2002 SEATTLE SKETCH FEST JOURNAL

By Adrian Villegas, LCP Artistic Director

The 2002 Seattle Sketchfest. presented several important and intimidating "firsts" for the Latino Comedy Project:

It was the first time the LCP ever traveled out of the state of Texas to perform. In fact, it was really the first time we ever took our show "on the road" at all. And it was the first time we’d performed in a decidedly "non-Latino" region of the country (the Northwest!) for what was almost certainly going to be a non-Latino audience.

Once the initial rush of excitement over the invitation receded, questions flew furiously in the mind: Would our material "travel"? Would anyone in Seattle "get it"? Or would the Seattle audiences stare, blank-faced and stone-silent, as these strange, swarthy creatures calling themselves "Latinos" traipsed and gibbered across the stage in a sweatily desperate effort to be amusing?

The answer: We had absolutely no idea. But God help us, we were going to find out.

We were scheduled for two 40-minute performance slots at The Seattle Sketch Fest. The LCP members who would go to Seattle were myself, Patty Arredondo, Omar Gallaga, John Juarez, Karinna Perez, Mical Trejo, Nick Walker and Joaquin Villareal. It was immediately clear to me that the selection of sketches we chose for the Sketch Fest had to strike a very delicate cultural and aesthetic balance. Our performances in Seattle had to be:

1.) Accessible enough for Northwestern non-Latinos to enjoy (unlike the typical non-Latino in Texas, who is surrounded by Latino language and culture)

2.) Still culturally relevant enough to be appreciated by any Latinos who might be in the audience, and finally…

3.) A bold illustration of how our comedic style and body of work differs from the mainstream.

Since we’d be performing for a completely fresh audience who’d presumably never seen the LCP before, the final Seattle sketch selection was comprised of sketches and video pieces ranging as far back as the first LCP show in 1998 up to our most recent show in 2002. To display a wider range of material, we prepared a different set of sketches for each performance, the only similarity between the two sets being their opening and closing sketches.

Immediately after the 4th Annual Austin Latino Comedy Fiesta closed, we began rehearsals for the Seattle event. September was arguably the most intensely focused month of rehearsals in the LCP’s entire five-year history. Given the uneasy sense of intermingled opportunity, unpredictability and unique audience challenges embodied by the Seattle Sketch Fest---it had to be.

Flash forward to 8:48pm Friday October 4th at Seattle’s Broadway Performance Hall. We’re onstage taking a group bow after our first performance, exulting in long and enthusiastic applause from our Seattle audience. We breathe a collective sigh of relief: Yes, our material had "traveled" and yes, Seattle "got it". We’d proven to ourselves the comedy truism: "A laugh is a laugh is a laugh." And all the laughs had been right where we’d wanted them to be.

The sets we chose for the Sketch Fest struck the exact balance we were hoping for: culturally accessible yet relevant comedy delivered with a distinctive performance style. Our audiences genuinely enjoyed us, as demonstrated by loud and appreciative applause at the end of both our surprisingly well-attended sets.

Also surprising was the unexpectedly large number of Latinos in our audience--and not just any Latinos, but actual Meskins! Long fabled but rarely seen in the Northwest Americas, Meskins materialized almost magically out of the Seattle landscape and, as if emerging from a state of natural camouflage, suddenly appeared at the ticket counter for our show. And after our shows were finished, just as mysteriously as they had appeared, they were gone.

In all seriousness, the audiences for both shows were easily a 50/50 ratio between Latinos and Anglos. This was undoubtedly the result of LCP’ers Nick Walker and Karinna Perez’ excellent direct email PR to Latino organizations in Seattle months in advance of our shows there.

The Sketch Fest organizers and staff, already extremely gracious to us since our arrival, seemed genuinely impressed by our performances. Naturally, there were members from other sketch troupes who attended our shows, and the feedback we received from them was also very complimentary. The more cynical among us (i.e., me) were almost skeptical of the flattery at first, especially since I rarely feel that the praise we receive is ever completely deserved. But as great word of mouth filtered back to us over the weekend from people who hadn’t even seen our shows, we happily realized that the compliments had indeed been sincere and, in the eyes of those complimenting us, well-earned.

Another great aspect of the Sketch Fest was that it was the first time the LCP was able to see so many professional sketch comedy troupes from all over the nation perform live and in one place. We were electrified, amused and inspired by many of the troupes we saw that weekend. So many highlights remain vivid in the memory: The hilarious bitchiness of the The OOPS! Guys’ "Asian Sings the Blues" cabaret; the amazing physical precision of Bald Faced Lie’s two naked actors during their beach sketch; the jaded crustiness of Troop!’s "flashback" Teamster; the clever musical juxtaposition in Cupid Players’ Catholic Hoedown sketch; and of course, Totally False People’s sensitive yet unflinchingly honest depiction of Michael McDonald Syndrome (don’t ask--you’d just have to see it).

We also met some wonderful people in Seattle, including Sketch Fest organizers Val Bush, Laura Farbrother and Morgan Brayton of the Vancouver Sketch Fest. These are three cool and sweet individuals we can’t thank enough and whom we now consider friends. The same can be said for the guys from Totally False People, David, Janet, Cole, and Gabriel. A few of us in the LCP spent time talking in depth to David and Cole about our lives in sketch comedy, comparing our influences, group processes, frustrations, successes and ambitions. In the end, sharing the commonality of our experiences in this way was as valuable as sharing our work onstage. We came away enriched well beyond the satisfaction of simply having had a "good show". I believe this idea is at the heart of the Sketch Fest and, for that alone, the trip was many times over worth the hard effort to make it possible.

Meanwhile, the LCP bonded in ways we never had before: Exploring downtown Seattle on foot; embarking on cross-town prop quests; sharing 2am dinners at the nearest all-night diner; ceaseless summer camp-like shuttlings between hotel rooms; the entire group walking one and a half miles from the hotel to the theater at a seemingly 90-degree incline (but only once–we’re not stupid!); and laughing our asses off all weekend at anything and everything that crossed our paths. I have to say thanks to Teatro Humanidad Board Member Martin Chapa, who was awesome, a great help to us, and we're all so glad he came along on the trip.

Finally, "PUSH" was a Saturday midnight event where all the sketch groups gathered for a loosely organized post-show performance/party. The idea was to hold an event where troupes could drink free beer and do material that they, for whatever reason, could not perform during their regular Sketch Fest slots. The LCP decided to screen one of our video pieces called "Masa y Sangre". At eight minutes long, "Masa" was an unwieldy and impractical fit for our 40-minute performance slots, but for "PUSH" it was perfect. Since it was the only video scheduled, "Masa y Sangre" was shown at the top of the line-up. I introduced it by first interpreting the title for everyone ("Flour and Blood") and explaining that the video was our take on every barrio movie cliché in film history. I also warned, "If the acting seems bad-- it was intentional," adding, "Just to make it interesting: Every time you see a shot with a tortilla in it…take a drink." And we began the video. What happened next was unforgettable.

Understand something. The Latino Comedy Project was founded with two sincere and equally important goals: To provide entertainment that speaks to and for a Latino audience rarely given a voice in the arts, but also to bring non-Latinos into our world by sharing with them our common humanity through laughter. And that Saturday night, an audience of tired sketch comics filled the room with roaring laughter from virtually the first shot of "Masa y Sangre" to the last. I’d watched the short get laughs from audiences before, but was still stunned by the enthusiasm and relentlessness of this particular response. It is no exaggeration to say that they got everything-–even the subtle touches that had previously only seemed to amuse us in the LCP.

For the LCP to have been almost an entire nation away from our home state regional audience, facing unknown cultural barriers, and yet to still have a roomful of our peers give our work such a generous and unforced outpouring of laughter, well…It was the perfect ending to the weekend.

One last thing: Amazingly, by the end of our second show, we'd sold most of the LCP t-shirts we'd brought along -- rather optimistically, I'd thought-- to sell in the lobby. We took the surprisingly healthy t-shirt sales as empirical proof of our appeal to the Seattle audiences, but were still slightly taken aback. Why? We were in a city where no one knew who we were, yet we had made enough of an impression with our modest 40-minute sets to compel perfect strangers to purchase $15 t-shirts of a group they'd never seen until less than an hour before. I have to admit: Every so often the odd thought occurs to me that somewhere in Seattle, at any given moment, there may be a person wearing an LCP t-shirt (and then, quite possibly, another
person standing next to them wondering what the fuck an "LCP" is).

Our LCP t-shirts are covered with various jokes and logos, but in my imagination, the t-shirts we sold in Seattle now say just one thing:

"The Latino Comedy Project was here."