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Okay!

So here we are, another Monday.

Another Monday with no phone calls for interviews and one phone call to cancel the one I had for today.

SO, lets keep up with the picture descriptions shall we?

My next picture on my shelf is of MR. FANCYPANTS.

MFP was my improv team at the Playground Theater.

And I can say, with a lot of self assurance. We were the best team at the Playground Theater.

MFP was made up of me, Dave Colan, Trish Izzo, Phillip Mottaz, Bob Ladewig, Jason Anfinsen, Jim Bennett and the coach of all coaches, Mr. Dan Izzo.

The picture is of one time when were actually all there for a show. We were looking good and we needed a picture taken. So somehow we all took a picture with a cigarette hanging from our mouths, which was odd in itself, cause hardly any of us smoked. It’s a black and white picture, and we look happy, cool, weird and interesting.

MFP started as an incubator team at the Playground, which means that everyone auditioned and got put on this team to grow with the PG. I didn’t come until a few years later.

It was a time of course, when I needed something. I had moved back from NYC, I was lingering all over, not sure where to go. My old theater, the Annoyance, had closed since I had gone and I wasn’t really sure where to go. My friend Dori and I started to hang out at the PG and my friend Dan asked me to sit in on a show called Terrorslide. Terrorslide was MFP doing a horror movie, with all the archetypical characters: the virgin, the slut, the jock, the spaz, the rich kid, etc.

I chose to play the spaz.

And I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun with a group of people. (besides my group sex ordeal, that was pretty fun). I was thrown around the stage, I fell off the side, I laughed, they threw things at me. And the show was good, and I was good, but more than that, it was just too fun.

MFP asked me to be on their team.

The thing about us was, in this day and age of over saturation in improv, MFP was really committed. Everyone had other things going on, other teams other shows. But we were committed to each other, to our coach, to our new forms, to trying new things.

Our rehearsals were at 10:00 in the morning on Saturdays. This is early. Very early. But you did not miss MFP rehearsal. If you weren’t there, we all knew you weren’t going to be there because you had told us all weeks before. And Dan, our coach, actually made us rehearse. There are a lot of teams these days, especially the older ones, who never rehearse, much less at 10:00 in the morning.

And we loved each other. We fought, we had hard times, some really hard times. A lot of people say that their team are their best friends. That they play with their team because how close they are, what good friends they are.

And I don’t mean to mislead, MFP were all friends. But we weren’t best friends, we didn’t hang out after shows, we didn’t all go get drunk together, or go play Whirleyball.

We improvised. We rehearsed. We laughed. We farted. But we worked our butts off comparatively.

And the thing that we were, even more than “friends” is we were artists. We were the weirdest, strangest group of artists that I’ve seen in a long time. We had a weird, kinetic energy when we got going. We would just ….go.

When MFP finally let go of itself, it was time. People were moving, people had bigger commitments, we just couldn’t give it the time and energy we all wanted it to have. So we let it go. We didn’t want to stack what was left of our team with people from outside the group, we didn’t want it to morph into something it never was. We just retired it.

And since MFP has been gone, I haven’t felt the need for a “team” again. I’ve felt the want and the enjoyment of playing with other people. I’ve had a blast on stage with other groups. But without MFP, it just didn’t seem a priority anymore, there wasn’t the creation of something bigger than ourselves, or the pride of team that knows how committed each member was.

There are some Pants I talk to, some I don’t, some I see all the time, some I don’t. But that’s okay, because we weren’t there to be friends and get hugs.

We were there to work. And laugh. And fart.

And that we did.