By Pam Victor
[“Geeking Out with…” is a series of interviews with well-known, highly experienced improvisers. It’s a chance to talk about stuff that might interest hardcore, improv dorkwads like Pam. The series can be found in full frontal geek out version on My Nephew is a Poodle and in pithier version on the Women in Comedy Festival blog. For behind-the-scenes action, ‘like’ the “Geeking Out with…” Facebook page.]
[“Geeking Out with…” is a series of interviews with well-known, highly experienced improvisers. It’s a chance to talk about stuff that might interest hardcore, improv dorkwads like Pam. The series can be found in full frontal geek out version on My Nephew is a Poodle and in pithier version on the Women in Comedy Festival blog. For behind-the-scenes action, ‘like’ the “Geeking Out with…” Facebook page.]
While I was in Chicago for iO Theatre’s Summer
Intensive, I had the pleasure of watching TJ Jagodowski perform in a variety of
shows such as: Monday’s talent-packed The Armando
Diaz Experience at iO, Tuesday’s
night-full-of-improv-delights at Annoyance
Theatre where TJ performs first with Chicagoland and then In a World, Wednesday nights with Carl and the
Passions and then of course TJ and Dave at 11pm in the Cabaret Theatre at iO, and on
Thursdays he’s in The
Scene at iO. I regret that while I
was in Chicago I wasn’t able to catch him in his Friday night show at iO, Challenger. And I sadly left before he started his run
at Annoyance with fantabulous cast of Almost
Atlanta.
My
respect and admiration for TJ’s work only grew each time I saw him perform this
art form that I love so passionately. To me, watching TJ on stage is like
watching an improvisation aficionado perform with the utmost respect and
affection for the art form, his fellow players, and the theater itself. Yes, TJ
follows Del Close’s edict to treat improvisers as "geniuses, poets, and artists" as we will discuss. Together, TJ and his richly gifted partner David Pasquesi make me believe in the Great Spirit
of Improvisation. Amen.
(And I apologize profusely, Mr. Jagodowski, for
blathering on like an eedjit. I really am sorry, and I would stop myself if I
had even a sliver of self-control. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty
sure you’ll suck at the next show I see you in, thus reversing my entire
concept of you. In preparation, I shall be stockpiling savage and blistering adjectives
for the scathing review I’m almost certain to write. You’re welcome.)
In Part
One of our geek out session, TJ and I discussed his journey into the heart of
improv, the fear of sucking (not in the good way,) and the process of
performing TJ and Dave. This conversation picks up where we left
off, with my eagerness to pry up the hood of TJ and Dave, and get a nice, long look at the inner
workings of their process.
***
PAM VICTOR: Do you
[and David] rehearse?
TJ JAGODOWSKI: Not every week. But we do rehearse.
PAM: Do you have a coach?
TJ: No,
just us. We do the tops of the shows - the first five minutes, the first ten
minutes of the show – and see if we’re intact. We try to make sure we didn’t
miss anything, that we were true to the very first moment. Because usually we
find that if we can get the first moment right – or the first minute right or
the first two minutes right – we should be in a position to be able to execute
the rest of the show. If we miss that first minute, we never get it back…the
teeth don’t go back into the gears if you miss that first moment…
PAM: Do you have special ears for
capturing those first few lines or those first few moments?
TJ: No. We
just try not to rush it. If that first thing is really apparent – whatever that
thing is – then we don’t wait to say it or act upon it. But if that first thing
is not yet clear, we just want to make sure we give it time for it to show
itself. So it’s listening with your eyes and all that. It’s nothing special.
Anyone is capable of doing it. Sometimes you just get
nervous, you feel like something needs to happen or something needs to be said,
so you rush that first thing. As opposed to just letting it come to you, and
when it presents itself go ahead and act on it.
PAM: And through experience you and Dave
have been able to both agree on, “There’s the gem, there’s the germ of our
scene”?
TJ: I
think so. What we would refer to it as trying to get a read on the “heat” and
the “weight.” The heat being the intimacy of the relationship – anything from
strangers to being married and soul mates for 50 years and anything in between.
And the weight being what is already in the room with you - what does it feel
like is already going on? Like, “Oh my God, it feels like our common best
friend is in a coffin in the other room.” Or it feels like one of us needs to
sell a car today…
So what we trust is that we
won’t have the same details exactly of the name of who we are to each other or
the name of what’s already in the room, but that our read on how intimate our
relationship is would be congruous to each other. And our read on the weight of
the thing in the room would be congruous to each other. So that, “best friends”
equals “brothers who really get along” equals “husband and wife” – the heat all
of that would be similar enough. And the weight of, “We just survived a car
accident,” or “We made it through the first night of our honeymoon,” that
weight would be the same.
PAM: And that has been spoken out loud [in
the scene]?
TJ: Not
yet, but whatever we title it or whatever we end up calling it, the heat and
the weight of that will be already groovy with what the other person is
feeling. Dave and I wouldn’t get into a situation where he thinks we’re husband
and wife and I think we’re absolute, total strangers at a bus stop. The heat of
that would blow apart how we’ve already been behaving. So we trust that our
read will be similar enough, that the details won’t matter because the level of
our intimacy is what is important, not the name we put on it.
PAM: So the weight thing of the “other
thing that is in the room” - you
might do a first a few lines about husband and wife and you’ve agreed that you
guys have known each other without even-
TJ: All it
will take is [dropping into the voice of a wife], “Babe.” So we don’t have to
explain-
Most of those lines of
exposition are usually because the players think the audience is not on the
same page as you. So you say [taking on a gruff character voice], “Well, Ron,
you and I have been brothers-in-law for ten years…” You don’t say that to anyone ever [in real life.] The
equivalent of this is like, “Ron, you’re a total retard because I’m explaining
to you right now how long we’ve known each other and in what capacity.”
So those lines are designed
to inform the audience, but they already know. And also they don’t really care.
It doesn’t matter that the title of this relationship is “brothers-in-law.”
What counts is that [in gruff brother-in-law voice], “We shoulder-chuck each
other and throw barbs at each other because we love each other.” That’s what’s important about the relationship.
PAM: So you have the scene about the
brothers-in-law, say, and you could both stop it after 30 seconds and say, “I
have a feeling there is something going on here. There is something in the
other room…there seems more, that something is happening today for these
people.”
TJ: We
would have already felt it.
PAM: Without speaking about it. So there
is sort of a spiritual aspect to it or a psychic or…
TJ: It’s
not psychic. It reveals itself. There
are already clues being established as to what else is going on by how we’ve
behaved. That maybe we get the feeling that these two guys are being a little
extra jocular today. So why is that? Did one of these guys say something
yesterday that he’s worried that the other guy still is taking to heart, so he
wants to make sure that there’s no problem? Or is there some sort of sadness in
the other room that they’re trying to take their minds off, so they’re being
extra, “Hey, everything’s aces, buddy!”? Clues are being given that you
basically solve the most obvious mystery of.
And Dave will refer to
Occam’s Razor. If you see a hoof print in your front yard, it’s more likely a
horse and not a zebra. We just try to go with the most obvious answer that
makes sense with what’s already happened.
TJ discussing "heat" and "weight"
PAM: You and Dave are very highly respected
in the improv community, as you know...
TJ:
Sheerly through our ages.
PAM: There are people older than you, who
have been doing it longer than you, who come to see your show-
TJ:
Usually as a favor.
PAM: I’m making you uncomfortable…
You know it’s so funny…I’ve talked to a lot of people
now, and they don’t want to take credit for their stuff. Maybe when I get to be
a great improviser – I hope I’m humble, but I hope I can recognize…[To TJ] You worked hard. You deserve it.
TJ: It
wasn’t work.
PAM: Why do you think it makes you so
uncomfortable to be so highly regarded? Because it can always go wrong?
TJ: I
don’t know… I might be prone to put a decent amount of pressure on myself, and
so if there’s a way to fly under the radar, that’s a lot easier to deal with.
And if I am highly regarded, then I’m absolutely grateful for that. And I like
being part of a community where I do feel respected, and hopefully return that
respect…I know I’ve been luckier than I’ve been good. I know there’s a lot of
work still to be done. And, yeah, anything can go wrong at any given time…so I
don’t know if that answers your question or not.
PAM: I know it’s a hard topic, so I won’t
talk about it anymore.
 |
| TJ and Dave Theater on the Lake (July, 2012) |
You did a run at Theater on the Lake, which is really cool. And Dave called that
“legitimate theater” when he was talking to me about it, which I thought was
interesting. [TJ laughs.] It’s not
surprising that your show in particular is making this transition into unscripted
theater because it is so perfect for it.
TJ: We’re
not alone in that. Improvised
Shakespeare is doing it. Baby
Wants Candy has played some of the places we play too. And part of that is
this fellow Scott Morfee who’s been bringing us to the Barrow Street Theatre in
New York who is really intent on trying to help show that bridge between
improvisation and theater. We’ve been lucky to be part of that, but we’re
certainly not alone in that…
I’m also fortunate to be
with the group Almost Atlanta who have been trying
to do that as well, doing an improvised play. We got to do it at the Garage Space
at Steppenwolf. Almost Atlanta, as
well, is working that bridge.
PAM: Are your goals for TJ and Dave to
become more “legitimate theater”?
TJ: My
goal for TJ and Dave is on a weekly
basis to do a decent show. My goal for TJ
and Dave is to dodge bullets. Whatever else happens is groovy. Dave has
plans on world domination. I have plans to have a Jameson after that show is
over…
PAM: Tell me about what “playing the
relationship” means to you?
TJ:
Finding out how these two people are interacting in this moment in this place.
How they are affecting each other.
PAM: What specifically do you go to when
you’re developing a relationship on stage?
TJ: I
would say you don’t go to anything, you’re given it. Your partner gives it to
you. Dave says – you should interview Dave again [He laughs. And I make a wish.] - he doesn’t get anything about who
he is from him. He gets everything about who he is from me. And I do the same.
I don’t go to anything; I just try to be ready to receive everything.
PAM: Do you come in with an emotional
state?
TJ: Not
for TJ and Dave. I will for a Harold
show or whatever, from the information at hand. I find it easiest to
internalize an emotional point of view and have that be my starting place and
then figure out everything else…
No one ever goes in
absolutely blank. There’s already something, your posture, or something you’re
going to be doing by accident. You’re going to be doing something when the lights come up. But what [Dave and I] both do is
try and figure out what exactly do we both have, what is the combination of
what we’re both doing right now. Because before those lights come up, you may
think you know exactly who you are and what’s going on. And then you meet
another person’s eyes and realize you were wrong about that entirely because
that does not make sense to what’s going on, balanced and in conjunction with,
what’s coming back at me from him.
PAM: That first moment [in a TJ and Dave
show] – that much talked-about first moment, at least in my circles – you guys
are looking at each other…
TJ: The
way we perceive that is that show has already been going on. The lens has just
been opened on our participation on it. But whoever we just pop into, they’ve
already had a life until then. We’re just occupying it for a little bit. We
have to figure out what moment did we just jump into.
 |
| TJ and Dave at UMass (Amherst) May, 2012 |
TJ: I’m
looking at Dave. I’m receiving that information and trying to be as aware as I
possibly can of what I’m giving to him because I have to be responsible for
that as well. So I have to be aware of what my body, what my face, what my eyes
are saying, what he’s saying with his body, and his face, and his eyes. What
our proximity is. If one of us glances away, what were we looking at because
that can start to tell us where we are, whether inside or outside.
It’s all a gradual process
of eliminating possibilities. Before those lights come up, literally the possibilities
are infinite. But as soon as the lights come up, a bunch of possibilities are
removed. And someone moves or someone looks at something – other possibilities
are removed. What we end up trying to get to is this sense that we are now
doing the one and only thing that this was absolutely from the beginning…
It’s a gradual process of
like, “Well, he just talked in a man’s voice. I feel like I’m a man. We know
we’re not a man and a woman. Ok, now that possibility has been removed. We both
just used a voice and a posture that seems like we’re not 15, 16, 17, 18, or
19, so those possibilities are removed. Dave just looked up and wiped his head
as though he was looking at the sun. Ok, so we’re not inside – those
possibilities are removed.” And so you just keep trying to chip away stuff
until you realize, “Oh. Of course. We’ve always been these two guys stranded by
the side of a road in a hot climate waiting for a tow truck to come and fix our
automobile.”
PAM: How many minutes into the scene is
that?
TJ: It
could be forever. Sometimes we
haven’t realized we were until 20 minutes into the show. Sometimes it happens
within the first 30 seconds or minute. We try not to call anything something
until it has shown itself to be that, or until the clues that are offered lead
us to having that be the most obvious conclusion. But uninformed action and
uninformed speech leads to more uninformed decisions. Until we feel informed in
a way that we can make a conclusion or informed in a way that we would take
action, we try not to take action or jump to conclusions.
PAM: I think that is not the way we’re
being trained right now.
TJ: This
is a specific show with a specific amount of time allotted. It’s two people and
it might be an hour long. And so that is really useful for us in the way we
want to go about that show.
Frankly, if you’re doing a
Harold, you just don’t have that amount of time. You have to get into your
opening. You have to start making decisions, and start getting information out.
Especially in an opening, you have three hard minutes of work to do, and if you
do hard work the rest of your show is nice and free and easy. You gotta’ get to
work at the beginning of a show like that.
 |
| Mark Piebenga, Linda Orr, Noah Gregoropolous and TJ Jagodowski "Chicagoland" (Annoyance Theatre, 2012) |
I get to play in a show
called Chicagoland that’s kind of location-
and environmentally-based. In that show, we move pretty quick off the beginning
to try to get that location flushed out and maybe a couple of themes. And then
that show can breathe and move in any way, shape, or form as it wants to. As
fast or as slow as it wants to go from there. Every show is different. The
things you have to do for each show are probably different. But with any show
you can still operate from an emotional point of views. You can still listen
and pay attention. You still be as honest as you possibly can. So those things
you bring to any form, any show.
PAM: Do you get high differently from that
pure, mutual discovery than you might in, like, an Armando
[Diaz Experience show]?
TJ: Yeah.
It’s a different feel. But there’s also other things that can happen in Armando - like you can run a ten-person
heist with farcical elements, doors opening and closing – and Dave and I just
wouldn’t be able to pull that off.
But there’s no show that
make me- when I’m playing with Dave for that hour, I feel like I’ve gone away
for a while. I can’t come back to this world too quickly or I get the bends. It
takes me little bit to come back because it does feel like the bubble seals
with that. I don’t feel that way with Armando
because there is so much time off. You sit back. You’re out of the show for a
while. You’re present, you’re paying attention to it all, but you’re on the
sidelines. So you get a chance to breathe; you’re out of that world for a
little bit. With Dave, you never leave that world. It’s not an option to break
the fourth wall because that wall is a wall, or that wall is a vista to a
canyon ten miles away. You can’t break out…
PAM: Speaking of the fourth wall, you sort
of redefine the concept of stage picture [in a TJ and Dave
show] where you’ll turn your back to the audience at some point, sometimes for
almost a whole scene. I’m wondering if you’re doing that in order to tell the
audience, “This is a real fourth wall,” that space is truly three dimensional
to you…
TJ: Just
about everything we do is out of necessity, convenience, or because it’s
closest to real. If you were playing a bar scene, the bartender and the patron
might both be facing the same exact way and stuff like that. That would be
harder for us to read exactly. We’d be denying ourselves information because I
can’t really see him. I’d be coming out of my periphery and Dave the same. It’s
just more natural to try to play it that way. It’s easier, frankly. We try to
do what makes the most sense, what’s the easiest, and try a little bit louder.
[Laughs.] We don’t ever purposefully want people not to be able to hear, but
that’s how the bartender stands. He stands facing his patron. So that’s how we
stand.
PAM: Do you think it’s for you or for the
audience, where you’re saying, “We’re not playacting. We’re really inhabiting a
world”?
TJ: I
think it’s just what’s easiest for us. Hopefully it’s good for them too. It’s
real. It is real. You can’t walk
through this car door because it’s a car door. And the way this bar is set up,
that’s where the bar is…
PAM: Tell me about your take on discovery
versus invention in improv.
TJ:
Invention is just harder. It takes effort. It’s work. I just picture in my head
like inventors are toiling away in laboratories and doing experimentation.
Discovers just stumble across the damn thing. [Invention] is more effort than
it needs to be. You’ll probably get something cooler by discovering it than by
inventing something that wasn’t there to begin with.
PAM: There are styles of improv that rely
more on invention.
TJ: I
imagine, like story-based or narrative-based stuff…
PAM: I guess the UCB [Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre] philosophy could even be argued is more
invention-based.
TJ: My
experience with that is it’s a little more “tag-heighten, tag-heighten.” So,
yeah, there might be a little bit more invention. But, man, does it work for
them. When you get some of the funniest people and best writers in the world,
that’s going to work.
And I was only joking a
little bit earlier that one of the reasons Dave and I get along pretty well on
stage is that neither of us is fast or one-line funny, so it’s easier for us to
allow those things to come out of a different place because we’re just not that
quick.
PAM: You’re playing to your strengths.
TJ: Yeah.
TJ: I’ve done
one or two, and, yeah, it is scary. And I no way want to disparage [them] and
say that they don’t play relationships. The couple times I’ve seen it’s just a
much faster kind of form. Yeah, it’s scary. But, like I said, everything’s
scary…that might be a little extra scary.
PAM: I think going more in the “slow
comedy” direction personally, as a 45-year-old woman with two kids and that
brain drain….I don’t know if I’m going to be capable of as being as fast. But I
get off on [slow comedy] more, so…
TJ: Well,
as a 45-year-old mother of two, I’m glad you’re getting off on anything.
PAM [Laughing.]: Oh, I get off on a lot of
things. Right, Peter? [Peter is videotaping the interview.]
TJ: Woah.
PETER: I tape it.
[More laughter.]
PAM: I don’t know if you think of it in the same spiritual
ways that Dave is thinking of it – he
and I got into a conversation of improv as a spiritual [pursuit], which is
the only way we understood it at the same level. And I always find the “god” of
improv, if there is such a thing, is found in those discovery moments, when
we’re both in the moment and mutually discovering something together. That’s
what gets me high. Do you have any suggestions for evolving improvisers, such
as myself, to get more into that discovery mode?
TJ
[shaking his head]: No.
PAM [laughing]: Ok, thanks. Next question…
TJ: It’s
probably right along the same lines of what we were talking as to how you go
into a show wanting to be great, you really want to rock it. You can be as
prepared as you possibly can to receive
those moments of discovery. And I find that through calm and, like you say,
being in that moment. Because you really can’t get there if you’re thinking too
hard or still wondering about something that already happened. You just have to
be there at that same time with your partner. But I don’t know how you make it
happen other than you both just have to be ready for it to happen.
A very short clip in which Pam say,
"I get off on a lot of things."
***
Want more improvlusciousness?
Check out the final part of our conversation in
Check out the final part of our conversation in
In the meantime if you're in Chicago, do yourself a huge favor and see TJ and Dave at iO almost every Wednesday at 11pm. They also perform occasionally at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City. But even if you won’t be in NYC or Chicago, you can see their wonderful documentary Trust Us, This is All Made Up. It is the rare opportunity to see improv brought to the screen in a most adept fashion. Trust me, it’s true.
***
Geeking Out with…Chris Gethard of The Chris Gethard Show
…with Joe Bill of BASSPROV
…Jimmy Carrane of the Improv Nerd podcast
…Susan Messing of Messing with a Friend
and many more!
And "like" the "Geeking Out with..." FACEBOOK PAGE please.
Pam Victor is the founding member of The Ha-Ha’s, and she produces The Happier Valley Comedy Show in western Massachusetts. Pam directs, produces and performs in the comic soap opera web series "Silent H, Deadly H". Pam also writes mostly humorous, mostly true essays and reviews of books, movies and tea on her blog, "My Nephew is a Poodle." If you want to stay abreast of all the geek out action, like the “Geeking Out with…” Facebook page!
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