Go to http://www.studio5.dance to procure your tickets to the funniest year-end party of this malevolent, maddening year. We’ll be having great fun for 5 nights in Evanston — and we hope you’ll join us! The cast is Covid-free, socially-distanced — and ready to entertain as if they wanted to erase all the bulls*it of the past 20-something months! (And they certainly do!)
See you all at Studio5. It’s going to be an event to remember.
Filed under Art, Beauty, Comedy, Improvisation, Music, Politics, rock & roll, Truth
Opening night is just 32 days away. Tickets on sale now!
Those wacky veteran vaudevillians, Morty & Mitzi, will be joining their fellow performers from 1927 for the next three Fridays, 4/16, 4/23, 4/30, before our online interactive virtual playground “Into the Mist” takes a pause.
That doesn’t mean the end of “Into the Mist”. After this pause, our brilliant, inventive friends at Studio5 in Evanston, Illinois will work out a new chapter of this bold new entertainment vehicle. After all, the show has garnered a lot of great press and audiences have responded. Check out this article that just came out on the home page of Downbeat Magazine — the premiere national jazz magazine since 1934!
So, you’ve got three last chances to see what the buzz has been all about. Tickets for all three shows are now available on the intothemist.net site.
Group sales incentives are now available, so if you or someone you know is part of a group of any kind (families, friends, coworkers) they'll get a 20% discount if they purchase 10 or more tickets. Anyone interested in a group ticket purchase of 10 or more should email Lauren at info@intothemist.net.
Get yourself “Into the Mist”. Morty & Mitzi will be waiting for you!
Filed under Art, Beauty, Comedy, History, Improvisation
This Friday, March 26th, my wife Victoria and I will join the cast of “Into The Mist” as the husband and wife vaudeville duo, Morty & Mitzi. For the past few months, we’ve been playing the roles of Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway — but that was a pre-recorded performance. Morty & Mitzi will be serving up the jokes LIVE.
Drop by our dressing room this Friday if you’re in need of a few good laughs.
If you haven’t checked out “Into The Mist”, don’t miss it. My wife Victoria and me performed in a variety of ways over the year — but this is truly the most unique venue we’ve every played. It’s like find your way through an old hotel to experience a door-to-door, interactive variety show. Actually, it’s hard to describe. Go “Into the Mist” yourself and have fun back in 1927!
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My wife and comedic partner Victoria Zielinski will be playing Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway among a wonderful cast of characters inhabiting a hotel in 1927 as part of an immersive virtual experience called “Into the Mist”. What exactly is “Into the Mist”?
I’ll just let Steve Rashid explain…
Dear Friends,
A new year. A new day. A new hope. May 2021 bring us a measure of calm, peace and health we so desperately need.
As you know, our aim at Studio5 is to help build community through the performing arts. So I had an idea for a new project back in October, and the concept arrived fairly fully formed. I imagined an entire online world that would place a musical performance in a meaningful and entertaining context. Like time travel, it would be a virtual portal that would give the music an added, dreamy resonance.
I came up with an initial design, talked to a few people to gauge interest in being involved as performers, and got to work. Web designer, Lauren Biolsi, came aboard, and my sons, Robert and Daniel joined to co-produce with me. Three months later, here we are, with a live, immersive, interactive, 1920s jazz-themed event, featuring a diverse cast of over 20 musicians and actors spread literally from coast to coast.
Opening Friday, January 29th, we invite you to step with us … Into the Mist.
Music is a reflection of a time and a culture. That was never more true than in the Jazz Age: America in the 1920s. How exciting would it be to travel back to 1927 and hear a live band? How much more exciting would it be, if, before they started playing you had the opportunity to wander freely through the world of that raucous decade? What if you could choose to hang out in a speakeasy, attend a rent party, play blackjack against a shady dealer, watch some fancy footwork in a dance hall, converse with literary figures of the day, glimpse a fashion show, go to the cinema … and then gather with your friends in a club to hear a hot band? Sound like fun? That is the world that awaits you, starting January 29, 2021 at Studio5 online. Step with us … Into the Mist.
When I first wrote the history of The Practical Theatre for this blog, I finished by saying, “The Practical Theatre in Chicago in the 1980’s — that was Brigadoon: a magical place that existed for a brief time and vanished. And I got the girl.”
That was true. I did get the girl. And because I emerged from that life-changing experience with Victoria Zielinski as my wife and collaborator, the Practical Theatre was ultimately due for a renaissance.
Alas, the PTC revival would take more than two decades.
The PTC had to wait as Vic and I raised our three wonderful daughters: Maura, Emilia and Eva. But by 2010, the year of our 20th wedding anniversary, with our girls old enough to spare their parents for a few hours a day — Vic and I began to consider whether we were still comedians who had something to say.
We decided it was time to bring the Practical Theatre back. Thus was born “The Vic & Paul Show.”
Inspired by the classic work of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Vic and I began improvising extended comic scenes in our kitchen, including…
There were times when our improvisations were so lively, so passionate, and so LOUD – that our girls would rush downstairs to see if we were okay. Were we really fighting? Arguing? Drunk?
They’d never seen us performing comedy sketches.
We polished our routines, edited our scripts, and wrote some songs. A Practical Theatre revue had to include music. That meant involving our long-time music director, Steve Rashid. We booked a series of shows in a tiny local bar called Push Lounge in Woodland Hills, California.
That leap of faith launched a tour that took “The Vic & Paul Show” to Chicago’s Prop Theatre and Mayne Stage in Rogers Park, to Cleveland’s 14thStreet Theatre — and iO West in Hollywood.
After that, we renewed a collaboration with our fellow Northwestern graduate and Mee-Ow Show alum, Dana Olsen, starting with Mr. Olsen’s Neighborhood at The Wilmette Theatre in 2012 — followed by “Mr. Olsen’s New Year’s Rockin’ Neighborhood” at 27 Live in 2013.
Then, Vic and Dana and I spent a solid year writing new material for “The Vic & Paul & Dana Show.” We were delighted that Steve Rashid and Rockin’ Ronny Crawford joined us for a Hollywood run at iO West in November 2015.
That show in LA revived a PTC comedy tradition that launched North Shore runs of “Mr. Olsen’s Holiday Party” in 2016, “Mr. Olsen’s Champagne Celebration” the following year and “PTC Radio Theatre On The Air” in 2018 – all staged at Bea and Steve Rashid’s fabulous Studio5 theatre in Evanston.
The Practical Theatre is alive and well at Studio5.
The PTC’s “Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun!” is the latest comedic chapter in a very funny history.
“Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun!” is a compendium of The Practical Theatre’s funniest sketches, dating from our “Mee-Ow Show” days at Northwestern University to “Bag O’ Fun” – our first improvisational comedy revue staged in the summer of 1980 at Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center – through “The Vic & Paul & Dana Show”.
Plus a few new bits written right up to opening night.
Brigadoon is back.
See you at Studio5!
Filed under Art, Comedy, History, Improvisation, Music, Politics, Uncategorized
If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet for The Practical Theatre Company’s Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun at Studio5 in Evanston, Illinois — now’s the time!
Tickets are going fast — so don’t delay.
It’s going to be the best party of the year. After an arduous political and social slog like we’ve all experienced in the past 12 months — we can all use a big, blow-out party with great music, free-spirited laughs, and a great big, bag o’ fun!
Get your tickets now at: http://www.studio5dance/calendar
Filed under Art, Comedy, History, Improvisation, Music, Politics, Truth, Uncategorized
1980 L to R: Jane Muller, Herb Metzler, John Goodrich, Dave Silberger, Paul Barrosse & Brad Hall
In the summer of 1980, The Practical Theatre opened it’s first improvisational comedy revue — “Bag O’ Fun”— at The Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston.
Now, four decades later, The PTC returns to Evanston for a concert celebration of classic Practical comedy – featuring grown-up laughs, great live music – anda well-stocked bar!
Tickets available at: Studio5 website. Or via Direct Ticket link,
Playing their third holiday run at Studio5 in three years, writer-performers Victoria Zielinski, Paul Barrosse and Dana Olsen anchor a “Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun”– with music by jazz maestro Steve Rashid and his Studio5 All-Stars.
Saturday Night Live veteran Gary Kroeger and Evanston’s own Rockin’ Ronny Crawford set the beat for a bright young supporting cast: recording artist Eva B. Ross, Giggle Break’s Daniel Rashid, VEEP writer and stand-up comic Emilia Barrosse — and newcomer Reilly Anspaugh!
“Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun” combines classic Practical Theatre comedy sketches, newsworthy satire, and music better than you can imagine — with Don Stiernberg on every stringed instrument known to man, and Rockin’ Ronny Crawford on all things percussion.
Come and party before the show, sipping cocktails and anticipating the fun in the warmth and comfort of the North Shore’s most intimate performance venue — located at Dempster & Dodge in Evanston.Shows run December 28-31.
There’s a cash bar for all shows. Doors open for cocktails at 7:30. Showtime is 8:00. Except, that is, for New Year’s. The New Year’s Eve show starts at 9:00.
It’s gonna be a “Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun”.
Filed under Art, Comedy, Improvisation, Music, Politics, rock & roll, Uncategorized
Click CD photo for music & info!
Paul's Voyage of Discovery & Etc. 