Sometimes there’s a story…

Posted by Tai on February 22, 2009

That's Weird Grandma

Sometimes, in “That’s Weird, Grandma,” there’s a story.

Like all of the stories in the show, it is awesome and fun, and enjoyed by the performers and audiences alike.

But there’s something about it. Something that keeps it in the show week after week. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years.

If you’ve been to the show before, you know about our voting system: at the end of each performance, the audience gets to vote for 2 stories they loved, and 2 stories they loved slightly less than the others. These ballots get fed into the Grandma-Tron 3000™, and they influence whether certain stories get taken out of the show rotation, or live to see another week. There are many factors that go into selecting which stories leave and which stay, but audience vote is weighted pretty heavily. So when a certain story gets an overwhelming amount of votes week after week, the director has little choice but to leave it in.

If you’re a longtime fan of the show, you may remember a little story called Kung-Fu Guys. Going further back, you may remember a little ditty entitled The Dog Was Dead. Each of these stories enjoyed an extended stay in TWG of two years or more. (The Dog Was Dead is possibly our most popular story ever—it was in the show so long that even after I moved away to Oregon for 2 and a half years and came back, it was still in the show. It was also performed at the TWG 5-Year Anniversary Show, at Theater on the Lake in 2005 AND 2006, and in our 2007 show at the Wilmette Theater. It’s also on our CD—perhaps you would like a copy?)

So, okay, where am I going with this? People, we may have another one on our hands.

A Bad Day has been in the show since August, and it’s showing no signs of leaving any time soon.

If you haven’t yet seen it, the story concerns a love triangle, and some cheerleaders.

There’s a fight involved, and an unexpected ending. And some prime moments of hilarity.

Since the original story was so concise and to-the-point, there was a lot of filling-in of story elements during the adaptation process (I wasn’t a part of the original adaptation, but perhaps Rachel can enlighten us). What we’re left with is a story that, while remaining faithful to the original, has a lot of added bits from the performers. And since the story is so open and loose in the way it is told (as opposed to, say, a word-for-word dialogue), there’s a lot of room for improvisation. On top of that, since the cast of the show changes every four to six weeks, characterizations and improvisations are constantly evolving.

Not to mention the part(s) of the story when the performers can’t keep from cracking up onstage. (We try to keep it together. We really do.)

These are all elements of a TWG hit. If you haven’t seen this story yet, you haven’t lived. And if you’ve only seen it once, you’ve only barely lived. Oh, hey look, it’s a link to buy tickets online. Can you handle it? Can you can you can you? Ready, OK!