Meanwhile … at the Alchemist …

When improv group Meanwhile started last November, it was a simple way for six local comedians to do what they love best: make people laugh with original, unrehearsed material. But before long, the group was selling out Bayview’s Alchemist Theater twice a month. ThirdCoast Digest sat down with Vince Figueroa, Beth Lewinski and Lee Rowley, three of Meanwhile’s six members, for a brief chat and a cup of coffee that turned out to be a bit too trying for one comedian.

TCD: How would you describe Meanwhile to someone who has never seen the show before?

Lee Rowley: I would describe it as an improv show that tends to be funny and is in a longer format than something like Comedy Sportz.

Beth Lewinski: There are six of us. We generally have a guest host who does a monologue, and then we do improv based off of those monologues. We usually have a more open second half, but we could change the format at any time.

Lee: … And Vince is in it.

Vince Figueroa: … Yeah. I Show up and don’t contribute.

TCD: Who are some of the guest hosts you guys have had?

Lee: On Friday we had the wonderful Bo Johnson who was one of the founding members of the Dead Alewives, another sketch and improv group from the early ‘90s. I feel like they are probably the most famous group of improvisers to come out of Milwaukee

Vince: Not too long ago we had Dave Bogan, who’s a pretty big deal over at Comedy Sportz and is also responsible for teaching us improv.

Beth: Yeah, for most of us he was our first teacher in improv, so that was cool. Then we had Kevin Gerrity. He’s a high school student who does short and long-form improv around the area. That was really cool, to get a high school perspective on stuff

Lee: In two weeks we have Stephanie Graham, who is a producer at TMJ4. She actually won an Emmy.

Vince: So this is going to be beneath her.

TCD: What role does crowd participation play in a Meanwhile performance?

Beth: There is crowd participation, but we don’t have audience volunteers. We have the person who is doing the monologue. We try to get people who have different backgrounds, and then the subject matter we get varies from show to show. The host bases their monologue off of questions from the audience.

Vince: That style of game is called an Armando Diaz, after the guy who made it.

Lee: We try to get relatively deep questions. Our first show we had someone from the audience ask “boxers or briefs?” Other than that we’ve had some really good questions.

Beth: On Friday it was “Why did you get into comedy?” and “What is your favorite thing about comedy?”

Lee: We try to get deeper questions, because the more realistic the monologue is, the better we do.

Vince: It’s a great dynamic for the audience too, because they get to hear this person tell a story and learn something they may not know.

TCD: How did everybody in the group meet?

Lee: I met Vince through Comedy Sportz. We started going to open improv, which is a Tuesday night thing down at the Alchemist. I had already known Beth and [Meanwhile member] Alex [Grindeland]. We all just kind of met at open improv. I was like “Oh, we should start a team.” So we’re sort of the house team I guess.

Beth: Our Coach, Patrick Schmitz, was my second Comedy Sportz teacher. He started open improv, and since he knew all of us individually we kind of converged on that spot.

Lee: Luckily the Alchemist is very conducive to artists. They gave us a 10 o’clock spot every other Friday and that’s how we got our start.

TCD: What are your individual backgrounds in comedy, even going back to when you were younger?

Lee: [Tries to sip his coffee through his wooden stir stick] That’s not a straw … That’s just a thing I stir my coffee with.

[Laughter amongst the three]

Lee: I started doing Comedy Sportz sophomore year of college. I had done improv in high school and stopped doing it for some reason, but I decided I wanted to get back into it. It’s fun, and it would be cool if I could make it a career. [Laughing] It’s my only career right now.

Beth: I watched a lot of comedy as a kid. I wasn’t the class clown, but I was the kid who made friends through comedy. I was the kid who found her group of people when she got to high school and started doing theater. We did a little improv as theater warm-ups during high school and college. I moved back here a few years after college. I found out about the Comedy Sportz workshops and took them. Then I just kept going with it.

Vince: I was never the class clown either, but I would always manage to be the funny guy in the group. People would always say, “Oh, you should be a comedian!” I didn’t have any material to write to be a comedian, so making stuff up on the fly seemed to work out. I got into high school theater production and got my first taste of comedy writing: The great success of writing something funny and the perils of writing something that wasn’t.

TCD: All of you seem to have a theater background of some sort. Do you feel that helps you with a show like Meanwhile?

Lee: Definitely. I wouldn’t be where I am today …

Beth: At Café Hollander …

Lee: Drinking a coffee through a non-existent straw. Damn it! It’s still a stir stick!

Meanwhile will perform at 10 pm on Friday, March 20 at the Alchemist Theater, and every other Friday at 10 pm. For more information, or to buy your tickets, visit the Alchemist’s website.

Photos by Alice Waraxa