Pictures and Words

Last Wednesday, I was in an improv show called “The Series”, presented by Edge Improv.

An old, old photo of me, wearing the coat I wore on stage.

There are two types of improvised theatre – short-form and long-form. Most of you are probably familiar with short-form, which is stuff like Whose Line is it Anyway? or Theatresports; lots of short games, with rules like “Everyone can only speak in questions”, or “Every time the audience laughs, you have to put a marshmallow in your mouth.”

I love short-form, but long-form is my real passion – in long-form improvisation, you construct a story over multiple scenes, you get a chance to really build a character and I think it’s a lot more fun. The stakes are higher, you’re putting all of the evening’s eggs in one basket, but if it works, it really rocks the house.

“The Series” was made up of three long-form shows, with short-form “advertisements” inbetween. I was in two of them – The Movie Show, a parody of the Australian movie review show by the same name, and Moore’s Law, a cyberpunk show. The third was That’s Amoré, a comedic “dating show”. At the end of the evening, the audience got to vote, and one show was “renewed” for another week, while the other two were “cancelled”.

That’s Amoré and The Movie Show were essentially a set of themed short-form games, but Moore’s Law was true long-form. Jason Christie, a local improvisor, came up with the idea, and asked if I wanted a role. I, with my passion for long-form, enthusiastically accepted; Jason played the main character, “Moore”, as well as directing the piece. I played “Choomba”, his best friend, the comic relief of the show. Brad Daniels, the man behind Edge, played “The Overman”, the antagonist. Other local improvisors Louise Callinan and Faheem Anwar respectively played “Discordia”, the love interest/femme fatale, and “Bolts”, the main rival.

The show went well; we won, and got renewed for another episode next week. I had a friend film the performance, and decided to subtitle it and display it to the internet at large. I also typed up a transcript, which can be found on my “scripts” page, under “theatre”.

Without further ado, here is “Moore’s Law”, episode 1: (running time: 15 minutes. Rated PG, because we say “fuck” about twice.)

We were given characters and relationships to other characters, and a paragraph or two about the world we lived in, but everything else in the show was completely made up on the spot. Improvised plot, improvised movements, every scene, every line, every action…even that fight scene! I know, it looks so pre-planned!

The second episode will be this Wednesday, at 7:30pm, with details available at Edge. Hope to see you there!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and there’s a pot of meat, gravy, tartar sauce, and a bit of wine sitting in my back yard.

My housemate Cannibal Kate, modelling the Pot of Rot.

Bit of housekeeping: sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend. I’m switching the updating schedule from midnight to midday, meaning that updates are the first thing I do in the day, instead of the last. Today is an obvious exception.

I’ve decided to call the “Pot of Rot” section of the project “StinkyPete 1.8″. This means that once again, I’m resetting the day count! We are now on Day 1, with Saturday being “Day 0″ and Sunday being “Day 0.5″.

From the comments: “Willomo”, also known as “MeatBoy”, also known as “my little brother”, informs us that:

Mould is a micro-organism, it is alive!

I was not aware of that. StinkyPete: educating you about things you didn’t even know you wanted to be educated about.

“Katydid” has a concern that I feel a lot of us share:

I’m disturbingly interested in the life-cycle of maggots. This disturbs me greatly. In fact I find the whole situation disturbing. Note the many, and varying uses of the verb ‘to disturb’ in this comment…

I’ve received a number of emails from people surprised at how interesting rotting meat can be.

One thing that had never really occurred to me before doing this experiment was that the cycle of a fly is comparable to a butterfly. Think about it! We always hear about caterpillars going off and turning into butterflies, and how beautiful it is, how it’s a miracle of nature that is…flies do the exact same thing! And I never hear flies being called “a miracle of nature”!

Flies are born as maggots, little wiggling grubs that I’m finding myself surprisingly attached to (they’re kinda cute) and end up as flies, who are interesting creatures that look nothing like maggots!

There are heaps of kid’s books about caterpillars turning into butterflies, but just because flies are hideous and maggots are really gross, they’re discriminated against! What kind of a message does that send to the children? Make a stand now, people!

“aphephobia”, over at the livejournal feed, in reply to Mark the entomologist’s answers:

Oh, wow: that was seriously awesome. I wonder if Mark is now reading your updates. (Mark seems very cool.)

I couldn’t tell you…Mark, are you reading this? If you’re reading this, nod twice. Or, more usefully, leave a comment. You have fans!

Also from aphephobia:

Oh, btw, my mother now knows about StinkyPete. She thinks it sounds revolting and does NOT understand my enthusiasm.

That’s great! More people should be recommending StinkyPete to their mothers. Send the site to everyone you know, people! Mothers, fathers, sisters, uncles, cats, ex-husbands, nurses, and piano tutors. Sure, most people will think it sounds revolting, but just as many will surely become enthusiastic about the project! StinkyPete: unexpectedly interesting.

Lastly, I’ll link you to this – Casu Marzu, a sheep milk cheese made using maggots. Since I started StinkyPete, I’ve had at least 6 people tell me about it, including two people that I’m related to.

The Pot of Rot, as it looked on Saturday, when first set up.

For those of you who missed Saturday’s update – I was getting bored with StinkyPete 1.5, nothing seemed to be happening, so I put everything from the Stinkycage into a pot, mixed it all up, and called it the Pot of Rot. I expect this to get a lot grosser than the StinkyCage ever did.

I didn’t get a chance to update properly yesterday, but I did manage to nip out and take a photo:

The Pot of Rot as it appeared yesterday, Sunday.

As you can see, the knives have moved slightly, and it looks like the maggots are exploring the rest of the pot.

Then, last night, there was a big storm, lots of wind, and when I woke up this morning, this is what I found:

Tomorrow, I'm considering stirring it all around a bit. Just for the fun of it.

I’m going to be honest; at this point, I can’t really think of any scientific merit to the StinkyPete project. If I notice anything vaguely scientific, sure, I’ll report on it, but until then it’s just an opportunity to get some really disgusting photos. With that in mind, I probably won’t be updating with graphs or numbers…just heaps and heaps of disgusting photos!

If anyone wants higher-resolution versions of these photos for whatever reason, please email me. I have heaps.

In the next few days, I’m going to start updating with the pre-prep for my February project, 28 Days, 28 Dollars. Exciting!

As always, leave questions on any topic in the comments. See you tomorrow!

Tomorrow: The stirring!