Tag Archives: music

October 13, 2025 · 8:24 pm

The Practical Theatre Presents a 2025 Year-End Revue: Classic Comedy, Music & Cocktails

The Practical Theatre Company Presents its Annual Year-End Revue at Studio5 in Evanston, Shows December 26, 27, 28 and January 1, 2, 3

The Practical Theater, the Evanston-based sketch comedy group that launched the careers of “Saturday Night Live” veterans Julia Louis Dreyfus, Paul Barrosse, Brad Hall, and Gary Kroeger in the 1980’s, is still hard at work in the Chicago comedy vineyards. This holiday season, The PTC will be staging their latest comedy revue in their inimitable style at Studio5 for 6 shows only: Dec. 26, 27, 28 and January 1, 2, 3.

Their new revue, entitled “Quick! Before We’re Cancelled” satirizes a wild and volatile 2025 with razor-sharp sketch comedy ripped from today’s headlines, as well as a fun-filled, satiric look at various aspects of contemporary life, love, and the pursuit of happiness in an increasingly crazy world. Their new revue is infused with an improvisational spirit and backed by a stellar combo of talented musicians who support cast members Paul Barrosse, Victoria Zielinski, and Dana Olsen for a night of smart laughs — and a cocktail or two. (Did we mention there’s acres of free parking?) Tickets range from $40 to $55.

“Quick! Before We’re Cancelled” is a merry mix of sketches and original songs touching on everything from wacko conspiracy theories, the bittersweet romance of Don & Elon, artificial intelligence, Tarzan & Jane, the new Chicago-born Pope, ICE raiders, and a musical salute to the late, great Tom Lehrer.

Multi-instrumentalist Steve Rashid leads the Studio5 All-Stars, featuring guest keyboard virtuoso and PTC veteran Larry Schanker and the popular Chicago jazz vocalist Paul Marinaro, who will put his own soulful spin on some holiday classics while also serving as the show’s announcer.

“We’re all in need of some good laughs after this crazy, maddening year,” says PTC co-founder and Artistic Director Paul Barrosse. “Going through a year like this, we’ve got a lot to work with comedically. Reality itself feels like satire. It’s also great to have Paul Marinaro and Larry Schanker back onstage with us. They added so much last year. And Steve Rashid and the band make every revue we do as much a great jazz concert as a comedy show.”

The Studio5 All-Stars include the great Jim Cox on bass and passionate Robert Rashid on drums.

Alcoholic beverages are available for purchase at all shows.

The Practical Theatre Company was founded in 1979 while its founders were students at Northwestern University. Three years later, after producing a string of new plays and comedy revues in their 42-seat storefront theatre on Howard Street in Evanston, they joined with Second City owner Bernie Sahlins to open The Piper’s Alley Theatre (now The Second City E.T.C. space) — where the entire cast of their first comedy revue in that venue, “The Golden 50^th Anniversary Jubilee” was hired by “Saturday Night Live.”

In the years that followed, The PTC followed up with the long-running “Megafun” at the Piper’s Alley Theatre and their longest-running show, “Art, Ruth & Trudy” at the Briar Street and Vic Theatres — which teamed Barrosse and Zielinski for the first time. Four years later, Paul and Victoria were married.

After a two-decade hiatus from the stage while Barrosse and Zielinski produced television, and a family, in Los Angeles, The PTC was revived in 2010 when Vic and Paul joined with fellow Northwestern alum Steve Rashid to stage comedy revues in Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago. The trio then joined in 2015 with veteran PTC drummer Ronny Crawford and comedian Dana Olsen, a Northwestern pal, fellow Mee-Ow Show veteran, and screenwriter known for writing comedy films like “The Burbs,” “George of the Jungle,” and the current hit Nickelodeon series, “Henry Danger.”

EVENT DETAILS
Friday, Dec. 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, Dec. 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Jan. 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 2 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 3 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Studio5, 1934 Dempster St., Evanston, IL 60202
Info: http://studio5.dance/calendar

Tickets: $40 for theatre seating, $55 for cabaret table seating

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Filed under Art, Comedy, History, Improvisation, Music, Politics, rock & roll, Truth, Uncategorized

Tagged as art, books, cabaret, comedy, Evanston, improvisational comedy, music, Paul Barrosse, Steve Rashid, The Practical Theatre, The Vic & Paul Show, Victoria Zielinski

April 25, 2023 · 6:55 pm

Larry Schanker to Make Musical Magic at Studio5 in Evanston for The Practical Theatre Company’s Silent Film Night!

Larry Schanker, the pianist for every “Mee-Ow Show” I performed in at Northwestern University in the late 1970s — and The Practical Theatre Company’s first musical director — is back in Evanston on April 30th. Larry’s an even better improvisational musician than he was back in the day.

And folks, back then, he was the best.

For Silent Comedy Night, Larry harkens back to the time before films had their own soundtracks, as Maestro Schanker will play Studio5’s 1927 Steinway grand piano LIVE to accompany three silent shorts by the great silent film comedians, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

Larry Schanker has received multiple Jefferson Award nominations for a variety of Chicago theatrical productions, including A Christmas Carol at The Goodman Theatre. Studio5 audiences will remember his work accompanying Tom Mula at Studio5 in Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.

I’ll be joined by my fellow Practical Theatre ensemble members Dana Olsen and Victoria Zielinski as hosts for the evening. We’ll tell you some things about these three legendary silent films stars — and our brilliant friend Larry — that you may not know.

The music, and the fun, will be worth the trip to Evanston!

For tickets, go to: www.tickettailor.com/events/practicaltheatre

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Filed under Art, Beauty, Classic Film, Comedy, History, Improvisation, Music, Truth, Uncategorized

Tagged as Buster Keaton, cabaret, Charlie Chaplin, classic cinema, comedy, Dana Olsen, Harold Lloyd, improvisational comedy, Larry Schanker, music, silent film, The Practical Theatre, Victoria Zielinski

September 24, 2015 · 6:40 pm

The Vic & Paul & Dana Show

My wife Victoria and I have known Dana Olsen since our days at Northwestern University in the late 1970’s. Dana was a damned funny guy then – and he’s gotten even funnier over the years.

While Victoria and I worked on the stage and then in television, Dana focused on screenwriting. Among the many films he’s written are The Burbs, Memoirs of an Invisible Man and George of the Jungle.

Vic and I have remained close with Dana since graduation – and in the past few years we’ve been performing together again. The last time was when we joined Dana and other friends for Mr. Olsen’s New Year’s Rockin’ Neighborhood on New Year’s Eve 2013 at 27 Live in Evanston, Illinois – the college town just north of Chicago where we all first met in 1976.

For the past several months, we’ve been getting together with Dana whenever he’s in town – or we’re in Chicago – to brainstorm and improvise comedy sketches (which is just about our very favorite thing to do in this world). And, golly, the world’s been giving us some great subject matter this year!

Then, two great musical friends agreed to join the party: our longtime Practical Theatre Company musical director and Whiskey Lounge impresario, Steve Rashid — and drummer Rockin’ Ronny Crawford, who’s hit the skins for Lisa Loeb, Anna Nalick and The Rockme Foundation, among many others.

Thus comes “The Vic & Paul & Dana Show” — an improv sketch revue featuring music, comedy and a few cocktails. Baby Boomers by birth, we’re all wading chest-deep through middle age. But blessedly, our sharp taste for humor and irony – and a neat Manhattan — has not been dulled. Our show is a toast to grown up fun amid the craziness of contemporary life.

“The Vic & Paul & Dana Show” will play for just three nights – from Thursday, November 19 to Saturday, November 21 at the iO West Theatre in Hollywood, CA. All shows at 7:30.

Come out, enjoy a beverage or two — and share some well-earned laughs with us.

Here’s a gallery of shots from our photo session with Bradford Rogne. (He’s really good, folks.)

Photo by Bradford Rogne Photography

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Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation, Music, Truth

Tagged as cabaret, comedy, Dana Olsen, Hollywood, improvisational comedy, iO West Theatre, jazz, music, Northwestern University, Paul Barrosse, Rockin' Ronny Crawford, Steve Rashid, The Practical Theatre Company, Victoria Zielinski

September 8, 2015 · 9:45 am

Eva sings “A Sunday Kind of Love”…

If you haven’t been to Steve Rashid’s “Live at the Whiskey Lounge” series at 27 Live in Evanston (just north of Chicago) — then you’re missing the opportunity to enjoy fine, soulful jazz like this. Our daughter Eva sang there on August 13 with Steve and some of our most talented musical friends. This is another selection from what turned out to be a most entertaining evening. Dig it.

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Tagged as 27 Live, blues, Chicago, Don Stiernberg, Eva B Ross, Eva Barrosse, Evanston, jazz, Jim Cox, music, Steve Rashid, The Whiskey Lounge

August 28, 2015 · 6:53 pm

Eva B. Ross sings “Thou Swell”

Check out my jazz-singing daughter, backed by the most swinging jazz cats on the North Side of Chicago!

And, hey North Siders! If you aren’t regulars every Thursday night at 27 Live on Church Street in Evanston for impresario Steve Rashid’s “Live at The Whiskey Lounge” series — this is just a small hint of what you’re missing.

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Tagged as Eva B Ross, jazz, music, pop, Whiskey Lounge

February 9, 2013 · 12:14 am

It Was 49 Years Ago Today…

I was just a young, working class Cleveland boy — two months shy of my 6^th birthday — and what happened on this day, 49 years ago, at 8:00 pm ET on Sunday February 9, 1964 became an unforgettable moment in my life.

On that incredible, magical, epochal day, The Beatles – Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — made their first live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City. There were just three TV channels in those days – and most televisions in America had their rabbit ears tuned in to the Sunday night broadcast that marked the U.S. debut of the rock n’ roll band that would soon transform international pop culture.

Upon their arrival in New York and in the months to follow, I was besotted by The Beatles. My older brother Peter and I would hang out beneath our neighbor Dino Zaccardelli’s bedroom window on West 33^rd Street, listening to the glorious, transformative album that Dino’s mom had just bought for him: Meet the Beatles.

I vividly remember how Peter and I listened to that thrilling album over and over, playing passionately along on badminton rackets posing as guitars. Unfortunately, we rocked out while standing on his older brother’s car – and that got is in trouble. (We left a lot of jubilant, rocking footprints on his hood and fenders.)

At the time, I had no clue that Meet the Beatles was actually the second Beatles’ album released in the United States. Ten days before the release of Meet the Beatles, Chicago’s Vee-Jay Records released the Beatles’ first U.S. album, Introducing…The Beatles.

As far as my brother Peter, Dino and I were concerned, Meet the Beatles was where it all began – and The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS 49 years ago was our introduction to full blown Beatlemania.

From those indelible days in February 1964, my life was changed in ways I am still learning to appreciate. To have grown up during Beatlemania is a formative, fundamental blessing that subsequent generations cannot possibly understand or fully appreciate. (Because they take rock & roll for granted.)

My daughters learned to love The Beatles.

But I was grew up with The Beatles.

49 years ago – my brother Peter and I got lucky.

All us kids got lucky.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

YEAH!

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Tagged as 1964, Beatlemania, Ed Sullivan, George Harrison, John Lennon, Meet The Beatles, music, Paul McCartney, pop music, Ringo Starr, rock & roll, rock n' roll, The Beatles

September 27, 2010 · 8:02 pm

More Thrills & Glory…

THRILLS & GLORY: THE BRIEF, BLESSED HISTORY OF THE PRACTICAL THEATRE CO.

Part Three: A Tale of Two Spaces

To read the latest chapter in my personal history of The Practical Theatre Company, click here.

After you’ve read our ancient history, you can check out video clips of far more recent PTC-style comedy if you click here.

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Tagged as Arthur Cantor, Brad Hall, Bury St. Edmund, cabaret, Cabaret Metro, Chicago Reader, comedy, Del Close, Evanston, Frank Rich, Gary Kroeger, Goodman Theatre, Greg Mosher, improvisational comedy, Isabella Hoffman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, music, Northwestern, Off-Broadway, Paul Barrosse, Politics, Practical Theatre, Richard Christiansen, Richard Kind, Riffmaster & The Rockme Foundation, rock & roll, Rockme, Rod McLachlan, Ron Crawford, Ronny Crawford, Saturday Night Live, Second City, Sheldon Patinkin, Steve Rashid, Steven Rumbelow, Sydney Crawford, The Chicago Tribune, The Daves, Tom Virtue, Victoria Zielinski

September 18, 2010 · 7:07 pm

My YouTube Channel

It’s hard to believe that YouTube is barely 5 years old.

It should be obvious to anyone with access to electricity that since the debut of YouTube, popular culture has changed dramatically. Whether it’s a dancing cat, a woman getting hit in the face with a watermelon, an Indy band with a homemade music video, or a too-comfortable politician saying something off-color at a fundraising barbecue – YouTube can make the trivial, the talented, and the downright terrible alike nationally known within hours and days.

This revolutionary online video portal was the founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim – but it was Hurley who studied design at my mother’s alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim were computer science geeks at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, or as we use to call it in Chicago, Champaign-Urbana.

YouTube’s early headquarters was housed above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California and the first YouTube video was was uploaded on April 23, 2005. That first video, Me at the zoo, features founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. You can still find it on YouTube.

Me at the zoo has scored 3,597,873 views.

Now, even a dinosaur like me is aware of YouTube. In fact, as you’ve seen if you’ve been following this blog since “The Vic & Paul Show” ran in June, I’m gradually getting the hang of how to use YouTube to post video clips and embed video on this blog.

And now I’ve figured out how to create my own YouTube channel. It wasn’t hard. The technology was right at my fingertips. But since nobody uses technical manuals anymore, you’ve just got to stumble around until you figure this stuff out.

My YouTube channel is currently a place where “The Vic & Paul Show” clips live, plus other video treats that will accumulate over time.

You can access Paul’s Channel at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/58pab

But if you’re looking for videos of dancing cats, don’t look here. Our noble beast Caliban just isn’t the dancing type.

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Tagged as cabaret, improvisational comedy, music, Paul Barrosse, Paul's Channel, The Vic & Paul Show, upload, Victoria Zielinski, videos, YouTube

September 10, 2010 · 12:29 am

A Salute to Walter Cronkite

“And that’s the way it is.”

Those of us who are of a certain age remember the days when there were only three TV networks (and those two weird UHF channels) – and network news was the Big Deal every night. In those years, back when the network evening news was an important daily event, Walter Cronkite was the Big Man Behind the Anchor Desk.

Walter Cronkite, the anchorman of CBS Evening News, was the most trusted man in America. Seriously. He really was. And he deserved our trust. After all, it was Walter Cronkite who went to Vietnam and said, essentially, game over: we’re losing and we should get out. (Can you imagine Wolf Blitzer going out on that limb?)

So, what’s happened to TV news since the days of the legendary Walter Cronkite?

Here’s a musical reflection on the gradual ruin of television news from “The Vic & Paul Show”, written and performed by Paul Barrosse and Victoria Zielinski — with musical director Steve Rashid.

The show was directed by Shelly Goldstein and performed in June 2010 at Push Lounge in Woodland Hills, CA.

This is the final installment of clips from “The Vic & Paul Show” available for free on this blog and on YouTube. The entire show will be available very soon on DVD. If you’re interested in getting a copy of the DVD, let me know by e-mail or via comment to this blog entry.

I’ll send you a copy of the whole show for $5.00 – which should just about cover the cost. (It’s the cheapest, coolest, and funniest Christmas gift ever!) You can send me a check when you get the DVD.

And that’s the way it is…