10 Written by Thomas Miller

    On the beach there is a commotion.  Georgeanne thinks she’s seen a meteor, which turns out to be an airplane.  “I’m going to the car and turning on the heat,” she says.  “Feeney, you come with.  See how long this tough guy lasts without us.”
    “We won’t be able to see anything in the car,” objects Feeney.
    “We can’t see anything here,” says Georgeanne.
    “Don’t go in the car,” says Bruce.  “It smells like Blix puke.”
    “Doesn’t matter to me,” says Feeney.  “I’ve got it in my hair.”
    “What do you see in Blix, anyway?” asks Georgeanne.
    “Lord knows,” says Feeney.
    “Enormous wang,” says Bruce.
    “Please never say that again,” says Feeney.
    Blix is the newest member of Old Tin Boots.  On the car ride to Gloucester, he had required exactly fifty-eight minutes and one pint of rum to vomit explosively all over Feeney in the back seat.  This sort of thing is par for Blix.  At his audition three months earlier, in a skit in which he’d played a firefighter, Blix had scampered out of the room, torn a fire extinguisher off the wall, run back in, and doused Feeney.  They’d taken him on the spot.
    Blix is necessary.  Everyone has tendencies toward particular roles in improvisation: Dap likes to play the star-crossed lover or the villain; Feeney, the child or the ugly duckling; Bruce, the straightman or a very old woman; Georgeanne, the seductress or a cowboy.  But Blix is a physical comedian.  They have to plan ahead when he’s involved, start him off-stage and take three minutes to set the scene something in the Ming Vase Wing of the International Museum of Priceless Art, or the House-of-Cards-Building World Championships, or an overheating nuclear reactor and then enter Blix as a giant wind-up mouse, or a 70-piece marching band, or a slinky that doesn’t obey the law of conservation of momentum.
    Their shows, which take place twice monthly, are entirely improvised.  For each skit, the audience supplies the actors’ identities (the Count of Monte Cristo), a location (an elevator) and a quirk or two (speaks in three-word sentences), which the actors drop into different structures.  Alphabet, in which each line begins with a successive letter of the alphabet.  Party, in which each person has a secret identity that only he or she knows.  Cafe, in which each person has a secret identity that everyone knows except for the actor.  It can become a little intellectual, entertaining in an I-couldn’t-do-that-myself sort of way, rather than laugh-out-loud funny.  Until Blix comes in.  Blix tears scenes apart, he blows them to pieces.  Blix is a belly laugher.

Posted on February 9th, 2009 in Fiction