Ella Fritts
It’s our second installment of a monthly look at what’s ahead in St. Louis comedy, with at least one look back, as well. Turns out that it’s a packed month. We’ll also note that our monthly conversation with three St. Louis stand-ups continues and you can find that here.
When Ella Fritts Scored That Pageant Gig: As Maria Bamford announced an open call for a pair of local comedians to open for at The Pageant on Saturday, August 5, a host of area/regional comics took their best shot, with St. Louis’ Ella Fritts nailing down the hosting duties, based on a video you can watch here (or below). It wasn’t exactly a long wait, from announcement to even better announcement.
The “process,” such as it was was “uproariously quick,” she says. “Maria Bamford tweeted out that she was looking for female comics in St. Louis at 5:20 pm. I received notice at 1:00 pm the next day. So, all in all, this took a little less than a day. When I'm waiting for something, even something insignificant, I keep bubbling with anxiety. The evening before getting Bamford, I was all over the place, constantly checking Twitter and jumping between thoughts: ‘I want this so bad!’ ‘This won't change my life dramatically....’ ‘It'll go to another comic, I'm preemptively happy for my friend.’ I could not distract myself. Getting it was sort of an electric relief. It was overwhelming; I forgot to tell my boyfriend when I got it, he found out from Facebook. If I waited longer, I feel like I would've been more chill by the time I got the gig. This, however, took me by surprise.”
Congratulations rolled in swiftly.
“It was my most liked post on Facebook and Instagram, at 300 something and 60 something likes, respectively,” Fritts says. “My family is going to see this show, and they haven't ever seen me do stand-up. A lot of people have come up to me and said how well I'd fit as Maria Bamford's host; we're both weird, high-energy, and visibly nervous. We both started comedy in our teens. We both like pugs and calm moments.”
As the initial excitement wound down, reality crept into the picture.
“I didn't really think about preparing for the show until Monday when Bobby Jaycox (an old friend of mine and the host of The Improv Shop's open mic) asked if I wanted to do extra time to prepare,” she says. “I realized I didn't have a full set ready. If you've seen me, you know I'm all over the place, but at my best, I hone it in and the audience actually likes it. For something big, like The Pageant, I need a script. So I wrote the words to my jokes out to recite to myself as I drive, do dishes at work, fall asleep at night, etc.”
For those unfamiliar with the headliner, Fritts offers an easy, 101-introduction to Bamford.
“Maria Bamford is absurdist comedy at its finest,” she states. “When I tried to explain how I act on stage to my dad, who likes a lot of political humor and Mike Judge sorta stuff, I pulled up a set she did on Colbert last year. If you're unfamiliar with her, watch her half hour, and her hour, Old Baby, on Netflix, where she changes where she's telling jokes, and who she's telling them to. Her Comedy Central half hour is slightly exaggerated story bits and pitches for ridiculous TV shows. Her own show, Netflix's Lady Dynamite, is the best show that came out last year. I am counting ‘Westworld’ in this statistic.”
Reena Calm Headlines a Beer-Paired Night of Comedy: Since moving back to St. Louis, Kelsey McClure’s kept up a busy pace, with a day job as the St. Louis brewery rep for Columbia, Missouri’s Logboat Brewing, while performing at open mics around town, especially music-themed mics. She’s also begun booking under the Comedy Here banner. This show neatly brings together the whole range of her current interests, with a show tied to St. Louis Craft Beer Week.
On Thursday, August 3, McClure is bringing in Chicago’s Reena Calm, along with John Margelewski, Bobby Condon, and Jane Harrison. Each of the four comics will be paired with a beer from Logboat Brewing’s summer portfolio. “The event is set up as if a beer dinner, but rather than meals being paired with beers, it’ll be comedians,” McClure notes.
McClure describes Calm as strong in “storytelling. She’s very frank, doesn’t hold anything back. She talks about the adventures of being a woman in multiple worlds not meant for soft women, like the bar scene and stand-up comedy. She also regularly hosts pictures of her butt hanging out of her pants at national monuments.” (True.)
And noted on that Instagram page, she’s fun. Here’s a clip of proof from 2016:
The Magic Smoking Monkey Delivers: While we normally look ahead to what’s coming up in the next month of local comedy performances, there’s no way that we can’t pause for a moment to praise the Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre. In July, the MSMT wrapped a two-weekend performance of a new show, a parody of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies list, which featured eight primary actors and two support players in a breakneck-paced bit of mid-summer hilarity. Serious, true, laugh-aloud stuff.
Suki Peters, who directed the project, is the Artistic Director for the St. Louis Shakespeare and its offshoot, the Magic Smoking Monkey. The idea, as she recalls it, came “One night in the fall of 2009, while drinking at our usual haunt, I pitched the crazy idea to tackle the entire AFI Top 100 List to Ben, Jones, Roger, and Cook. We started talking through the pros and cons, how could it be structured, etc., and we created a very rough skeleton. Throughout the years that followed, we did numerous MSM shows but kept circling back to the AFI idea. Finally, in the spring of 2017, we received approval from the Board of Directors to move forward with the project and Ben, Jones, Roger, Shualee and I dug into the scriptwriting process. At first, we started with a style similar to the treatment the RSC gave Complete Works Abridged. However, we felt like that was the easy way out, and decided it would be much more impressive and fulfilling to tackle, head-on, all 100 in reverse order, giving each movie a moment to shine.
“The list of 100 movies,” she adds, “was divided between the five of us, and we would meet twice a week to pitch our minute-or-less movie scenes. Some ideas worked very well right out of the gate, some needed a rewrite or two, and some we had to go back to the drawing board several times before we felt we had captured the movie’s true essence. Even throughout rehearsals we were constantly adding, subtracting and polishing the script with the help of the cast—which made for a very unique, tailor-made piece for the eight actors sharing the stage. Our final version of the script was 196 pages of material that the actors soared through in 90 minutes.”
The long-simmering nature of the show makes Peters say that “with a project this monstrous, you have to break it down into bite-sized pieces, or you will lose your mind. We began rehearsing the piece in small chunks at first—10 to 15 movies at a time—always in the correct descending order. We knew the transitions/pacing were going to be one of the biggest challenges of this production, so we had to have those smooth from the beginning. Then we started adding the chunks together and by the time we ran movies number 100 to 50 for the first time, the whole team applauded, the creative staff exhaled and we thought ‘Wow, this just might work.’ The first time we ran from numbers 100 to 1, I remember there being a very quiet moment that followed where we were all in awe of each other and what everyone had accomplished. That’s when we knew we had a show…but we didn’t stop there. We kept editing and refining the script throughout the run. There is even talk of a remount this fall which will include more new material.”
Because the Monkey’s home base of the Regional Arts Commission will be undergoing renovations this fall and winter, the often-seen winter show may, or may not, occur, depending on if a suitable space can be secured. If it can be, a send-up of the classic stop-action Christmas/holiday shows of yesterday (think Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) would be an option. If not, that concept could simmer until 2018.
Asked if she’s got a preference for the Monkey, in terms of re-running popular past shows vs. development of new material, Peters believes that “That’s a tricky question. As an audience member, there are many Monkey shows that I’d love to see again.Two of my personal favorites were Plan 9 From Outer Space and Planet of the Apes. As a director/actor, I enjoy creating something new from scratch. The chance to start with a single idea, spitball the concept, put it on paper and watch it grow and evolve with your team is a remarkable and addictive process to be a part of.”
This Month’s Show, An Abridged List: A variety of showrunners tossed us lines this month, offering up thoughts on their upcoming events. We’ll curate these in order of date.
Wednesday, August 2, Puttin’ on the fRitz, Hey Guys, $10: Jamie Fritz, recently interviewed in our monthly series of looks at local comics has put together her monthly showcase, with a lineup that’ll include: Fritts, Brian McDowell, Meredith Hopping and King Cooper. Each comic plays the same amount of time, in a classic, showcase format.
Thursday, August 10, All the Feels, Improv Shop, $6: Host Angela Smith sends along word of the latest in this series. She notes: “All the Feels is a monthly storytelling showcase dedicated to the earnestness of youth. This month's theme is ‘The First Time I…,’ where performers will regale the crowd with stories of the first time they did, well...anything. Stories can be funny, embarrassing, silly, and even a little sad. But they are always entertaining.”
Thursday, August 24, Boondoggle, Episode I: Danger My Lovely, The Heavy Anchor, $5: Co-written by concept founder Aaron Sawyer and Ken Warner (of Coffee Break and Fatal Bus Accident fame). We asked Sawyer to fill in some details and we got this: “For content, there are going to videos and short films we have shot over the past month, stand-up from Ken, music from a live band, long-form and short-form sketches (ranging from 10 minutes to 30 seconds), and characters played by the two of us. If one of us two of can do a role, we are. I think I alone am doing at least three different accents in the first show. It's basically all the kinds of stuff we've always wanted to do on stage, but never could during a regular stand-up show. Stylistically, we're shooting for a blend of both of our comedic styles, so some of Ken's self-deprecation and commentary on the minutiae of life mixed with my absurdism. In broader terms, Ken's big into music so there with be stuff dealing with music. I like parody and satire, so we're doing some of that, too. The pace is going to be fast and the goal is to never let the audience get a sense of what to expect next. The last thing I want for this show is to have a formula beyond the basic premise: two people make and perform a comedy show.”
Yale’s In the News: Standup comedian Yale Hollander, all over the scene in the last few months (and the host of his own open mic at Brennan’s, the monthly “Comedy Penthouse”) has recently been given the front-page treatment by the St. Louis Light. The lengthy piece, written by Bill Motchan, notes that “Hollander is an easygoing guy with a ready smile and a wry outlook on life.” Our experience, too. Fun piece, worth a read.
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