I like soccer, bear with me here
So technically tonight, i.e. in terms of cohesion and plot forwarding, we had one of our best shows ever at IB tonight. However, I'm still not sure whether or not the show was actually good. I wasn't sure whether our story (cold corporate douche exec. leaves wife behind to go to Denver, leaves nervous assistant in charge of office) was terribly interesting or even whether anything we did was all that funny. Overall I have quite a positive view of the show, I'm just not sure if it was something very fun for an audience to watch. I will say that Joe and I did maybe the greatest cross ever, a joke about Siamese twins that was executed so wonderfully in vocal and lockstep that I nearly wept offstage. I could not, could not be more proud of that simple joke.
The show the night before was good too. It's clear to me that the two new female members of the group need to join fast so we can at least get a new perspective and dynamic on characters, if anything. I'd like the group to be a little more women friendly, myself included. It's not that we're not, it's more like this. In the 1970s the Dutch national football team revolutionized the game with a simple offensive philosophy known as "Total Football". In Total Football the team eschewed the traditional 4-3-3 (four defenders, three midfielders, three forwards) or 2-5-2-1 or 3-4-3, all of them. They played a format where there were no set defenders, no set attackers, no set midbacks. Each player needed to have an all-around skill set that best suited the situation at hand. It also helped that they had Johann Cruyff, maybe the greatest player of his generation. The Dutch finished runner up in 1974 after a tough, tough match with West Germany (the great Franz Beckenbauer marked Cruyff the whole game) where Holland scored before the Germans touched the ball but ultimately fell short. They also lost in 1978's final after Cruyff refused to travel in protest of the Argentine military junta. Doesn't matter. The point is that that Dutch soccer squad could do everything. That's what we need from this improv group for it to be a viable artistic project and a damn funny show. We need Total Football.
The show the night before was good too. It's clear to me that the two new female members of the group need to join fast so we can at least get a new perspective and dynamic on characters, if anything. I'd like the group to be a little more women friendly, myself included. It's not that we're not, it's more like this. In the 1970s the Dutch national football team revolutionized the game with a simple offensive philosophy known as "Total Football". In Total Football the team eschewed the traditional 4-3-3 (four defenders, three midfielders, three forwards) or 2-5-2-1 or 3-4-3, all of them. They played a format where there were no set defenders, no set attackers, no set midbacks. Each player needed to have an all-around skill set that best suited the situation at hand. It also helped that they had Johann Cruyff, maybe the greatest player of his generation. The Dutch finished runner up in 1974 after a tough, tough match with West Germany (the great Franz Beckenbauer marked Cruyff the whole game) where Holland scored before the Germans touched the ball but ultimately fell short. They also lost in 1978's final after Cruyff refused to travel in protest of the Argentine military junta. Doesn't matter. The point is that that Dutch soccer squad could do everything. That's what we need from this improv group for it to be a viable artistic project and a damn funny show. We need Total Football.