When I was Famous: Thoughts on Tantrum

Pardon me while I reminisce a moment.

I was looking at some old photos just now and I came across one from about five or 6 years ago. It's a photo of Tantrum, the professional improv troupe I was a part of for about a year, back in Indianapolis.

I joined Tantrum not through a formal audition, but because a guy named Brian had seen me perform in another group, Absolunacy, and liked what he saw. He asked me and my fellow Absolunatic John to join this troupe he was forming. Like John and me, Brian had also been a member of Absolunacy and he knew a thing or two about improvisation. Having graduated and lived in Indianapolis for a little while, he also knew a thing about the booming metropolis and improvisation Mecca known as Indianapolis.

John and I would drive from Muncie to Indy frequently for rehearsals, and the trek was pretty substantial at the time. Rehearsals were unpaid and often unproductive, but an awful lot of fun. They would often end in drunkenness and be followed by a day in the big city, (Brian's treat, since he had the job.)

At our very first troupe meeting (and for many of us, the very first time we would meet each other) we recorded our promotional video, which I still feel stands up as one of the best promotional videos ever made. We weren't yet comfortable being funny with the rest of the troupe in the room, but it was edited into about 5 minutes of pure hysterics! ("George C. Scott. Tomatahs.")

What a great group of people, too! Aside from Brian, John, and me there was our other co-founder Michael and his now wife Liesl (who was never quite sure whether she wanted to perform or not), Katie and Emily (all three girls were all from nearby Brownsburg and attended school at Indiana University together), and the often absent Big Brian.

It was an interesting group. Some of us really wanted to be there and performing, others would have rather written things, but when we performed together, it was magic. (I'll never forget a rehearsal in Brian's basement where I had to act out the event of "bug participating".)

In the year that we performed together, we really were quite successful. We performed a lot at a local open mic night on a stage about five feet wide at it's base. The club was largely populated with bad stand up comics who embraced our performances as vital to the comic scene (unlike in Chicago, where stand ups generally hate improvisers).

We also performed at a few colleges, some comedy clubs, a high school, and I think even in a public park. At one college we performed two shows. One of them, the later show, was our scheduled performance, but first we performed an impromptu routine as part of some International Student talent show or something. I remember we went on right after the students from India had a Indian fashion show. Very few people in the room spoke English so we knew going in that we'd have to perform more physical comedy. There mush have been a thousand people in the room and I don't think one of them left without tears of laughter welling in their eyes. It was so great that when we performed our scheduled show, it couldn't begin to compare. (It may have helped if we'd have known going in that the show was a joint venture between the Gay Student Union and the Anti-Alcohol Student Coalition.)

We'd go out to clubs or around town and we were treated like Kings (even the girls--none of us was treated like a Queen).

There was so much fun. There was money. There was a kind of fame. But mostly, there was hope. There was a hope among some of us that Tantrum would really take off and be for us our bread and butter. There was hope that we could do for Indianapolis what The Second City did for Chicago. There was hope that the fun would never end. But, obviously, there were problems.

At first, three girls were coming from Bloomington, two guys were coming from Muncie, and one guy was only occasionally there. Travel was a pain, but a necessary one. We dealt with it. There was also a lack of focus. Being such good friends (and many from way back), every rehearsal was also a chance to catch up with neighbors or recapture our "lost" youths. We made it through them, though, and we did get a lot done. I had proclaimed to the group that I'd stick with it for three years--if we made it, great, but if we were spinning our wheels, I'd cut ties--and I got similar commitments from the others. Just about three days later, the group split up.

I understand there is a "Tantrum" still in Indianapolis, or at least, there was. Some of the people are the same, but the dynamic has changed. I sit here as a singing cupcake decorator and I look back at these times and I say, "God, what am I doing?" How did I get here, I wonder? Chicago was the last place I wanted to move to where I'd be just another struggling improv artist. We're a dime a dozen out here. I was famous and on my way to being more famous. Now I'm a no-name on my way to being a never-was. A piece of plankton in a very large pond, bound to be tomorrow's fish poop.

What happens to fish poop, I wonder?