BOM Blog

I walked into the dance room at Loyola Park Monday afternoon around two o’clock.  It was dark, silent and still.  Only a few monkeys were gathered patiently near the stage left step of the stage, early for their call time.  The calmness that surrounded me was bizarre, knowing that in just a few minutes the room would be filled monkeys buzzing around singing, dancing and trying on funny hats.  And in just a short time after that, excited children would be coming in, anticipating what they were about to see, which of course was THEIR stories!

Sure enough, my bizarre feeling of what was to come did indeed become a reality very quickly.  May I present to you the 2009 Loyola Park Winter Show!

Monkeys showed up with crazy awesome props.
Funny hats were found.
The children arrived.

Then the zombies!

The cast was talented, the stories were amazing, the characters were so detailed.

Sadly, we are saying goodbye to one of our fantastic monkey performers.  Hopefully, he will come back to us soon, but for now we hope he can find funny beards on his future adventures!

We’ll miss you John!

Great show all!  Can’t wait to see the LP stories in TWG and COA!

Only one new story this week. We bid a sad farewell to “A Cold Day” after several months (optimistically I like to think this bodes well for the weather) and welcome the delightful “How the Pitbull got its name”.

Never fear ardent fans in the front row, A Bad Day and Going to the Party are still in. See below for more on the awesomeness that is A Bad Day.

This is also the first week of a new promotion with Leona’s. I can’t get the logo to upload correctly (sometimes the internet is complicated), but if you bring in your program on the same day you see the show, you’ll get a free bruschetta. Delightful!

As always, full running order after the jump!

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Sometimes, in “That’s Weird, Grandma,” there’s a story.

Like all of the stories in the show, it is awesome and fun, and enjoyed by the performers and audiences alike.

But there’s something about it. Something that keeps it in the show week after week. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years.

If you’ve been to the show before, you know about our voting system: at the end of each performance, the audience gets to vote for 2 stories they loved, and 2 stories they loved slightly less than the others. These ballots get fed into the Grandma-Tron 3000™, and they influence whether certain stories get taken out of the show rotation, or live to see another week. There are many factors that go into selecting which stories leave and which stay, but audience vote is weighted pretty heavily. So when a certain story gets an overwhelming amount of votes week after week, the director has little choice but to leave it in.

If you’re a longtime fan of the show, you may remember a little story called Kung-Fu Guys. Going further back, you may remember a little ditty entitled The Dog Was Dead. Each of these stories enjoyed an extended stay in TWG of two years or more. (The Dog Was Dead is possibly our most popular story ever—it was in the show so long that even after I moved away to Oregon for 2 and a half years and came back, it was still in the show. It was also performed at the TWG 5-Year Anniversary Show, at Theater on the Lake in 2005 AND 2006, and in our 2007 show at the Wilmette Theater. It’s also on our CD—perhaps you would like a copy?)

So, okay, where am I going with this? People, we may have another one on our hands.

A Bad Day has been in the show since August, and it’s showing no signs of leaving any time soon.

Read more…

Hi Everybody!

Just a reminder to subscribe to our podcasts!  If you haven’t checked out our first one, I say, get to it!

Those of us who came to this year’s Monkey-o-kee got to hear it for the first time.  Oh, did you not come to Monkey-o-kee?  Don’t cry. It’s okay, there’s always next year. Listen, podcasts are on iTunes and our website. And this blog entry is all about Monkey-o-kee.  You’ll be up to speed in a jiff!

Monkey-o-kee is our yearly karaoke fundraiser, where we Monkeys convince our friends and relations to join us at a bar for an evening and sing some karaoke, spin a prize wheel full of magical prizes like BOM merchandise, gift cards, theater tickets and bean bags with the BOM logo (made by our very own Oona Kersey), among other delights and confections.  Also certain brave Monkeys volunteer to raise extra money and get sponsored to sing karaoke with a hilarious/ridiculous/brilliant concept.  All the money we make that night goes right back into our school programming, so it’s a lot of fun and it does a lot of good.  My favorite combination, personally.

This has always been one of my favorite events that we do as a whole company.  For one, it gets all of us Monkeys in a room together.  And all of our friends.  And if I’m really lucky, any or all of the following things could occur:
1. Monkeys dress up in hilarious wigs, costumes and false eyelashes.
2. A Monkey wears something on their head other than a wig or hat
3. People who don’t know anything about BOM and have just happened to come to the bar where we are having the event, witness us all in a room together and immediately want to know more about BOM.
4. People who don’t normally feel comfortable singing karaoke get up there and do it, because hey, we are all making fools of ourselves, so why not?
5. Someone wins something truly absurd on the prize wheel. Something they didn’t even know they DESPERATELY wanted, until they won it.
6. Someone’s sponsored monkey performance causes the karaoke jocket to drop his jaw in disbelief/awe.

Luckily for me, all my above wishes came true last Sunday.  Here’s a picture that proves wish #2:

Also, I got to sing “Midnight Train to Georgia” with this handsome fella.  Bonus for me.

So could you call Monkey-o-kee a night where all your wishes come true?  Well, mine did.  So.  There you have it.

Our first Podcast (Bomcast!?) is on our website!

It’s called, “The Haunted Piano” and was penned a couple years ago by one of our talented Loyola Park Students.
Laura Grey and I adapted the original performance during a monkey rehearsal a couple years ago.
It was difficult. We read it over and over and over.
One of us had to play the hilariously obsessed girlfriend and one of us the somewhat reserved “straight man” boyfriend.
WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO!?
Finally, Laura had a brilliant idea.
“You know what, I’ll just play the girlfriend, you be the boyfriend, and let’s get working on this thing because right now we’re just talking in circles.”
It was a major break-through and after that, the adaptation process was cream cheese.
For this version, Mike Tutaj created some incredible “audio environments” and generally beefed it up a lot from the original.
Also, Mary Winn penned and recorded the sweet header and footer with the kids talking.
Do enjoy.