[I apologize for the wretched formatting. Blojsom strikes again. I had something that formatted beautifully in pure HTML, but Blojsom's preprocessor rejects styles and block-element markup.] 
 
Here’s the deal. It’s 2006, and one of my improv heroes, Tina Fey, had created a new show, 30 Rock, based on her experiences as an improv artist and as head writer on Saturday Night Live. This was great, but it was on at the same time as Jericho, another show I particularly wanted to see. 
 
I’d had good luck with keeping up with shows like Battlestar Galactica by subscribing to them on iTunes and watching them on my iPod. Given the choice between downloading an hour-long epic to my iPod (a two-and-a-half inch screen in those days) and a half-hour sitcom, I’d rather have downloaded 30 Rock. But NBC had not released the show to the iTunes store. The alternative was to watch it on NBC’s website, but in those days web video was extremely poor, and it’s still the case that it isn’t portable. 
 
I wrote to Tina Fey, in care of Silvercup Studios, where the show is taped (please don’t take my word on whether that’s a good address for her — nobody ever answers my fan mail), and asked that she exert her influence to get it onto iTunes. I claimed acquaintance on the basis that (1) I had once stood in line behind her at the Old Town Arby’s; and (2) I had been on friendly, if very casual, terms with Jeff Richmond, her husband. (He had been exceptionally kind to my sister when she visited the Second City Training Center.) 
 
A few weeks later, 30 Rock was available on iTunes, and it had been rescheduled so I had no conflicts. I was very happy. 
 
The conceit of the following poem is that this was all my doing, having urged Ms. Fey to heroic lengths to meet my needs. 
 
I already know it’s very silly, and idea behind the second act is a cliché. 
 
The changes in meter are mostly intentional. 
 

Tina Fey Gets Results

 

An Heroic Epic in Twelve Cantos

 
 
Argument 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Muse, I pray urgently, answer my needs.
Only a goddess can tell all the deeds
that Tina Fey wrought with her memos and phones,
battling desk-jockeys, dullards, and drones.
Hear me, O goddess! Retell and take stock	[5]
of the new distribution of Fey’s 30 Rock.
Make my tongue nimble, to dance and to bob;
forfend it be thought that I cadge for a job.

 
 
Canto I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Chicago was home to a programmer, who
had trifled at improv a season or two.	[10]
Piñata and Paradigms were his delight;
the one about Gates upon opening night.
A child of the Cold War, bereft of a mom,
the crux of his life was the threat of the Bomb.
Took Physics at Kenyon, to Georgetown for Law;	[15]
atomic destruction still ate at his craw.1
CBS whelped in the fall of ’06
a tale of post-nuclear life in the sticks.
“Hot puppies!” he cried, “Just like Herman Kahn!
The social disruption! The green-glowing dawn!”	[20]
But the sons of Bill Paley chose eight Wednesday night,
to screen Jericho, which he felt like a bite:
For NBC set the same place on the clock
for Tina Fey’s masterwork of 30 Rock.

 
 
Canto II 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In search of solutions, he ventured a bet	[25]
on a plausible áddress he found on the net.
He put his predicament to Tina Fey,
and ‘fessed to his conflict on 30 Rock day.
“Grant to me, lady, this smallest of boons:
Suffer your show to go out on iTunes.	[30]
Two dollars a pop would enrich NBC,
and I’d iPod your program, and watch it ad-free.
“A consummate video program is clear,
with crisp color palettes, and sound you can hear
in stereo; not jumped-up fingerpaint shows	[35]
with cotton-wool sound wrapped in sponsorly prose.”
She wondered, “If he’s such an all-fired fan,
what keeps him from framing an alternate plan?
iTunes has Jericho on it already —
that should suffice him for keeping him steady.”	[40]
Grasping her knees, he pled, “That is not all!
Behold Tuesday’s Newsday: The Office appalled
in earliest ratings; scant viewers before it.
Remun’rative iTunes built audience for it!”

 
 
Canto III 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Matchless Fey uttered broadcastable oaths:	[45]
“By cracky, this lunatic Anderson clothes
his ravings with reason! Yes, now is the season
to draw forth my lance! Now comes the Big Dance!
No more my guise as Mistress Nice!
I’m on this quest like white on rice!”	[50]
On the lot of Silvercup,
Mrs. Richmond jiggered up
weapons needful, weapons made
to fortify her on crusade.
Arrows made she of desire	[55]
Made a chariot out of fire.2
Set the dogs of war at large;
put her cell-phone at full charge.
Crafty Adsit,3 wise in counsel,
kept intruders out of bounds, till	[60]
all was past the pow’r of those
apt to cavil or oppose.
(Naught sufficed to draw upon
Rachel Dratch’s4 Myrmidons.
Fearsome Myrmidons were pent	[65]
while brilliant Rachel kept her tent.)

 
 
Canto IV 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sure her cause was just in essence,
crost th’East River’s iridescence,
stoked for teaching baleful lessons
to Phílistines now in charge	[70]
of GE, paid in hundreds large.
Eyeless in their corporate Gaza,
Thirty Rockefeller Plaza,
patzers gaze through double glass,
each the guardian of his ass;	[75]
brood in silence, brood in horror
lest writers raid the cookie jar, or
actors jinx their plans to sell:
For weekend heaven, they reign in Hell.
From the findings of the spreadsheets,	[80]
eldritch focus groups on spreadsheets,
founded they a viewing model,
counterfeit from fulsome twaddle.
Blindly said, “We see no need for
iPod shows on broadband feeds; nor	[85]
Market Research is discerning
iTunes download lust a-burning.
(We did not put the question to them,
nor did they write it in, so screw them.)”

 
 
Canto V 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Despite Fey’s heart’s essential purity	[90]
network-minions of security
balked her at the building’s entry.
She saw she needed stronger gentry.
Sent she Dorff to beg dispatch
the Myrmidons of grey-eyed Dratch.	[95]
But in her tent she’s fuming, pissed
(but that’s another rime, not this).
At the front door Tina pounds, till
crafty Adsit, wise in counsel,
has a brainstorm: Deft Scott Adsit	[100]
found a push-cart of fruit baskets
destined for the dressing rooms
of guest stars, every one of whom
from table read through dress rehearsal
flacked for Peacock - Universal.	[105]
Adsit’s plans ape Escher’s plumbing,
but Tina Fey saw what was coming
miles away, yet suffered him to have his say:
“Rent-a-cops will surely pass
these tokens meant for kissing ass.	[110]
Ironic, then, to use this barrow
to evade them and to harrow
functionaries in our way!
Displace some fruit and stow away!”
In among the basket-load	[115]
was matchless Tina 5 thus bestowed.
And in that fragrant, cramped condition,
held a fetus-like position.
Soon the testing-time arrived:
Network henchmen came to drive	[120]
the basket cart into the tower.
Were there room, she would have cowered:
Did the watchmen stay alert,
she’d be in dutch, a world of hurt.
Never fear! The odds were steep,	[125]
but salutary gods made sleep
the guardians’ powers of oversight;
their watch that moment was not tight.

 
 
Canto VI 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Through corridors the barrow trundled,
bringing Fey midst favors bundled	[130]
till the moment came at last
when no more baskets could be passed
without revealing where she hid.
She knew what must be done, and did.
In passageway on six or seven,	[135]
Tina Fey appealed to Heaven
(or something like it) — but the point is,
access to the network joint is
hers, and knowledge that she’d done it
sped her to the building’s summit.	[140]
Lest her progress be discovered,
floor-plants gave her secret cover.
‘Neath yucca plant and pink clematis,
she gained the top floor (whichever that is).
On that floor her cunning instinct	[145]
showed her to the bigwigs’ precinct.
Mangoes mashed into her hair,
she fixed them with her flashing stare.
“You owe me big-time!” thundered Fey,
“Those Myrmidons are pay-or-play!”	[150]
She put her case before the Suits;
she spoke truth to high galoots.6
She played them like so many lutes.
She danced on them with hobnailed boots.
She ate the one who called her “Toots.”	[155]
She proved the iTunes veto moots
the worst decision since their hoots
at buying Alex Haley’s Roots.7

 
 
Canto VII 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Car service costed Fey nary a cent, to
Silvercup (nobody knew where Scott went to).	[160]
Thousands accorded her improvised triumph:
jubilee games, with the discus and high-jump.
Multitudes, gathered for tribute and fun,
bade her recount to them what she had done.
“Exploits so fabulous must always live!	[165]
Mrs. Jeff Richmond must tell us — so give!”
Reticence over her story were false;
modest belittlement nothing but schmaltz.
Middle-class upbringing frowned upon pride,
But love for her coworkers threw her heart wide:	[170]
“I showed them what’s what! And
I beat them so soundly,
I’ve a Thursday-night spot, with
a hammock around me!
iTunes? No problem! We’re lacking no more!	[175]
Met I the bosses, and now they are mine!
Effective this Tuesday, it’s all on the store!
Make free the flow of the wine… dark… um… wine!”

 
 
Canto VIII 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

While casting about for distractions from work,
Anderson opened up iTunes in Turk	[180]
(he always found localizations amusing),
then summoned th’American store for perusing —
and what should he find on the TV show page:
30 Rock offered, to quiet his rage!
Further he learned from the promos that night	[185]
NBC massed all its comedies tight
on Thursday night early, from eight until ten
So Jericho never could balk him again!
“’Tis all through my efforts these things came to pass!
For does not the sun rise and fall on my ass?”	[190]
You see at this canto the epic has died.
Twelve cantos I’d promised (or threatened); I lied.

 
 
 
 
The companion to this epic is forthcoming,
 
under the title
 
Adsit Has a Hell of a Commute. 
 
 
 

1 [16] This is not strictly accurate. I could never write autobiography; I lack a protagonist. 

 

2 [55] Truth be known, chariots of fire get lousy mileage, and the pavement melts, which is embarrassing if you’ve been at a light for a while. Also, who needs a flaming chariot in New York? Where would you park it? [Dear Sirs, I herewith return Stock New York Joke #7, slightly soiled. Any consideration you could give me on the deposit would be much appreciated.]

 

3 [59] Scott Adsit has a regular role on 30 Rock as TGS’s producer. He, Tina Fey, Scott Allman, Jenna Jolovitz, Rachel Dratch, and Kevin Dorff, were the cast of Piñata Full of Bees, the groundbreaking show on the mainstage of The Second City in Chicago, in (as I remember it) 1996. Jolovitz, by the way, is the best bullshit artist (term of art) since Severn Darden. I'm sorry not to see her anymore.

 

4 [64] For ten years, I’d had a crush on Rachel Dratch. I was thrilled when she was cast as Jenna for 30 Rock; alas, NBC replaced her with Jane Krakowski. A fine comedienne, but not the same. Rachel appeared in various roles throughout the first season.

 

5 [116] This is an epithet. Gotta have epithets in Heroic Epics.

 

6 [152] With this, I have exceeded my month’s quota of “galoots,” but it’s too much fun to drop. Say it with me: Galoots.

 

7 [158] This is ostinato. I hope you relish it as much as I.

 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ August 30, 2010 11:57:09 AM CDT ( )

If you're interested in hearing about the improv scene from the inside, The Second City sponsors a podcast hosted by Mainstage musician Ruby Streak. You can get the show through the podcast's home page, or via the iTunes link. The show is usually flagged as "explicit," as conversations among artists often are. 
 
Ruby is an improv accompanist. This is different from an improvisational musician, because that would be a jazz player. Ruby has training in jazz, but that's not the only genre she plays. She is an accompanist for improvisational theater. 
 
The accompanist does the instrumentals for a show's songs. She also provides a background score for the whole show. Because this means keeping up with the unpredictable demands of the improvised parts of the show, the accompanist is no less a member of the ensemble than the actors. It is extremely difficult work. She has to prepare for a new review just as intensively as the actors. You have to love it to do it. Because the talent is so rare, the accompanist is the only improv player who stays with the show revue after revue, for decades at a stretch. An accompanist knows all the stories, and the reasons behind them. 
 
Be sure to catch episode one of WBRB, as it provides the context for the other episodes. 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ June 9, 2006 12:02:30 PM CDT ( )

I signed up for Introduction to Comedy Writing at The Second City, but the class has been pushed back two weeks. So I'll further indulge myself with theory. 
 
One of the precepts of improvisational theater is that nobody is to ask questions. Players who ask others for the identity of the characters, the setting, what they are doing, or why, are trying to relieve themselves of their responsibility to advance the scene. They are asking the others to build the scene without them. 
 
Taken to an extreme, a scene might open with 
 
Simplicio Who the hell are you? 
Salviati You don't know who I am? 
Simplicio No more than you know me. 
Salviati All right, who are you? 
Simplicio That should go without saying. 
 
This opening fails the three-lines rule (see below). After five lines, the audience knows that the characters are peevish, arguing, in no place in particular (though the audience may wish it were Hell); they cannot guess why there is an argument, except that pointless argument is a sign of peevishness. 
 
I don't think literally every interrogative sentence hampers the scene. I can imagine a scene that opens with one character hugging the other and saying 
 
Sagredo You know I love you? 
Portia You're my brother, you have to love me. 
 
This opening implies a lot about the characters and their inner lives: Sagredo may be a little insecure, or may be comforting Portia. Portia's response suggests he has reasons to be insecure; and they are brother and sister. The opening line is a question in form, but together with the hug, it conveys information and advances the scene. The question is a declaration in disguise. 
 
The setting of the scene, if made clear by business* or posture, can also turn questions into actions. The Simplicio/Salviati lines above would advance the scene a lot, if it were clear the scene opened with the characters in bed. 
 
* Business is a stage term meaning "unspoken action by one or more players." The word may appear as a direction in scripts to indicate visual gags too elaborate to describe — as scripts for Harpo Marx often did. 
 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ May 11, 2006 12:33:47 PM CDT ( )

Tell me — what's this: 
 
 
 
It's a circle, right? Well, no, it isn't: It's a crescent of varying shades of gray. But your brain and eyes don't work like that. They were designed to see things, not marks. Artists spend years learning to decompose what they see into constituent shapes and shades so you can look at paint and see a picture.  
 
In my peripheral vision I see a bookshelf and the books in it. Except I don't. The acuity with which I think I see the world is available only in a few degrees of arc in the middle of my field of vision. Because I know the bookshelf is there, and because I know what a bookshelf looks like, my visual cortex fills in the details. I can directly gather only a little of my surroundings at a time. My brain fills in the rest so the world makes sense. 
 
Improvisers have three lines, at the top of a scene, to establish who they are; where; and what they are doing. From those three lines, the audience must understand — see — that the characters share an extensive context, and that this is the next moment in that context. This is impossible. 
 
Further: Before, or even after, the first of those lines, the players usually have no idea who or where they are, or what they are doing. When an actor utters the first line, the other actors have not agreed on an answer to those questions. He himself may offer that first line without any notion of what scene will come of it. Two lines later, the setting, the characters, and their immediate business are to be set in the minds of every player in the scene. This is impossible. 
 
And yet, it seems, it happens all the time (or at least half the time). The players toss out opening lines in near-desperation, and the audience really does see unique people who share a history. The audience sees this for the same reason they can look at a gray crescent and see a circle: It's not so much that they want the events on-stage to make sense; they can't help making sense of what they are seeing. 
 
The hardest thing for a new improviser to believe is that saying anything, promptly and with conviction, is better than waiting to craft a "good" line.  
 
Prospero I hate fish. 
 
Bang. First line. Do you know where this is going? I didn't when I wrote it. 
 
Salviati Hate him all you want, but Fish is a good cop, and I'm not taking him off this case.
or
Salviati Mr. Johnson, you hired me to organize a five-course dinner. Fish is the traditional first course.
or
Salviati So do I. We must destroy them all. 
 
Bang. The players are detective and lieutenant (or are they mayor and lieutenant?); if they are smart, they'll start talking about each other, or doing something in the office they've conjured up, to bring the focus back on-stage, and away from the absent Detective Fish. Or, the players are a social climber and the snob he hired to present a high-class entertainment; their relationship of master to servant is of opposite status from their relationship of novice to expert, and experienced players will make something of each character's efforts to uncross the relationship in his own favor. Or, the players are mad scientists of some sort; Prospero's job on the third line will be to establish whether he is colleague, master, or servant, and at least suggest where they are. They both have to work out why, by their own lights, they aren't crazy, because crazy characters might do anything, and the point of the exercise is to have actions come from character, not mental deficiency. 
 
To come back full circle: Improv players come naked, into a naked set. One offers a line — any line — and the other tries to make sense of it. Usually this succeeds, because brains are sense-making machines. The audience has sense-making machines of their own, and because they do they are naturally on the players' side. So long as the players give the audience enough support, keeping a consistent who, what, and where, the scene will make sense. The audience will, by necessity, fill out the remaining arc of the circle. 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ May 7, 2006 5:50:54 PM CDT ( )

Yes, writing at The Second City. The Second City Training Center is in the comedy-instruction business, and writing sketches, screenplays, and TV scripts is part of the comedy business. There's a market, and a reservoir of expertise, so they teach it. 
 
Second, the resident (mainstage and e.t.c) and touring shows at The Second City are at least 80% scripted, formally or informally. Pure improv fails about half the time. If you're good. If you're an improv aficionado, even the failures are interesting, but most of the audience wants to see a show that is reliably funny. It is no small achievement to be reliably funny; it is in fact a good and honorable thing. The Second City process for developing revues uses improvisational skills to develop scenes that will make up a good show. 
 
In some few cases, a scene will start as a script; trial and rehearsal will change it considerably. In most, a scene will be born in improv before a live audience (or in rehearsal), and go through the same process of refinement (possibly beyond recognition). The goal is to preserve the authenticity of sentiment and character that come of good, pure improv, but shave out the irregularities and dead spots, and enhance the scene's relation to the theme of the revue.  
 
So writing, even if by a group process, goes on all the time in the preparation for sketch comedy shows like the Second City mainstage. That's not a bad thing, and is worth learning. 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ May 5, 2006 2:57:13 PM CDT ( )

It is good to have goals. Goals give you something to work for, and a sense that what you're doing accomplishes something. What is my plan for my return to The Scene? 

 

• My principal, and ultimate, goal is to step up to Rachel Dratch and make that woman mine. I've been crushing on her since 1995, and I think this entitles me to priority. Only debilitating shyness kept me from making my Move in the late '90s. Of course, this goal is not entirely within my control, but on the upside it does not strictly depend on any of the rest of my plan.
 

• Next (and as a practical matter, probably ultimate), I want to take The Second City Training Center's Directing Program. Anne's book leads me to believe I might be better as a director than as an improviser. My handicap at improvising was always that I stopped to analyze and mentally write what I was saying, producing noticeable gaps and crummy scenes. These traits should not hamper a director, whose job is mostly asynchronous. Also, the great Mick Napier is said (by Anne) to be into Physics and computer programming. I majored in Physics, and program Macintoshes for a living. QED.
 

• The problem is that the Directing Program's class size is very small, and the students are described as "select." I've been out of The Scene for over six years, and there are significant gaps in my training. I am probably not "select." So I have to build my credentials, and rebuild my skills.
 

• Naïvely, this would suggest I dive back into improvisational acting classes and keep an eye peeled for opportunities to perform. However, there is a complication: I'm fat. Really, really fat. Fat enough that I'm considering, and am a candidate for, bariatric surgery. That I'm fifty already limits my play with other actors (who seem to average 22); being slow and awkward makes it that much worse. Improv is a contact sport: I'd expect a player to be able to dive to the stage and stand back up, without injury or noticeable strain, within three to five seconds. I'm not gonna make it as I am.
 

• So. How to fill the time I'll be losing weight (one way or another) while renewing and advancing my skills? Fortunately, there is an interim solution: The Second City Writing Program. (The Directing Program description says the trainees will undertake improv and writing classes, but remember I'm trying to become "select.") There are two choices, at the start: Accelerated Writing, eight weeks for experienced writers and Conservatory graduates; and the Core Writing Program, four terms of eight weeks each, for everybody else. Strictly speaking, I qualify for the accelerated course, but I'm inclined to the longer one. Remember I'm stale, and in need of the extra time.
 

• With my weight (I hope) significantly reduced, I can contemplate improv courses. In principle, I might simply retake the Second City Conservatory program, but it would be a repetition. I think I'd get more out of it a second time, but there'd be too much temptation to act as though I had nothing to learn. Besides, I am weak on long-form improvisation. The place for that is what used to be called the ImprovOlympic, and is now known as the i.O. Theater. That will take a little over a year.
 

 
It is interesting to guess how long it will be before this plan becomes a complete goddamn embarrassment. I'm guessing the over/under is twelve months. 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ May 5, 2006 1:27:06 PM CDT ( )

So I'm thinking of getting back into improvisational theater. If you've read my résumé — as who has not — you know that between 1996 and 1999, I took the beginning and Conservatory courses at The Second City. I also took two classes at Mick Napier's Annoyance Theater, but stresses in my real life made me spit sparks, emit smoke, and generally collapse there. I've been out of The Scene (but for an abortive audition at The Playground) since then. 
 
Why go back? In the rest of my life, I was at my best when I was in The Scene. I don't mean I was so awfully good at improvising (though I was high-average as a Conservatory student), but my interactions with work and others were unusually good. Second, I've just read Anne Libera's Second City Almanac of Improvisation, a fine book that recaptured the feel of the improv world for me. So it's back to The Scene for me. The question is: how? 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson

@ May 5, 2006 12:15:14 PM CDT ( )