Thursday night (May 30) at 8pm Neil Casey and I present our sketch show “Small Men.” It’s been running a long time. We officially opened the show a year ago, and had workshopped it for four months before that, and had initially done it one time a year before THAT.

I recently looked back at the first drafts and was genuinely surprised to see how much the sketches had changed. I was also surprised to see that we didn’t really know what the show was going to be like when we started working on it.

Our initial plan was to write a “2004 sketch show” since that was the last time Neil and I had written sketch together. I don’t mean 2004 references, but that we’d do the kind of sketch show that one would have done at UCB-NY in 2004 – not that much video, minimal tech. (The songs in the current show reflect this – they are all songs that were used a lot as transition music in the early 2000s.) It was going to be an unambitious show, something just to get Neil and I back on the sketch scene at UCB.

But in the course of writing and performing sketch that all faded and a different show emerged – one with long scenes and lots of dialogue and an unplanned recurring theme of celebrating people with minimal power, kind of.

I’ve never done a show with the long development period that Small Men has had, and so for the fun of it I want to show how one of the main sketches came to be. (consider this blog entry to be “sketchnonsense” not “improvnonsense”)

So this is “Liberty Plaza” a sketch in which two employees of a small town argue about approving a left-hand turn lane into a shopping plaza. Here’s a sample from the first draft:

DAVID

Shut your fucking face, Henry. Shut it the fuck up and tell me what it is you want. You want an awning permit for your brother-in-law’s Einstein Brothers franchise? HENRY

They are doing quite well without an awning. DAVID

They are fucking dying, and you know it. Say the word, they’ll get their awning and I get my traffic light at Liberty Goddamn Plaza. HENRY

David, Liberty Plaza does not need a traffic light. DAVID

Liberty Plaza is the FUTURE of this town! They’ve already got a Game Stop, they’re got a sushi place and you didn’t hear it from me but they’re a goddamn cunt hair away from getting a Duchess in there. If you don’t have a traffic light there’s gonna be an apocalypse of traffic jams of consumers trying to get in its parking lot. It’s the hottest strip mall in Wilmington!

This sketch came from me telling Neil about when I was a reporter and watched land use meetings in a small CT town and him talking about the strident dramatic tone of the Jane Jacobs book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities." We liked the idea of mid-level city employees passionately defending their issues, both because it could sound silly and because it was an example of real people doing real jobs that aren’t normally celebrated.

We sat in a bar and improvised a bunch of dialogue, and wrote a "shitty first draft.” It reads to me now like a clumsy Glengarry Glen Ross meets Parks and Rec. Lots of swearing. Specifics all over the place.

We met several more times over a few months. Each time we’d read what we wrote before and tweak it, and also improvise a bunch more stuff and write down our favorites. Certain lines were winning out and surviving these rewriting sessions.

We talked a LOT about the issues at play in this sketch. I’d describe the hammy and theatrical people from the zoning board I used to cover (a high-paid lawyer begrudgingly kissing the ass of a locally elected super-liberal guy in a turtleneck and a ‘CCCP’ hat). Neil made me read aloud from Jacobs’ book – her diatribe against enclosed parks in housing projects was awesomely full of fire and brimstone.

We had a lot of discussions about the passion hidden in these town meetings, and how much they affected people’s every day lives much more than seemingly more grand things. We started getting protective of the sketch – we wanted our guys to come out looking good.

Over these meetings, we started to iron out the specifics. Replacing “Duchess” with the more recognizable “Friendly’s.” Neil’s character was getting fussier, calling it a “turning lane” instead of a “turn lane.”

DAVID

FUCK Bran Mar Plaza! Are you kidding me? What do you got in there, a SHOP RITE and a VIDEO STORE? It’s an embarrassment! Liberty Plaza is the economic hub of the whole god damn Concord Pike if you don’t count the mall! We got a sushi place, we got a Gold’s Gym and you didn’t hear this from me but we are one cunt hair away from getting a Friendly’s in there! HENRY

No way you’ll get a Friendly’s in there. DAVID

Oh, it’s coming. HENRY

Look, David, you know darn well we can’t just throw turning lanes in front of every shopping plaza that wants one. It takes planning, takes resources…

After we read it to our director Michael Delaney, he said that we were playing the “proper noun game” and so we should ramp that up. He also said to cut back the swearing. We decided we would never mention the town but that to us it was a mixture of Wilmington, Delaware (Brynn Marr Plaza) and Danbury, CT (Route 7 wetlands).

HENRY

Oh David, not now. Ann Gerratano was just in here demanding I finish up the survey of the Route 7 wetlands. DAVID

Forget the wetlands survey, Henry! Need I remind you that I am chairman, interim, of the Chamber of Commerce… HENRY

And I am Deputy Liaison to the Zoning Board of Appeals, David. But I have NO idea why you’re so upset! DAVID

Do not play dumb, Henry! Jack Cosgrove called me this morning, in TEARS, and told me that you revoked approval for the new left turn lane into Liberty Plaza. Please tell me he’s joking! HENRY

Yes, that’s right. You know Eric Sprock did a traffic study that says there’s no pressing need for a turning lane into Liberty Plaza.

We read it to Delaney, and then had a few meetings where we’d perform it. Each of these times we’d tweak the dialogue as we’d say it. Delaney would suggest phrases and veto others, or go to bat to protect others (I remember he loved when Neil would say “that’s my wife’s pet project and it’s GD sacrosanct” and would remind us to keep it in).

Delaney also made our performances more specific. Neil was getting more buttoned-down. We decided he was a family man who would never really stand up to a superior. He developed a voice for it that sounded a mixture of mousey and rarefied. And I was someone who saw himself as a crusader, though in reality would not really have the power to change much. Delaney wanted me to be full of intensity without the profanity (though we kept in choice colorful swears like “one cunt hair away from replacing Computer City with a Friendly’s”).

The dialogue started getting very specific. This…

DAVID

You want an awning permit for your brother-in-law’s Einstein Brothers franchise?

became this…

DAVID

I say you’re still steamed that the chamber opposed the retractable awning permit for your sister’s Einstein Brothers bagel place.

and this…

HENRY

David, Liberty Plaza will handle its capacity just fine. Look at Brynn Mar Plaza.

became this…

HENRY

Brynn Marr Plaza is an exquisite open-air shopping arcade that is doing very well.

The first few times we performed this sketch in front of an audience, it would start slow before doing well. We thought maybe because there wasn’t a hard reveal where you introduce the game to the audience. The main “jokes” were proper nouns that seemed to imply a back story. So we added a line that was meant to be over-the-top even for this sketch, to sort of “teach” the audience that we meant the complicated mouthfuls of jargon to be the joke. This line:

DAVID

Eric SPROCK? You mean “used eminent domain to seize 2 acres of Tibbet’s Farm to replace ONE traffic light with THREE roundabouts at the Augustine Cutoff to connect Falk and Weldin ROADS” Eric Sprock? Please. HENRY

It’s faster for me.

And there were jokes that we wanted to hit but weren’t. So we framed more obviously. Like we loved this line but it never got any reaction:

DAVID

Liberty Plaza is going to the economic HUB of the town. If you don’t count the mall.

So we started doing this:

DAVID

Liberty Plaza is going to be the economic HUB of the town. DAVID / HENRY

If you don’t count the mall.

Some of the jokes still don’t hit the way we want. This line:

DAVID

What is this about, Henry? Are you mad that the Chamber hasn’t featured you in our html newsletter?

“Html newsletter” makes us laugh – we imagine that it was an internal point of pride that they are able to send out newsletters in HTML. But I believe nary a person has reacted to that line? WE KEEP IT IN ANYWAY.

Each time we did it, we’d improvise small things differently, keeping some. This show existed primarily as stuff we say out loud to each other for fun rather than a script we have written down.

After doing the show a year we had to re-type the script because we were performing a much different version than what we’d written down. I just looked at the script and it’s out of date again. It says this:

DAVID

I’ll call Alicia Coen! HENRY

I’ll call Dave Luchese! DAVID

I’ve got the number for Martha Finch on my speed dial!

When what we’ve been saying is (I think) this:

DAVID

Well, I’ll call Alicia Coen! I’ve got her number written down at home! HENRY

Then I’ll call Dave Luchese! Or just talk to him when I see him at coffee and donuts after Mass! DAVID

I’ll call Martha Finch! Our kids are both second clarinet in concert band!

The ending changed dramatically. Here’s the ending of our first draft.

DAVID

Fine, fuck face. You don’t want to play ball today, then I’ll leave. But I promise you this: that putt-putt will never get the signage it needs if you don’t learn to take Don Kane’s dick out of your mouth long enough to recognize Liberty Plaza for what it is: THE FUTURE ECONOMIC HUB OF WILMINGTON. HENRY

Good bye.

Oof. But with the help of Delaney and putting it on its feet in rehearsal, we eventually got to this:

HENRY

Say, David? TECH: PLAY U2 “WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME” start at :50. HENRY

You really think Liberty Plaza’s gonna get that Friendly’s? DAVID

We’re gonna try like hell. HENRY

My God. That’d be huge.

Very early in the process, we fell in love with this sketch and decided it would be the heart of the show. It’s not the clearest game, or even the one with the strongest jokes. But soon after the first draft, the specifics all felt like they implied a bigger world. We could not revise this sketch without discussing the back stories of every character mentioned. It inspired the title of the show (Small Men). It also set the precedent of us following our own indulgences (complex deliberate dialogue in this case, long pauses, grand philosophizing in other sketches) and trying to find a way to make them work in a sketch. We agreed that even if it got zero laughs, we would not cut this sketch.

Come see! Thursday night 8pm UCB-Chelsea!