FUE Blog

The Home Stretch

fueteam — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:57:53 +0000

It's been quite a roller coaster ride as we wrapped up this weekend and look ahead to the final two performances of F#@king Up Everything. To say that things have been eventful would probably be an understatement--We've seen everything from happily molested audience members thanks to Fritz and Crystal A. to blown out tires on the side of the road to producers run over by cars (no worries, he's just fine). And I'd be remiss if I were to leave out the epic Woolly Flood of 2011 that began as a small pipe leak in the lobby to torrents of water streaming out of pipes all over the building and onto our light board. (Again, no worries, everyone was fine) But what would theatre be without a little drama?

The cast and band get the nightly applause from the audience and if tech is doing our job right, no one really notices we're there. But in representing my peeps, I wanted to spend this blog doing shout outs for some of the little things that went on backstage and might not have gotten the love...

To Daisy, our lighting designer, who doesn't get breaks between her triple headers of FUE-WYB-FUE on the weekends because she's up climbing ladders to flip the lighting plot between shows. While the cast is out schmoozing, she's hard at work.

To AJ, our sound operator, who quite literally saved our butts during tech week by jumping into the show with no advance knowledge. Now, knowing the show as well as any of us, he continues to work on us, sharpen his cueing and make sure all our mics are in the right place. The show sounds as good as it does, in part, because of you.

To Peter, our go-to costume repair genius. I don't know how actors do the things they do to their costumes sometimes, but you've been there to pull things back together.

To Eric and Sam, our writers. As with techies, if you've done your job right, the audience thinks the actors are just making up all the things that come out of their mouths. You've giving us such a layered and joyful piece to work with and it's been an honor to know you set your baby into my and our hands each performance.

To Jeremy and Charlie, our crack team of producers. A producer is more than a credit card, folks. When push comes to shove, they are the phone call that makes things happen or the ear when you need to vent in a crisis. Gentlemen, it's been totally for real... and Jeremy, take care of that foot.

To Grace and Sarah, our kick-ass intern team, who runs our backstage like clockwork. Unless you've done it, you have no idea how much work goes into setting, tracking and maintaining props and costumes for a show. And they clean sweaty, nasty actor underwear... not a pleasant task! Ladies, I've come to rely on the two of you as much as any ASM team I've ever had. Thank you.

And something personal - Stage managers are the people who end up dealing with everyone else's problems and complaints, which doesn't leave much energy for yourself sometimes. There have been several of the cast and team who have been a generous ear to listen or shoulder to lean on. You know who you are, and I thank you endlessly for that. You are the people who replenish others so that we can go on to fight another battle.

So onto that last battle I go... If you haven't been to see us yet, this is it. And to the FUE family, let us fight on like it's "Braveheart" and show everyone our bare butts on the way out!

--Hope Villanueva (Stage Manager)

Hipstamatic!

fueteam — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:04:30 +0000

Here's my latest photo fun:

My latest roll of film is being held hostage by a photo developer in NYC so I offer this fun look into the onstage life of FUE:
Every night in the show I take the same picture of Christian and Juliana using my iPhone with the Hipstamatic app.
I think it's pretty fun to see all these lined up together in collage form.
Rock and roll my friends!
xCrystal Arnette (Arielle)

Instrumental Break

fueteam — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:36:54 +0000

One year ago, I was the keyboardist/rapper—yes, rapper—in Jeremy King's band Mass Ave with John Fritz. My choice to leave wasn't creative differences, by any means, but my previously blogged-about relocation to NYC. Actually, two years ago I was the drummer in Jeremy King's band Mass Ave. At any rate, there were a few songs where we decided an extra guitar would fatten the sound a little better than a keyboard. Well, I was just never 'there'. I would learn a song but between playing drums for Evita which opens with a funeral mass, writing a Latin mass for The Yonkofa Project, and learning changes for the keyboard numbers in a Mass Ave. set, the guitar stuff just didn't stick.

I realize it sounds like I'm just bragging about my broad talents…I am. But with enough decency and humility to say I wasn't perfect. Wasn't being the operative word. Thanks to F@#king Up Everything I've been playing an axe onstage (is that how one says it? Playing an axe?), in front of an audience, five times a weekend for the past three weeks. And we have another amazing two weekends! Hello, perfection.

John Fritz and Jeremy King were certainly instrumental—no pun intended—in this, as well as Matt Hinkley's well-documented scores, and Eric's fun and rockin' songs. I think I'm just about ready to give this instrument a full time position on my résumé!

I hope this show has been half as educational for the cast and audience as it has been for me.

See you at the show,
Taylor J. Williams (Musical Director)

Ba dum! hiss

fueteam — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:20:34 +0000

So everybody else in the cast and crew has already stolen my brilliant idea to blog about how awesome the show is, how awesome the cast and crew is, and how much fun this show has been week after week, so I decided to get everybody in the mood for seeing F#@KING UP EVERYTHING with a set of wonderful hipster-themed jokes.

How did the hipster burn his mouth?
He ate his pizza before it was cool.

How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Dude, that lightbulb was cooler before it changed.

A hipster walks into a bar and says, "this bar sucks, it's full of hipsters".

--Jeremy King (Guitar)

F#@KING Public Service Announcement: They're not Kidding

fueteam — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 02:01:39 +0000

If the reviews haven't brought you into the show by now,
If our relentless Facebook posts and emails haven't,
If our shameless self promotion and whoring ourselves out haven't (so un-hipster-esque),

I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WAITING FOR.

Really, you are only hurting yourself. I'm coming to you as a friend, as your confidant. I only want the best for you, and if you don't see F#@KING UP EVERYTHING while it's still hot in DC, you are wasting your summer! Perhaps you're wondering, like many of your peers, what if I do it once, and I can't stop? It's time to throw caution to the wind and live a little!

Nancy Reagan may have told you to just say no, but she had no idea what she was missing out on.

Is it getting a little clearer? No? Time for a personal testimony.

I, Dana Marcus, went to this past Saturdays's 10 pm show with my parents (another f#@kup tale to come). I converted this "in bed by 9" couple into a couple of regular Williamsburg hipsters. Together we sang, we danced, we felt up John Fritz (he knows he loved it), and in between the bongs and the hot and heavy make out sessions on stage, we bonded.

Come on, that is some wholesome s#@t right there. Take your parents to F#@KING UP EVERYTHING, and grow closer over how much you really have in common (more than you'd like to admit, your parents are so cool!)

Do the right thing. Call your mom, call you friend, (hide your kids, hide your wife) and go see F#@KING UP EVERYTHING. Do it today.

The more you know! --Dana Marcus (Web and Marketing intern and general f#@kup)

hurting bad

fueteam — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:13:17 +0000

I can't be in DC this weekend and it hurts. Bad. It's hard enough to stay away during the week but to miss a whole weekend of shows? Misery. I'm so proud of this cast, band and crew. To put together such a funny and hard-rocking production in three short weeks? I didn't think it could be done. But they did it. So if you're in DC or can get to DC, please go see the show this weekend. For me. I'll be somewhere else. Hurting bad.

David Eric Davis

The Wonderful World of F#@KING UP EVERYTHING from an unbiased intern

fueteam — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:08:14 +0000

Wow! No one ever asks the interns what they think about anything! But, since there are four of us I'll try to keep my thoughts sweet and to the point. My name is Sarah and I'm one of the production interns. So, what do I do as an intern on this lovely show? I sit quietly in the corner and take notes. Oh, and I wash beer bottles. Lots of them. I love it!

I was hooked on this show from our first read-through. I'm still rather new to the wonderful world of theatre, but I can definitively say that this is how theatre is supposed to be. But, to prove that I truly am as unbiased as I claim, I feel it's only fair to share both my highlights and lowlights from this show with the world.

Highlight: The music? The people? The ironic t-shirts? Spending an entire summer hanging out with rockstars and watching this show five times a week from the wings? I can't pick just one!

Lowlight: Finding out that I, apparently, dress like a hipster.

Come see us soon! Tickets are on sale now! :)

<3 Sarah Korn

Production Intern

the first few runs

fueteam — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:29:22 +0000

Phew! Got through those!

It’s incredibly exciting to get a live audience in front of you. I think when you work on a comedy for so long, the jokes you were buckled over laughing at during the first read, have become expected and commonplace. The things you do to get laughs now are so over the top that they seem exaggerated and idiotic to even you.

I think in order to perfect comedy you have to maintain a very strong and rigid structure to your play. In a lot of ways, making an audience laugh is harder than making them cry, or at least making them feel sad.

Laughter in a theatre can be difficult to produce. We don’t want to feel like we are the one’s on display, so our laughs are stifled. It takes an audience member with some big balls to start belly-laughing from the get-go. We don’t want to be looked at as that dude who laughs real loud. The one thing we want to be when we enter a theatre is invisible (unless of course we’re on stage).

So getting into the space a few weeks ago for our first run, I was worried we might have that situation on our hands. I know the show is funny, I know how hard we’ve laughed in rehearsal, but when you get in front of an audience, the only thing you can think is “Oh, God. I hope I’m fucking funny.”

So I would like to send out a hearty thank you to all the belly-laughers. The high-pitched squeally laughers. The chucklers, the deep-breathed smoker’s laughers and the one’s who came into the show thinking “I don’t want to see live theatre, Captain America is playing down the street” and who still let a few laughs squeak out. Thanks for making this show so incredibly fun(ny).

Augie Praley (Christian)

rockstars

fueteam — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:04:54 +0000

I can hardly believe the show has been open for two weeks already especially since we only started rehearsing a month ago. I was unsure if we would all be able to pull off this quality of a product in such a short period, but this cast rose to the challenge and knocked it out of the park. We opened the show having only actually run through the musical three times including tech runs...i mean it was absolutely insane that we were able to open the show at all. The first few shows were a bit rough technically but then suddenly it transformed..i have never seen a cast take something so far in such a short amount of time. These guys are all rockstars!

Jay D. Brock (Director)

Vlogging!

fueteam — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:54:32 +0000

Dani Danger Stoller (yep, that's her real name) has posted a new video, classifying famous movie characters into two very important roles: asshole who redeems his existence, or just plain assholes Check it out here!

Some spoilers, you've been warned!