Tim ME

Anonymous asked: Just wanted to correct you. UCBTLA has 6 maude teams, with 6 actors on each. So there are 36 Maude performers, not 80.

I corrected this to separately count Maude actors and writers for future readers, thanks to this message from a very successful hacktivist group. 

I get a lot of questions about the two schools that I study at, and so I thought I would write about them as a reference point for any and all asking. After all, we as actors have very little money to spend, so why not be a bit informed before spending it. I think I am in an interesting place to be writing this piece, considering I have not finished either school, but am simply in the midst of doing so.

Background of Tim: At Upright Citizens Brigade, I have finished UCB 401 twice and am now in my first Advanced Study starting the first week of March. At Groundlings, I have completed Advanced Improv and have been on the wait list for Writing Lab for almost a year.

In other words, I am on the cusp of what both schools refer to as their “Performance Track”. Woo.

Initial Notes:

Below are my thoughts. They reference the main curriculum and the main shows. There are dozens of extra classes at each school and countless shows at each theatre that feature every form of comedy imaginable. This is because of the complex backgrounds of each and every performer and teacher at the schools. 

So let’s get to it. The title of the post mentions “and (but not vs.)” and I want to tackle that fact first. These schools are not in competition. After having a hunch myself, I had the great pleasure of confirming this fact with the head of the Groundlings school firsthand after a few brews at Dark Room. They offer a different product- plain and simple. 

Product Offered: Curriculum

The first thing to note is that UCB specializes in long-form, and Groundlings in short-form. That info you can get from a google search. What I have come to realize is that UCB offers a tool that is in addition to your acting technique, whereas Groundlings is a tool to improve your acting technique.

Since it is in addition, you do not have to be an actor to take and love UCB’s classes, nor to be a great long-form performer. I have seen many “non-acting” writers, and even some “non-acting” non-writers, absolutely DESTROY crowds in improv shows. The skill of Acting (or Acting Training, specifically) is not always necessary. Long-form relies on truth-telling, commitment, and a simple identification of what’s funny. Longform scenes primarily contain justified dialogue as a means of adding information. UCB curriculum teaches you the aforementioned, and how to better it. That’s not to say acting doesn’t help in long-form improv; it most certainly does. The art of acting focuses much on truth-telling and commitment, and aids the long-form improviser in even more ways like spacework, dialects, character work, stage picture, etc.

Groundlings classes improve acting technique. Since Groundlings focuses on character work, their curriculum is almost necessary to the actor. Different from long form, with short form one has very little time to fully inform the audience of their point-of-view. Therefore, dialogue is only one way to add information. Spacework, emotion, stage picture, and character are the others. Without acting, a groundlings scene would be very dry and uneventful because of the lack of training in “funny-identification”. It is also important to note that Groundlings training involves a director who leads the scene or game.

Yes, games. In a Groundlings class, unlike at UCB, there are “improv games” which are important to the curriculum and training. A few that come to mind (and my faves) are:

 1) Family Dinner where the audience gives the improvisers a recent event (ex: father lost job, son busted for pot, daughter wrecked family car, mother ran over dog) and the improvisers try their best not to bring it up, but rather move on with the family dinner.

 2) Talk Show where the audience gives a name of a talk show, a topic, and a personality trait for the 3-panelists.

3)Genres where the director gives a genre (Shakespeare, Dickens, Sorkin, Film Noire) and the audience gives the improvisers an activity or job.

In any of the above games, the director can stop the scene and give the improvisers a new gift throughout. This, again, is exclusive to Groundlings (in this context).

My friend Johnny, drew an infographic about what we learn at Groundlings. Maybe this will help you understand. If not, you will at least know how to plan out a meth lab. 

Product Offered: Performances

The performances of each are geared towards different audiences. This section should help explain why Groundlings charges $15+ on most shows and UCB charges $5-10 on all shows that are not free.

The simplest way to explain it is to say that UCB performers perform for their peers and Groundlings perform for comedy audiences.

The main UCB shows Monday through Thursday are all $5 and allow you to get in free with a student ID. Seeing these shows make you a better student and inevitably a much better performer. Because of this fact, the audiences are primarily made up of students. They’re amazing shows stress long-form technique, particularly Harold Night.  Laughs come at times of hilarious dialogue, stabbing call-outs, and a breaking of the “rules” of improv. Students eat this stuff up. Non-students are less concerned as they won’t understand all the callouts and have never learned the “rules”. (Note: for “rules” of improv, look to anothers’ blog. They don’t really exist but are taught in the beginning as a foundation. I am without a doubt too amateur to try to explain anymore than this. I am an honest person. I promise.)

A Great Call for an Edit to the Above by a friend and amazing blogwriter, Caroline. Besides the $5 or free for students shows at UCB during the week, their shows can be great for a comedy audience. Specifically, their late night shows on the weekend. In fact, I have been told by multiple teachers NOT to see Shitty Jobs on Sunday nights as a student. (However, i say go to it; It’s amazing). There are other shows too that are fit for a comedy audience, thus adding to the fact that there are dozens more shows and types of comedy seen at UCB than Groundlings. 

The main Groundlings shows are for comedy audiences and are priced that way. Groundlings students get 1 free ticket to each main show. Therefore, there is a clump of students in each main show, and 1 clump only. The rest is “normal folk” who are just coming for laughs. The laughs at these shows come from seeing funny characters, hearing amazing songs, and feeling fully immersed in the improvisers’ world. The audience needs no information before they come in. They find everything they need in their programs, the words of the director, and by watching the show.

Another thing to discuss is the question of who gets to perform. At UCB, there are sooooo many performers. Countless. Know somebody or be somebody or do something and you will get on their stage. Harold night offers almost 50 performers, Maude night offers 72 (36 writers/36 actors), and those numbers comprise 2 of the 7 nights they have shows. There are 30 Groundlings, 11 Sunday Company members, and they have 2-3 nights where they invite their friends/Groundlings Alum to play with them.

That said, Groundings just added a student stage- G3 which will eventually house student shows so that more than the above get to perform.

Brag Moment: I got to perform in the first show at G3.

These kids are great.

Two More Things I Think You Should Know:

There are a million and a half indie improv shows in Los Angeles. You are all an email away from performing at these. Something to note is that the improvisers here are primarily trained in Long-form at either UCB or IoWest. I perform with my pleasant crew, It Girl on the regular and I have only seen 1 team that did Groundlings work.

This does not mean that they are not welcoming of short-form. If you love it, do it. Full disclosure: I am working on a way to present short-form at an indy show because it is extremely fun for me. Until then, I am content doing long-form with occasional characters thrown in that I have developed in Groundlings classes.

There is a component of Sketch-writing at each school. At Groundlings, it is built into the program. At UCB, it is a different track. At UCB, most of their main shows (weekend and weekday) are improv. At Groundlings, their weekday shows are improv and their weekend shows are sketch with a little improv therein  The Groundlings themselves do sketch/improv. The UCB itself rarely performs together- if ever. I guess Asssscat is the most “ucb-original” and it contains zero sketches. Stupid comparison. How about this comparison- At Groundlings the level below being a Groundling is Sunday Company. They perform Sketch with improv tossed in. At UCB, that same level is Harold Team (improv) and Maude Team (sketch). That works. Now, you get it.

Boom.

There you have it. My comparison/contrast of the two. I sincerely hope this aids your decision if you must make one. I cannot stress how beneficial these two schools combined are for me. There is no difference in the level of talent at either a student or teacher level at these schools. If you have questions or comments, message me and I can always edit. 

I have not trained at IoWest, nor Second City Hollywood, nor anywhere else. Therefore, I did not write about them. For those curious, I hear they’re great firsthand, secondhand, and thirdhand. Never fourthhand. 

Tagged are all my teachers.

Its 4 am and I need to write. 

I’m still a vegetarian. Over two weeks now! Or exactly two weeks if you consider the time I ate chicken and waffles, my favorite food, at Rosco’s after wanting to go for the year and a half I’ve been here. 

A year and a half… wild. 

Being a vegetarian is awful. I’m sure its not awful for someone who likes vegetables. I don’t though. So, its awful. For me, being vegetarian means eating yogurt and eggs for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and a bowl of corn for dinner. 

I’ve lost weight though. My pants don’t fit and the ones that didn’t fit before, now bunch up in the crotch when a belt is pulled tight. I’m not proud of my fashion, though I am proud of my thinner belly. 

However, I’m pretty sure I am just thin because I don’t eat, and not because I eat better, as originally intended. 

I have to decide if I have to go to camp soon. I love camp. It was honestly the best summer I can remember. So dreamy. But, is it intelligent to return to a “dream state” when reality is weighing down on me so hard?

I am living in LA and working towards being an actor, so shouldn’t that mean I give it 100% 100% of the time? Leaving this silly little world for 3 months doesn’t sound like the best route towards becoming a successful actor. What if a huge audition comes up?

Then again, my last professional audition was nearly a year ago. Boo me, right?

There’s something to say about quality of life. Living and eating for free in an amazing environment surrounded by some of the best humans and teaching 6-16 yr olds how to be a better actor and even how to be a better person in general would make my quality of life SIGNIFICANTLY greater than what it is now. 

Also, comedy comes from experience right? So, by gaining more experience I will have more to pull from, right?

WHY DO I KEEP SAYING RIGHT ON A COMPUTER ADDRESSED TO NO ONE AT 5 in the morning? You tell me. You… lol.

I just watched my current Groundlings teacher on Chelsea Lately. Groundlings Advanced Improv is fun. I can’t wait to feel confident to write the comparisons and contrasts of Groundlings vs. UCB. I will probably do that after 1 Advanced Study at UCB and Writing Lab at Groundlings. I realize this paragraph makes 0 sense to those uninformed about improv comedy in Los Angeles, America. For that, I am sorry. 

I am so hungry. I need to eat iron. I forgot about iron when I decided to go veg. 

I am not going to quit yet, though. If nothing else, I will probably develop at least a sliver of a palate for green things in this veggie time. 

I wrote a funny sketch that I think could go viral, but I need to film children. That is so much harder than I thought it would be. If you have children you want to give me for a day, please let me know. 

I wrote a long paragraph about my dating life and then I deleted it. 

LA bums me out. I wonder how long I will be here unsuccessfully until I change lifeplan. (Scared to keep writing on this subject. Moving on.)

Camp could be fun. Vegetarianism sucks. Acting scares me. In this post, I’ve accomplished nothing.

After every drunken night, I find the PUR filter by my bed. Well, it’s not PUR- it’s an off brand- but you get it. I guess I just decide that pouring into a cup would be too much work, or that taking it into my room will prevent my dirty roommate to breathe into it. I can never remember.  

I’m scooping yogurt with the bottom of my banana. We don’t have any clean spoons. That’s courtesy of my roommate too. But to be honest, banana goes quite well with black cherry flavored milk.

This post is not about my dirty roommate or my selective palate. It’s about the end of the world.

It didn’t happen, right?

You can thank me for that. I stopped the world from ending. Read on.

At 10pm yesterday, I realized I left $450 rent money in cash in the glove compartment of a rental car I returned 8 hours prior. That sucked. Possible end of the world type sucking. So, I thought I’d go investigate the rental car place. They closed at 5pm, but I figured if I could see that the car I rented was still there, I would be confident that I could show up at 8am when they opened and get my money. Genuis.

When my roommie comes downstairs, he’s distraught. It turns out, he threw the door opened so hard that our doorknobs fell off into the house. That doesn’t stop him from closing it though, which he does, only to realize you can’t open a door without a doorknob. #FirstWorldProblems.

“[Roommate], don’t worry. I’ll fix it when I get home.” “Tim, you can’t fix it. We need to stay in and call the emergency number and wait for them now.” “No [Roommate], I got business to attend to. Get in the car. I guarantee I can fix it drunkenly in 4 hours” Spoiler Alert: I did.

Off we go to the rental car dealership. Are they called dealerships? You get it. We arrive, and there’s gates galore blocking us from what MIGHT be my used car. I can’t tell because of the poor, ‘keep burglars out’ lighting. Surrounding us are 6-8 valet attendants scattering about. These facts are important.

What to do? Stare. Think. Stare more. Think more. Stare harder. Realize I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Stareeee. ALAS! The door is unlocked in my old car.

Cue 1920s thief music. They had music right?

I dodge some valet attendants. I sneak around the back of the building. I jump a barbwire fence. I slide down a grassy knoll. I jump into the lot from the back. I get to the car my heart all-a-racing. And 2, yes 2, valet attendants walk by BUT I FREEZE AND SLIDE DOWN THE CAR LIKE A LESS ATHLETIC WITH WORSE SKIN VERSION OF JAMES BOND. It works. The money is in the glove compartment. I retreat. I jump and reverse slide and jump again and I am home free.

The world hasn’t ended yet. 

I go to a sweet end-of-the-world party. We are talking Hefeweizen beers, clementine orange garnishes, and oreo cookies. Keep imagining tortilla chips with chunky salsa, 4 great people, and the pilot episode of Hey Arnold! If the world ends, we are going out in style. (calming music)

(Sharp dissonant music) Roommate jumps up and… hold on, i am out of banana and still have more yogurt to eat. brb. 

Ok I am back.. jumps up and remembers the door. He can’t take anymore great time without knowing confidently that we can get into our apartment. 

We return to our apartment. We call the emergency help line for our apartment but they won’t come until 8am. After hours means regular hours according to the half-asleep maintenance man. 

Readers, you already know what happens. I fix it. I unhook my keys from the key hook. I make the hook into a L-shape. I wriggle it inside the doorknob tunnels for 30 minutes, and I finally trigger the mechanism that opens the door. Then, I fixed the doorknob and re-installed the knobs from the inside. 

The world hasn’t ended yet. 

Celebratory finish: I put on another layer of jacket because its freezing outside. It’s seriously like 47 degrees!

There’s a new bar we want to try. They have women with half-shaven heads and men with eyeliner and leather suspenders. The DJ is wearing pajamas and occasionally unzips her pajamas to reveal a tight but regular shirt over her womanly figure. 

In other words, we found a home. 

We sit at the bar for way longer than one should when waiting for a drink, but holding a 20$ bill even though I am only going to spend 4$ usually works. We finally get drinks, and see the bartender throw vodka/redbulls on a woman who refuses to pay the 7$ for 2 drinks. 

There’s a man passed out in the corner with a 6’3” woman handing him a tequila shot and saying “One more!” so we decide to investigate. The woman turns out to be super crazy, and has a friend of equal craziness. Turns out the friend is the fiance of the passed out man. That, however, doesn’t stop her from asking if we will make out with her, “…because someone has to.”. We don’t. Roommate just steals passed-out’s shot and we exit.

The walk home is as good as any. Call random girls on our phones and leave voicemails if they don’t answer. Who cares what we say… considering they won’t be able to make out what we tried to say.

Get home, open the door that I fixed, invite Roommate to sleep in my room because he can’t afford a heater and mine works fine, and text friends I need to hang out with soon. That is how the night ended. 

So what I’m saying is… You’re welcome.