My UCB Harold Audition
As I mentioned in this space before, I have been way into improv comedy the last year or so. Honestly, I’ve gone a little nuts with it. Sometimes, I’m doing four or five nights a week of this shit. As far as just pure time commitment, I’d say improv has nosed past watching early 90s WWE and shame eating as “Brendan’s main thing.” But after a year of classes and jams and performances, it was time for me to take the next step: audition for the UCB Harold team!
Upright Citizens Brigade has a core curriculum of four levels of improv in which they teach the “Harold” format. When you have completed all four levels, you are eligible to audition for the Harold teams which perform every Monday and Thursday nights at the theater in Hollywood. Auditioning for Harold is an LA improv community rite of passage. While I am not nearly as experienced as most of my improv peers, there was no logical reason not to do it. It’s an experience, right? And life is about collecting experiences. (I’m such a millennial!) So I signed up, got my time slot, and went for it!
I had never really auditioned for anything like this before. As a filmmaker, I’m usually on the other side of auditions, smiling politely while I secretly judge you all. But one advantage I have coming to this later in life is this: I genuinely don’t give a shit. If I were auditioning in my 20s like a lot of the students around me, I would be all up in my head about it, judging my value based on whether other people thought I was funny enough. But one of the beautiful things about middle age is that you really stop caring about all that bullhonkey. I know who I am and no audition result is going to challenge that. In fact, this is what I used for my headshot and resume:
“But Brendan,” you may be asking yourself as you try to unsee that shirtless shot of me, “Did you purposefully not take it seriously so you wouldn’t be hurt if you got rejected?” Good catch! That is something I would traditionally do, for sure. And if I'm honest… maybe! But this time, I was so convinced that there was no chance I’d make it, I didn’t even care. I personally know at least 50-60 auditioning improvisers who are way better than me. There are only a handful of slots and I ain't getting one. So I thought the whole ‘goofy resume and headshot’ would a good bit for the ol’ Substack. I live my life for you people!
My audition time was 11:30am on a Thursday. I am not what you’d call a ‘morning person,’ so I thought it would be a wise move to have a cup of coffee to perk up. Some background: about ten years ago, I gave up regularly drinking caffeine. So these days, I drink a cup of coffee once a year or so. So for me, coffee has essentially the same effect as shooting an 8 ball of cocaine into my prick. But I wanted to be upbeat energetic, so I would be able to easily feign enthusiasm (not a strength of mine). What I didn’t take into account was that even though I wasn’t worried about the audition, I would have a natural adrenaline kick at audition time. So by the time I arrived at the theater, I was a jittery, bug-eyed Gary Busey!
For the Harold auditions, UCB groups you randomly with five other people. You arrive twenty minutes before your time and are given a coach to warm up. My group was made up of two people I knew and three very nice strangers. When we got into the warmup group, everything seemed to be going fine until one weirdo decided to get weird (as weirdos do). In improv, there is a game called Justification Lawyer in which someone imbues you with an unusual behavior and you have to instantly justify why you’re doing it. For example:
Improviser 1: Why are you so jittery?
Improviser 2: Because I’m Gary Busey! Give me more cocaine!
Get it? So during our warmup, the (white dude) weirdo turns to my (Asian) friend Mickey (who he had never met) and asks “Why are you wearing black face?” So now it is on Mickey to justify wearing black face. As you can imagine, this is an uncomfortable position to be in. In improv, that sort of behavior is called a ‘pimp’ and it is widely frowned upon. You may be thinking “I could justify that in a non-racist way!” and I probably could too (some sort of well meaning but ignorant time traveler comes to mind), but you’ve got to remember that you have to do it on your feet in a scene with a stranger you now don’t trust potentially in front of an audience judging your response. Improv! Mickey handled it better than I would have. When the exercise ended, I said as kindly as possible through a gritted fake smile, “Please leave shit like that in the warm up room. Do not do that to any of us on stage.” And on that awkward note, we were called into our audition!
We arrived on stage to a very kind and warm room of the UCB artistic directors and began our set. The audition itself was fine! I was not terrible, but I was not spectacular. I was boringly competent. UCB teaches a very specific style of improv, so I did my best to show the skills I learned. I think I did okay! For the sake of you readers, I kind of wish it were more of a disaster so I’d have a funny story about it. But it was pretty okay! Even the weirdo guy wasn’t that weird. He was a little weird, but didn’t commit any hate crimes or anything. So it was fine! A good experience that I’m glad I did. Booooo-riiiing!
Going through the four levels of UCB and then the audition was totally worth it and I am glad I did it. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of my improv journey. But for your sake, I hope I have more disastrous auditions. These medium experiences just don’t put butts in the seats!
Oh, one exciting thing happened later that day. I was swimming laps at my gym, going over in my head all the things I wish I said (a proud improv tradition). Someone walked by and dropped his water bottle into the pool. Without missing a stroke, I dove to the bottom of the pool, scooped up the bottle, and placed it on the side of the pool. In mid stroke! Then, I heard the guy yell “Thank you!” and I gave him a thumbs up as I continued swimming! It was literally the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life and no one was around to see it.
Before I go - one last reminder that my movie TALLYWACKER is playing in Wisconsin next week at the Beloit International Film Festival! Here are the screening times:
Sun Mar 30 at 2:30pm at La Casa Grande
Thu Apr 3 at 2:30pm at Visit Beloit
I will be winging into town for the Thursday screening so come by and see me do a Q&A on no sleep and full of cheese curds which I think they have in Wisconsin and will be very disappointed if they don’t! Tickets available here.
Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!