Once, the Chainsawboys performed in Boston as a part of improv festival at a space call Improv Asylum. Our hosts were extremely friendly and kind so we were given the prime eight o’clock slot. It was a packed house and the audience was ready to laugh, just as we were ready make them do so.
It was a great show, we were all working together, dropping yes ands like candy on Halloween. Everything was going perfectly until the back half of the show.
To set this up, I need to share a detail that was previously hidden. The Improv Asylum sold beer. This is not unusual. The majority of venues where comedy is done serve alcohol. However, not all of them serve buckets of beer.
FYI, a bucket is partially filled with ice then five beers are added. It’s also practical. You don’t need to disrupt the show if you want another beer, and it’s less expensive than ordering five individual beers. You and a buddy can share it and enjoy the evening. What could be bad about this model of economic efficiency?
Perhaps the fact that one person can consume five beers in less than and hour.
As I said before, we are getting towards the end of the show, we’re doing our long form, myself and Matt Ostrom are vultures having a conversation when an audience member walks on to the stage and begins to comment on how sweaty Mike Bencivenga was. Which was rude. But then five beers will blunt your social graces.
He gently tries to guide her off but she’s determined to be part of the show. Fortunately she’s not a belligerent drunk, just uninhibited and once she wanders to the edge of the stage she’s whisked away by the stage crew.
We then come to the end of our show, which was always a musical piece called the gospel. I ask the audience, what have they learned tonight, what lesson was imparted.
It was “Don’t Jump on the stage.”
We could not have asked for better.
The Writings of Leo Byrne Jenicek 