J:
Improv wise, you have been with a lot of teams. Your current UCB
improv team Standard Oil has a mix of seasoned veterans and
newbies. How is it changing teams?
PM: I think it might be my fifth team at UCB. I
was on my last team for a long time. Any time your team gets
broken up and you get onto a new team, there’s a sad feeling of
(laughing) ‘Oh, I guess I’ll never see you guys again!’ But then
you have to get immediately excited for your new team. You mourn
the loss of your old team, but you get very excited about your
new team and start thinking how it will be interesting to
perform with a new teammate, or it will be an interesting
combination. Maybe the new combination will work better than the
old one was.
I like to perform with all different kinds of people, even if I
was on the old team a long time and loved it. You may get lazy
as an improviser if you know one castmate will always come in
and do a certain type of thing or trust another person to do
something else, and then you end up less active as an
improviser. Performing with a cast you haven’t performed with
before keeps you on your toes, and you want scenes to be good
for everyone. You don’t want to think, ‘I just called it in and
sat back and let you do all the work or I was pushing my agenda
and didn’t listen to you.’ I think it makes you be a better
improviser.
When you get onto a team with all new people, sometimes you have
issues with being too polite. You’re like, ‘No you, no you, you
sir, after you, go right ahead!’ You have to get over that
pretty quickly because that’s not good for anybody. Having more
veteran people with newer people makes it exciting for veterans
too. You want the experience to be good for someone who’s never
been on a team before. You want them to feel, ‘This is exciting
and I enjoy doing this and this is great. Instead of, ‘Oh no,
that was horrible!’ When I was first on a Harold team, every
show I hated myself. I would think, ‘Oh God, now I have to wait
two more weeks to redeem myself!’ Instead of thinking about the
show or team as a whole, I would think, ‘I’m not funny, I’m
terrible, I don’t know how to do this!’ You get over that. Once
you do it for so long, you become more team-minded as opposed to
your own individual concerns. The team might have a great show
and you didn’t feel good about it, but at least we had a good
show.
J: Harold Night seems like a big event each
week. Do you still get nervous, since the house is always full?
PM: I don’t. It took a long time for me to get
to that point. I used to get really nervous. I would be
terrified. I had really terrible stage fright. I would think,
‘Why am I doing this?’ Why am I doing this to myself? But once I
got out there and did it, I would be happy about it. Now I don’t
get nervous at Harold Night at all. I don’t think about whether
something was the right move or if I understood everything.
That’s all stripped away. The theater is packed, there are
people on stage and also standing in the back. When I first
started, the Harold shows didn’t sell out every week. The more
people there, the greater the energy from the audience. If there
are less people watching, there’s more hesitation to react from
the audience.
The worst that can happen is if I have a bad scene, my teammates
will help out. This supports better choices and makes me enjoy
improvising more, and makes the shows better. The audience
doesn’t have to sympathize with a cast having a difficult time
on stage. The audience sees us having fun and knows we’re
enjoying it.
J: When you’re improvising, do you come out
thinking you want to work on a particular technique in
improvisation games?
PM: I’ll think that. Sometimes Betsy Stover and
I will be thinking, ‘Today I’m going to work on grounding the
scene or I’m going to work on environment.’ Maybe it’s in the
back of your mind and you might do it, like ‘oh I’ll go get a
drink of water.’ Or
I’ll try to notice the drapes or something. But once we start
doing that, then we’re very much in the moment and what ideas
we’re generating together. I’m ready to receive whatever you
want to dish out. Anything I said prior to that, usually goes to
the wind.
I don’t end the show thinking, ‘I really did work on
environment, I did great.’ I don’t even think about it after.
Once the show gets started, once you generate ideas in the
opening, once I’m in a scene with someone, I’m very much in the
moment. I try to disregard that there is an audience there and I
try to pay attention and think about the situation we’re in
together. I try to really listen.
J: In one of the reviews for your one-woman
show, the reviewer basically said, watch out for her to move to
L.A. Why New York instead of L.A.?
PM: It’s tough because many others in the
theatre have moved to L.A. or are moving there, including a lot
of friends of mine. Everyone I know who lives in L.A. now says,
‘you gotta move out here.’ I think about it, but when I started
taking classes at UCB, in 2003, just for fun, I didn’t think I
was going to be an actor, comedian or writer. I lived in New
York before, I didn’t move to New York to become a comedian. It
was just by chance. I really love the theater here. It’s a
different feel than what I just guess L.A. theatre is like.
There is excitement on Harold night and on Maude night. It’s a
lot of fun to perform at the UCB Theatre.
New York is awesome for everything else that it has.
There is so much to do, it’s steeped in history and it’s cool.
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