Scenes From A Marathon (Part 2)

9:15-11:30 p.m. Friday:
Blackout 2003
Later on Friday, at the Marathon’s Urban Stages venue, the event took on more geographic range, with out of town performers The Galleria, of Los Angeles, and The Signatures and Tucker Max, of Chicago; although the highlight was the last show of this time block, “Blackout 2003” performed by “Green Eggs and Beef,” a collection of UCB veterans including Charlie Sanders (see interview), Lennon Parham (see interview), Eugene Cordero and Anthony King.

Blackout 2003 had the novel idea of performing their entire set in the dark, which turned out to be more than just a novelty. You could hear just how sharp these performers were (also billed, but we’re not sure if they were in the group before they turned the lights off, were Eric Scott, Kate Spencer, Charlie Todd and Joe Wengert) as they built scenes aurally without the benefit of the audience even seeing them.

Suggested by the setting, “Blackout 2003” included haunted house-oriented stories, including the passing around of a bucket of knives, a grandfather reading inappropriate stories to grandchildren, and of course playing with a ouija board. Aside from an audience not being able to see the performers, these performers were obviously experienced enough at improvising together that they could play off each other without even seeing each other.

12:30-2:30 p.m. Saturday at Hudson Guild Theater:
Start Trekkin
Now we may have to amend these accounts later on to add bits about groups that were not remembered or noted at first, so consider this the first draft. On Saturday afternoon, Start Trekkin, a New York-based group (Ben Sterling, Lauren Hunt, Kate Caldwell, Phil Ristanio, Frank Todaro, Casey Jones and Joy Masters), performed their set in character and in costume as Star Trek-like characters, with Sterling as the group’s Captain Kirk-like personality, Jones as the arch-villain “Domo” this time and Caldwell in dual parts as Domo’s associate and the Captain’s first mate.

The group proved pretty deft at crafting an original movie-like story from start to finish, within the constraints of specific characters, all the while leaving room to make discoveries of character and plot that kept the show entertaining.

Next: A repeat visit with Bassprov and they deliver a second tour-de-force.