. The theater, my family, and the comedy world are all giving me different things to think about, and I'm interested in seeing where all of it takes me