Seattle Sketch 101: Disgruntled Bit-Players & The Second Wave Part II

DBP had a thing for group walking at the camera. Pictured, DBP's original roster: Lisa Sanphillipo, Skot Kurruk, Brent Johnson, Kim Nyhous, Joe Wack, Marcea Pierson, José Amador and Deni Mayer; Carrie Houchins-Witt is not pictured, but was a member. Photo by Megan Joplin.

Having agreed to move forward with the project that came to be known as Disgruntled Bit-Players (a name that Joe had adapted from a prior project), we set about the work of populating the team. One of the things we agreed upon was that we wanted to include people who we knew were going to be funny, we had to have seen their work somewhere along the way and be familiar enough with it to know that they'd be good to collaborate with. It didn't have to be a unanimous decision, but it had to be more than just an intuition.

I don't think it was a conscious decision on our part, but in our selection, we tended to lean toward comedic actors, as opposed to outright comedians; we wanted people who could sell the material, regardless of how absurd it may have been. For that reason, we started by pulling interested parties from Immorality Plays: Brent Johnson (at the time starting to work as a carpenter at the Intiman), Marcea Pierson, Carrie Houchins-Witt, and Deni Mayer. To these we added two cast members from Veggie Underground, the show I had just completed at Open Circle: Skot Kurruk (he was pretty dubious about committing to the idea, but adopted a "we'll just wait and see" attitude) and Kim Nyhous (who currently is working as a producer for the production company responsible for "Hoarders" and "Sell This House", among others). Finally, to even up the number of men and women in the group, we nabbed Lisa Sanphillipo with whom I had worked with on KAZOO! (the brainchild of the mono-monikered Winlar), a good friend of mine and someone whose comic sensibility I felt was a strong match for what we were going for.

This was the initial core group. Not long after Do Miami!, our first production, we discovered that juggling schedules was going to be an issue, so we added several other players in order to expand the core group and be more flexible as a result. These folks were added in the months immediately following Miami, and included Evan Mosher (currently in the band "Awesome" with former members from Bald Face Lie and The Habit, and is also a regular performer in Scott Auguston's Sgt. Rigsby series of silhouette and shadow puppet plays), Jeremy Young and Suzanne Cohen (who ran, and still runs, the Mirror Stage theater company, which is currently producing shows around Seattle).

It would be churlish of me if I also didn't recognize the work of Tim Long who was our house designer/stage manager; our usual stage crew, Paula Phaneuf and Andy Riegel; and Patrick Broemeling who regularly helped us out on directing duties.

To this already long list of people, we also utilized featured performers, normally from other sketch groups, such as Lo Blo's John McKenna and Brandon Whitehead (who can now be seen regularly on Seattle's professional stages); Marty Mukhailian can also be found there -- she was our central guest for our second show, Je'mapelle Pablo; finally, our dear friend Val Bush, who frequently came over to play with us from Up In Your Grill, her sketch group with Corey Nealy, Jean-Michelle Gregory and Mike Daisey.

We created five shows, from scratch, in three years (perhaps third wavers can attest to the gargantuan nature of that accomplishment). Miami! simply established our presence, and in Pablo we started to explore the realm of running gags, while centering around several pop culture references that I insisted upon, but no one else got or appreciated. Our third show, The Duct Tape Experience, reversed that misfortune, as we payed tribute to a number of influences (Sesame Street among the most prominent), and started hitting a consistent quality. As a result, we started garnering attention and respect from our peers. That trend continued with A Hobo's Christmas, our holiday themed sketch show.

Have I mentioned that Joe was a prolific writer? Well, by this point in our history, DBP had become our producing company's sole concern, and even our low-budget productions needed money in order to operate. And so, through circumstances described here, the group came up with A Night of Shitty Theater; you know, in the spare time we had between productions.

The core group's last show, Gate 17 was the pinnacle of our achievements: a 90 minute long non-blackout show (meaning no break between sketches, one sketch led right into the next); it took place in 'real-time' inside an airport terminal and featured the sort of characters you'd find there: fast food workers, traveling salesmen, couples arriving, etc. Irreverent, absurdly mean and goofy as hell, the show ended with octogenarian terrorists blowing up the titular gate. The show performed to sold out houses in Seattle in the summer of 2001.

In the month of September 2001, we had travelled up to Vancouver BC to perform G17 at their Fringe Festival, confident we were about to take the place by storm. Our venue was a portable barnhouse, literally -- drafty as well as smelly; all shows scheduled within that temporary edifice did not get the audiences they were hoping for. Other circumstances led to the deflation of our confidence, not least of which was our decision to stay at a Gastown hostel that suffered a bedbug outbreak during our stay.

Our last performance was on Monday, September 10th. We performed to eight people, but for the first time during our Vancouver run, we had abandoned any pretenses at having ideal circumstances and just had fun with it. After celebrating that night, half of the troupe returned to Seattle to their day jobs, planning to come back North later in the week for the second half of the Festival's run.

No need to explain what happened on September 11th, 2001, nor how those events placed a pall on our suicide-bombing-octogenarian-terrorists ending. The event horrified us, and for most involved, it served to suck the joie de vivre out of Vancouver; DBP was already planning to mourn the loss of Joe, the man responsible for the majority of our material, who was planning on moving to New York City in order to be with his fiancee as she went to law school.

Put simply, we never recovered. Joe and I both tried to make a go of it without our creative partner, however. Joe went on to create DBP: NY, which had a few successful productions, including a run at the Upright Citizens Brigade's theater space.

In Seattle, I enlisted the help of Scotto Moore, a friend of Evan Mosher's. Together, Scotto and I created 'Thon!, a bleak post-apocalyptic catharsis, noted for its aggressive and angry humor. Scotto and I liked it anyway.

It wasn't the same, however. The spirit wasn't there. The remaining Seattle members either moved on to other projects or left Seattle altogether for school, families or careers. Meanwhile, in New York, marriage, law school, the need for a steady income, and a child helped to interrupt production, and, eventually, DBP: NY faded away...And that was that.
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This Sunday, the core DBP group, minus a couple of members, will perform together for the first time in 10 years. The show is nearly sold out, and it's going to feature some of our favorite sketches from the original shows. It will include some awkward sexual situations, a giant man-baby, commercials for questionable products, the beating of a UPS delivery man, a children's show called Fluffer, and much much more. If you're able to get tickets, you might wanna come check us out.

Sunday at 7:00p.m. // The Rendesvouz' Jewelbox Theater, 2322 2nd Ave // $10, tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets