The Second City e.t.c. troupe and its director went to work on Sept. 11 to develop material for their upcoming show — and wound up cleaning the dressing room.
On Sept. 19, they were at a loss as to how their upcoming show could deal with the tragedy. “We haven’t really touched upon it yet, partially because we can’t think of anything that’s funny,” performer Samantha Albert said that day in the company’s Pipers Alley home.
Fast forward to last Sunday, exactly two months after the terrorist attacks, and the e.t.c. group was premiering its 23rd revue, “Holy War, Batman! or The Yellow Cab of Courage” — and provoking belly laughs with sketches involving an Arab cab driver, a post-Sept. 11 pottery class and a 3-month-old baby nostalgic for the way things were in August.
If, as the famous saying goes, tragedy plus time equals comedy, then time moved much faster than anyone could imagine back in September.
“It was amazing how the audiences warmed up to the terrorist stuff so soon after it happened,” director Josh Funk said Sunday night after the premiere. “The scenes having to do with the attacks get more response than anything else, and the person who gets the most response is the Arabic cab driver.”
The process by which the e.t.c. troupe went from avoiding Sept. 11 to addressing it head-on, in a sense, mirrored the way the public has dealt with the disaster. The performers used the audience as their barometer as they first dipped their toes in the terrorism waters with some late-night improvisation sets and then gradually worked such material into the weeks of previews for their show.
“I’ve never ever been in a process where I’ve appreciated an audience more,” performer Abby Sher said. “Every audience we had was such a gift because it let us know what was viable and what people were ready to hear.”
Almost from the moment that the terrorist attacks jarred the rehearsal period for the new e.t.c. revue, Second City producer Kelly Leonard gave Funk and his company the directive that they would have to deal with the tragedy. After all, the Second City’s Mainstage show, “Embryos on Ice! or Fetus, Don’t Fail Me Now,” was already done, having been scheduled to open Sept. 12 before being delayed by two weeks.
“Because I knew we weren’t dealing with it and couldn’t deal with it in the Mainstage, I knew the burden would fall on the e.t.c. show,” Leonard said. “I said, `You don’t have to portray Osama bin Laden on stage, but we’ve got to find some way to address it.’ We should be this living, breathing place where topicality reigns supreme. That’s why you have an improvisational format, so you can respond to the day’s events. It’s our job.”
The e.t.c. company, which Kelly described as Second City’s most cohesive unit in years, agreed but didn’t have a clue how to proceed.
“No one was feeling very funny that day,” Funk said, referring to Sept. 11. “No one wanted to improvise or rehearse scenes. But we decided if we didn’t work that day, we would be letting the terrorists keep us from doing what we do for a living.”
The next day’s improvisations didn’t address the terrorist attacks but perhaps channeled the resultant emotions.
Creepy improv
“The improvisation we did was very macabre and very creepy: people coming back from the dead and talking,” performer Keegan-Michael Key recalled a week later at a rehearsal in which the group still was avoiding the tragedy.
That day, Funk — an easygoing, soft-in-the-middle guy with a bleached-blond buzzcut and goatee — led his fellow 20-to-30-something cast members through rehearsals of scenes in which everyone on an elevated car starts rocking out to an Everclear song (this bit later would be dropped) and an overly earnest two-part sketch in which parents display intolerance toward a gay Boy Scout leader, but their kids show intelligence beyond their years.
“I hate this,” Key muttered at the end of the second part.
“We still have to find the funny here,” Funk acknowledged. (Part 2 would eventually be cut.)
The group also tried to rework a scene in which a gung-ho Applebee’s waiter rallies his co-workers to change the birthday song; before Sept. 11 the sketch had included a parody of Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song” with lyrics about the Taliban, but such topicality was not on the bill this day.
“I personally think that that kind of experimentation at this point is inappropriate,” Key said in the backstage dressing room, which, truth be told, could have used another day of cleaning. “Other people are braver than I am. You can be irreverent, but this is offensive — using the tragedy-plus-time rule.”
“I don’t think we’ve all worked out our own feelings on what’s going on, so it’s hard to get any satirical perspective,” performer Andy Cobb said. “But it’s certainly something we need to address. It’s what’s on everyone’s mind.”
Self-censoring
It also was affecting the performers’ instincts.
“I think more internally we’re editing or censoring ourselves,” troupe member Jack McBrayer said. “I think, `Oh, shoot, I can’t go there.'”
T.J. Jagodowski was less concerned about violating taboos, at least in the company of his fellow cast members.
“If I start thinking too much, I’m going to stop doing everything,” he said.
The ice finally broke the last week of September. During rehearsals, Key created the American-flag-waving Arab cab driver who picks up an achingly liberal couple, played by Cobb and Albert. The group also developed a sketch in which Jagodowski plays a “clay arts” teacher who insists to his depressed class, “If we don’t glaze our pottery today, they win.”
After the Sept. 28 late show, the performers made an announcement from the stage: They were going to perform an unscheduled set to try out some Sept. 11-related material, so anyone uncomfortable was free to leave. No one did.
“I was scared out of my mind,” Key said afterward. “And they were ready.”
Although another sketch about a slacker collecting World Trade Center relief checks didn’t go over so well, the cab and pottery scenes triggered a reaction that the cast members called “cathartic.”
“We’re never going to get the laughs we got the first two weeks that was in the show,” Key said of the cab sketch. “People were so ready to laugh at that point. That was going to be their release.”
Over the next several weeks, the cast worked on more Sept. 11-related material. By Oct. 12 the show included a mock CNN report, set on Sept. 10, that covers Anne Heche’s wackiness with a War-on-Terror fervor. Also, the Applebee’s sketch now had a musical ending that refers to anthrax, debate-stifling politicians and fear of flying.
Later that month, the show actually began portraying bin Laden onstage in a “Where’s Osama?” game, and the jaded 3-month-old baby’s reminiscence also was added. Meanwhile, the cab driver’s role continued to expand until Key had scenes with all of the other cast members.
In a particularly sweet final segment, conceived within the past few weeks, the cabbie reveals his actual background to a young girl played by Sher, who kisses him on the cheek.
Funk, in particular, liked the idea of a Sept. 11-themed show having a sympathetic Arab-American as its hero — one who exits to the strains of Cat Stevens’ “If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out” no less.
“We make him the most beautiful character in America,” Funk said.
Dealing with emotions
Throughout the process the company concentrated on dealing with the emotions stirred up by Sept. 11 rather than somehow lampooning the tragedy itself.
“As we continued to explore the feelings that the events of that day might have inspired in people, whether they be fear or anger or sadness, we allowed those to move into scenes instead of trying to make light of the events,” Jagodowski said. “That seemed to be the best way to go about making something that would resonate.”
In fact, Funk and Leonard said, the e.t.c. show has prompted no formal complaints, unlike the Mainstage show, which doesn’t even address Sept. 11 but has been deemed by some patrons as being too “unpatriotic” for these times.
“Holy War, Batman! or The Yellow Cab of Courage” officially opened Sunday and received a prolonged standing ovation at the end.
Tension relieved by humor
The show includes its tense moments, but they’re invariably followed by what Key calls “release-valve jokes.”
The diciest exchange comes early, during the first cab scene with the liberal couple, when Albert’s character blames the terrorist attacks, in part, on U.S. policy.
The crowd turns silent, except for some murmuring and even, on occasion, hissing, until Key finally says to Cobb, “I am sorry your girlfriend is retarded.”
Such metaphors aren’t appropriate anymore, but, really, the place explodes.
After two months of mining humor and meaning in the darkest of areas, the cast members were happy, at least, to have risen to the challenge.
“We were given an opportunity that is really unique,” Sher said. ” I don’t want to say we’re blessed because none of this tragedy is a blessing. But I do think we were in the right place at the right time and given a task that was more fruitful than we originally thought.”
After the premiere, one of Funk’s friends approached him and asked, “Relieved?”
“Yeah,” Funk said, clutching a beer and letting his shoulders slump. “Oh, my God.”
`Jingo Bells’?!?
The following titles were brainstormed and rejected — often for obvious reasons — for the Second City e.t.c.’s 23rd revue, which ultimately took the name “Holy War, Batman! or The Yellow Cab of Courage.”
– “Osama Can You See?”
– “Osama Sama Sama Sama Sama-Chameleon”
– “Little Orphan Anthrax”
– “Misery Loves Comedy”
– “George W.W. III”
– “Thank God We’re the SECOND City”
– “Recycle Bin Laden”
– “Osama the Parts Are Greater than the Holy War”
– “It Took American and United To Unite America”
– “All We Have To Fear Is Getting Blown Up Itself”
– “Rumsfield of Dreams”
– “Jingo Bells”
– “Tali-Ban the Bomb”
– “Osama Chanted Evening”
– “Don’t Tread on Me or Blow Up My Buildings”
– “Hello Muddah, Intifada”
– “WTC: Where’s the Comedy?”
