By Brynne Ramella I dropped by last week’s 33rd & State meeting, which kicked off with a casual, “All right, peeps. Let’s get to it,” from co-president Charlie Mohl. Their meetings take place in Marquette University’s Humphrey Hall. The building houses a number of upperclassmen at Marquette and a shabby auditorium that has become a makeshift writers’ room for 33rd & State.
The meeting’s first order of business was discussing the comedy sketch group’s latest mission: Get Vander Blue to appear in a video. They started to release weekly comedy videos and, from what I understand, have written a part for the Marquette basketball guard – who, I learned through having class with him, is nicknamed Nook Nook. He is in an acting class with the group’s presidents. They said they have not yet had an opportunity to talk with Nook Nook, so I’ve told them that I refuse to watch any videos of theirs until they get him.
After discussing the Nook Nook sketch, the group moved on to other ideas. I am not going to discuss ideas I hear in their entirety, as to not spoil future videos. However, I will touch on some that I find funny or intriguing. For example, peaches. How will this group develop a sketch that revolves around peaches?
The rest of the meeting involved readings of each other’s sketches. After each reading, the group would critique the sketch and bounce new ideas around. The group-wide fascination with Nicolas Cage made its way into the discussion. After a lull in the conversation, things briefly tensed up when the group appeared to have run out of sketch ideas. They eased back up when the group talked about which male members of 33rd & State should play which princesses in a gender-bending Disney princess sketch.
Once ideas ran dry, the group decided a potential theme for the next meeting to help the writing process: Character development. I aim to roll with this theme in an interview for my next post.
From this point on, I am stepping out of the writers’ room to learn more and work closer with the process. To parallel my experience with the film “Almost Famous,” I will be the William Miller to 33rd & State’s Stillwater, and my heart hurts for those who don’t understand that reference.
Brynne Ramella, a journalism student at Marquette University, is a guest blogger for MilwaukeeComedy, documenting the start-up of Marquette’s sketch comedy troupe, 33rd & State. This is the second in her series of reports.