Sketch 22 at the Alchemist Theatre
The Alchemist’s storefront theater. TCD photo by Brian Jacobson.
The writers got their subjects at 11 p.m. Friday. The actors and directors came in at noon Saturday. The show went up at 8 p.m. on Saturday. The results? Inconsistent. That’s to be expected. The point was exploration, not perfection.
There was no printed program. Members of the audience determined the order of the sketches by randomly drawing cards from a bowl.
There’s something to be said for the spontaneity. The atmosphere was lively. An audience eager to laugh filled the intimate theater to absolute capacity.
The 10 sketches ran the gamut from the lowest common denominator of piss-and-fart jokes to extremely witty and creative satire. Some were downright painful, such as the uninspired West Side Sh!tty, a West Side Story knock-off set in a men’s bathroom. The Wets and the Sharts rumble in a Matrix-style fight sequence. Some were hilarious, like the creative and well-executed Decision Daycare 2010, in which six-year-old liberals and conservatives debate the vital political issues of the day.
It’s fun to go the Alchemist. Sketch 22 was a noble effort made within an impossibly small window of time. You take a chance, to put the work out there, you win some, you lose some.
Sketch 22 played for one night only at the Alchemist Theatre in Bay View to a sold-out house. For more information on future productions at the Alchemist, visit The Alchemist website or call 414-426-4169.
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Haha, as one of the actors from “West Side (ahem) Shitty,” I wish I could disagree with this assessment, but the “you win some, you lose some” applies to us as participants, as well. The best you can do is work with what you have, and if that means adding a gratuitously long choreographed fight scene so you don’t have to sing another scatological parody of a “West Side Story” song, then so be it.
This event is about collaboration, oftentimes with people you’ve never met before. It’s one thing to write a show for yourself and people you’re comfortable performing with (I’ve done this), but it’s a completely different experience to first write a scene having no idea who’s going to be in it (I had never met any of the people that performed in the sketch my roommate and I wrote), and then turn around literally in a matter of hours and perform in a piece that was just wirtten in the same manner. It’s about testing our own limitations and growing together as a community as much as it is about putting on a show for an audience.
In that spirit, this was the first Sketch 22 I’ve been involved with wherein the public show was equally as lively and entertaining as the tech run, which is our only opportunity to see it live on stage. I would also venture to say that, overall, the quality of the sketches have only gotten better as this event has grown… Even if you’re occasionally forced to listen to grown adults (poorly) sing “When you’re a shart, you’re a shart all the way.”
Personally, I thought the “West Side Story” knock-off was really funny. Maybe I’m easily amused?