Sketchingham – Bellingham’s answer to the sketchfest circuit, hosted by Washington sketch institution Cody Rivers – is more than half way over now. This second year of the festival opened last weekend with return performances by 2006 attendees Bucket and Ten West. This weekend featured SketchFest mainstays Troop! (read last month’s interview here) and renowned fringe circuit act The Pajama Men.
A massive throng of SketchFest Seattle staff and crew (i.e, three of us) hopped in a car and made the trek up to the fest’s little sister to the north for the final performance of the second weekend so that we may impart to you, dear reader, what we saw.
As we entered the iDiOM theater, Cookie, a Bellingham bluegrass trio, was in full swing. Now, I enjoy bluegrass, but this choice of opening act really informed the cultural differences of the city. We’d shed the hipsters and regulars of the Seattle fringe scene for something more granola. A cursory glance of the audience revealed a cross-section of thrift store lurking students, a graying-around-the-edge crowd that probably donated said clothes to begin with, and the children of both. The population of a small liberal arts college town. An honest-to-goodness theater audience.
The evening’s comedy portion began with our old pals Troop! This was an unusual outing for the group, not merely because of the smaller city, but because it was the first time in several years the entire six-member roster was able to travel together. I don’t think I’d seen oft-truant member Brent Simons in the flesh since Chicago ’03.
Troop! trotted out a handful of mostly familiar classics like Twinkie the Kid, Soothsayer and Corpsicus, and while is was a treat to see old favorites received by an all-new audience, the evening clearly belonged to The Pajama Men.
Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez are a pair of Albuquerque transplants living in Chicago. That is, when they’re not on the road touring like they apparently have been for the past six months.
Sketchingham has built a reputation of featuring unusual or vanguard comedy, and The Pajama Men were certainly no exception. Their performance was spare. No props, no costumes (except their PJ’s, of course), no sound effects and no lighting transitions save a lone blackout.
In a genre dominated by the prop heavy lights-up/lights-down tradition (peppered liberally with sound cues and video clips), you might think this s
partan approach could be limiting, but it allowed them total command of their scenes. Without having to rely on a blackout or other cues, their sketches blended seamlessly, relying instead on the contrast of their characters to define who, what, where and when they were, be the changes slight (passengers aboard a jet transitioning to a flight attendant in the aisle transitioning to passengers in the next row) or total (a cowboy dying in his friend’s arms to a little girl cradling a baby).
“It’s all improv-generated,” said Shenoah. “We don’t write anything down. We just work it out and keep it in our heads.”
If Troop! and The Pajama Men were the meal, then SketchingJam was the sweet, buttery pastry at the end. Unique to Skegtchingham, Sketchingjam is an opportunity for that weekend’s acts to collaborate on an all-new show, writing, rehearsing and performing it in a period of twenty-four hours. Though it’s clearly an exercise more to the benefit of the performers, it’s still fun to watch groups (hosts Cody Rivers always participate) with vastly differing styles find ways to make each’s abilities complement the other’s.
The Troop!/Pajama Men/Cody Rivers incarnation of the jam included such oddities as an unconfident roller-derby, a creepy voyeur with preternatural powers of persuasion, a groan-filled trapse through Puntown (“a baaaad part of town!”), and a scene whwere the entire cast physically join to form a huge, flesh-eating monster.
Sketchingham and its jam are a fun, artsy-town addition to the circuit, but when hanging out with the performers afterward it’s clear that it’s more than merely another chance to tour and practice the craft. The intimate nature of this newest fest brings the acts closer together as individuals. Rather than the compatriots and sometimes rivals that groups regard one another as at other fests, they come away as good friends with people they may have only met a few short days before. And that’s what sets Sketchingham apart.
The closing weekend of Sketchingham features LA duo KARLA and Bellingham’s own Pesant Revolt.
Sketchingham
$10, 8:00 (live music at 7:00)
iDiOM Theater ~ 1418 Cornwall, Bellingham, WA
For tickets call Brown Paper Tickets at 800.838.3006 or click here
