It’s “Weird” and It’s Going to Get Weirder: A Q&A with the Practical Theatre Company

December 17, 2024

I got this text today:

Dear Comedians Defying Gravity,

Do you know what comedy is happening this weekend … wow, do I need it!

~Signed: This Year Was Too Much

Dear TYWTM,

Perfect timing! I just caught up with Victoria Zielinski, Paul Barrosse and Dana Olsen a/k/a The Practical Theatre Company. Their new show Weird premieres at Studio5 this Friday night for a limited three-night run. Tickets are nearly sold out, so get ‘em fast.

Weird is the antidote for 2024-itis. I have an inside scoop … well, a limited inside scoop because Victoria, Paul and Dana were not going to tell me all their secrets. For that, we all have to go to the show. (Did I mention there are only a few tickets left?)

The Practical Theatre Company is known for smart, literate comedy capable of cheerfully veering off into something silly but equally delightful at any given moment. Expect surprise, sophistication, catharsis, and ingenious comic commentary on this confusing (weird) year and generally, on life’s … well, weirdness.

The Practical Theatre Company (PTC) has a provenance like none other. It all began at Northwestern University. Paul and Dana met in 1975 performing together in the Mee-ow Show. Soon after, Paul officially founded the Practical Theatre Company with roommate Brad Hall. They brought in fellow students Gary Kroeger and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

The group quickly impressed Sheldon Patinkin who became a beloved mentor. When the PTC needed their next home, Second City’s Bernie Sahlins funded the conversion of the Paul Sills Story Theater at North and Wells into a cabaret  performance space just for them. The theater was designed by PTC member Louis DiCrescenzo, who had also designed the original PTC space at 703 Howard Street. Soon after the move, Saturday Night Live came calling, saw one PTC performance and hired all four founders.

Where was Dana? He was in Hollywood writing television shows for the legendary Garry Marshall, a job he landed the day after graduation. Dana would go on to critical acclaim for writing The Burbs starring Tom Hanks, George of the Jungle starring Brendan Fraser and for creating the series Henry Danger at Nickelodeon.

Victoria became an accomplished Shakespeare scholar and attorney, and re-immersed herself in PTC and Chicago theater comedy when she reconnected with Paul in 1985. And as Paul says, he got the girl – he and Victoria married in 1990.

In 2013, Paul, Victoria and Dana reunited and eventually established their series of annual holiday revues in Evanston. In 2022, Paul and Victoria made the move from L.A. to their beloved Evanston. The Practical Theatre found its home base at Studio5, a gorgeous Evanston theater space and dance studio owned by Emmy-Award winning musician Steve Rashid and his wife Béa. (Both are Northwestern alums. Béa and Victoria were college roommates!)

The new Practical Theatre now has a catalogue of over two-hundred sketches (Dana keeps the tally). For everyone in need of comic relief, Dana, Paul and Victoria will reveal their newest works in Weird: the 2024 Holiday Revue this Friday, December 20-Sunday, December 22. Joining them are Steve Rashid, jazz vocalist Paul Marinaro and keyboard whiz Larry Schanker. (I’ll add that Studio5 literally has acres of free parking since that’s an important point in Chicago in December.)

Victoria, Paul and Dana kindly zoomed with me in between rehearsals live from Victoria and Paul’s dining room.

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HUMOR IN CHALLENGING TIMES

Victoria: We each have our own unique approach to the creative process. Dana is calm, cool and collected, Paul is my psychotherapist and I … Well, the sky is falling. That’s how I work.

Paul: That’s okay. It all winds up just fine. We’ve been working on this show, what? Four or five months …

Dana: It started in earnest in late August. I actually wrote a couple of things last spring and just let them sit around on my desk for a while.

Victoria: We had a particularly challenging go of it because the whole Trump uncertainty made it difficult for us to know what was funny anymore. The show started really coming together quickly after the election.

Dana: A lot depended on what happened in November. Usually, we have pretty much stopped writing, are dusted off and ready to go by then. This year was a little different.

Paul: In the lead-up to the election, we had some premises that we knew would have to be tweaked. But the whole show isn’t political at all. We wrote a lot of evergreen, funny sketches based on silly premises. Some are based on events that happened during the year having nothing to do with Trump.

Victoria: Our opening sketch heads straight into a call-in sports-style radio show that’s political. We wanted to get that out of the way and express where we stand. It’s a sense of rage – the comic rage that one feels when one feels hopeless, looking for a paradigm to express it. So sports –

Paul: … was inescapable because of the whole idea of having a losing season. One day I was stuck in traffic in the Jane Byrne Interchange listening to sports radio. It was one caller after another venting and going off on Eberflus and the Bears. We thought that had fun possibilities.

Dana: Frankly though, at this point, the less air we give this guy [Trump], the better. That’s why we’re dispensing with it up top. I am not going to be doing Trump this year, I can tell you that. That was a welcome development.

Victoria: It was there in some early drafts of the show and then we just all decided no. We want to play, we want it to be sexy, funny and smart and have fun.

Dana: People are exhausted. I can’t watch MSNBC anymore. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Paul: We’re all watching TCM and classic movies. We knew we wanted to lighten things up, so there’s a lot more music this year. We’ve always had musical elements, but we were delighted to get the great Paul Marinaro to come in as our show announcer and to play a couple of songs of his own, and also join us for a couple of musical numbers. We brought in Larry Schanker who was our original music director who Dana and I had been working with since 1978 [at Northwestern’s Mee-Ow Show].

Victoria: That’s about a half century! Teme, I want you to look carefully into your screen, and there in the background, that handsome gentleman  …

[Paul Marinaro waves from the living room.]

Teme: Oh, hi!

Paul: He lives with us now.

Victoria: He’s our new son.

Paul: Yes. He’s very good about cleaning up his room and it’s nice to have someone else to send out on errands.

Victoria: Very nice boy. One big happy family.

Dana: Larry moves in next week.

BREAKING NEWS!

Paul: We are breaking some news with this show. We are going to perform the premiere of a lost Stephen Sondheim musical.

Teme: Wow! Can you tell me more about it?

Victoria: We “can.” He [indicating Paul] won’t let me talk about it. All I’ll say is that it has been lost for 17 years.

Paul: It’s finally emerging, so it’s going to be very exciting.

Victoria: Steve played his composition for us and it absolutely responds in a beautifully powerful musical way to that numb resign and sense that we want to take a hibernation from politics.

Teme: It sounds like you’re observing what’s happening with all of us and reflecting it back in a way that makes us laugh and is therapeutic all at the same time.

Paul: Absolutely. “Therapeutic” is a good word because we’re throwing a party. We want to have a good time. We know the audience wants to have a good time.

Dana: That’s what this whole thing derives from. We had a New Year’s party in 2013, and then that became a holiday tradition.

Victoria: We are aching for an audience. We’ve been doing our lines around the table. We’ve got fourteen drafts of some sketches.  Here’s the running order. [Waves paper too fast for me to read it.]

Dana: When we start the [writing] process, the first thing we do is throw some stuff on the table that we’re familiar with that we’ve done before because we’re like, “Oh, my God, we’re not going to have enough! Do we have time to write a new show?” Then we start to develop new material and then new material starts replacing the old material, and the next thing you know, now we have a bounty of new material, some of which may end up cut because we don’t have room.

Victoria: We know that people really want to laugh. They want a smart laugh. And a silly laugh. There’s a lot of really silly.

Paul: The vast majority of people are coming in groups of four, in groups of six, and sometimes groups of eight, so they’re anticipating a party and we intend to deliver.

Teme: So how much can you tell me?

Paul: We’re dealing with what’s happening to sports and the ridiculous attention on bizarre stats.

Dana: We’re doing a musical tribute to Elon Musk, everybody’s favorite billionaire.

Victoria: We’re experimenting what it must be like to have zero gravity sex if you’re stranded in space.

Paul: It’s something I know a lot of people are thinking about because there’s that couple that’s been stranded in space now for the longest time.

Dana: We have a tribute to one of our favorite weird adult Westerns from the fifties that Victoria gets to sing a song in.

Victoria: I’m Joan Crawford.

Paul: It’s nice that we know our audience will actually understand who Joan Crawford is.

Victoria: We also take a clown into custody and put him on trial. We started from the premise of cancel culture and what if clowns were outlawed? We ended up not going in that direction, but we wound up with the clown and a different spin.

Dana: We also have a sketch called “Metrosexual Vikings.” That’s all I’ll say about that.

Victoria: That’s probably as much as you need to know for now.

Teme: Of all the characters you’re playing, which feel closest to your heart?

Dana: There’s one, but I can’t say what it is without giving it away.

Paul: That’s true.

Victoria: I think I know. He has an accent

Dana: Yes.

Victoria: Teme, what will you do? You’re going to write, “They’ve got a bunch of strange things going on!”

WORDS (AND LAUGHS) TO THE WISE

Teme: I read that in addition to funny and original sketches, this year’s show includes some “acquired wisdom.”  

Dana: Last year’s show ended with a Charlie Brown sketch which was a little more pointedly sincere and-

Paul: … optimistic.

Victoria: It was almost patriotic. There was the hope that this year would be a continuation of something good. Well, now that’s out the window.

Dana: In retrospect, it was a little naïve.

Victoria: The overall wisdom of the show is that things now are weird and may get weirder! We need to be funny and to stay together and drink to make it through. It’ll be okay, but let’s be together and laugh. What else can we do?  

Paul: Right? It’s part of the reason we wanted to have more music. These public gatherings are important, especially now. People will gain some human connection. That’s what the theater’s always been about. The first thing the Greeks would do when they set up a town was establish where the theater was going to be and everything revolved around that.

Victoria: It was the only form of group communication. The idea still stands. This show is for everyone.  I’m just trying to think what else. Oh, should we tell her about the fitted sheet?

Dana: If you want.

Paul: We reveal the mystery of how to fold a fitted sheet.

Teme: Oh, my God. Really? I need that so badly.

Victoria: Thank you! I said let’s teach people how to do something.

Dana: It’s a two-person operation, Teme.

Teme: Exactly what I thought!

Dana: Can’t really do it by yourself –

Victoria: … but it can be done.

Dana: I can now do it in 35 seconds.

Victoria: It didn’t happen overnight, Teme. Don’t put pressure on yourself.

Teme: I’ve tried for decades. I still don’t know how.

Victoria: We didn’t either. We went online and I found a mathematician who explained it.

Dana: These guys [indicating Paul and Victoria] were like, “I don’t know if this is going to be funny.” I said, “Oh, no, people are going to love this.”

Victoria: It’s called the “Fitted Sheet Pas de Deux.”

Teme: I love it. You have something for every aspect of life. You make life better whether we’re talking about politics, clowns, cancel culture, Shakespeare, or why our linen closet is a disaster. No matter what it is, you have a way to address it. Thank you!

PTC and SNL

Teme: I was listening to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast Wiser Than Me. Her guest was Catherine O’Hara and Julia began by talking about the Practical Theatre Company, including your time at Saturday Night Live. How did the Practical Theatre ethos and SNL work well together and where did you diverge?

Dana: How much time do you have?

Paul: I saw the Mee-Ow Show before I even realized that Saturday Night Live was on the air. It wasn’t even called Saturday Night Live yet, it was just called Saturday Night. By the time that we were doing the Practical Theatre Company, we were watching a little bit of late-night TV, but we were working late, not paying attention to television.

Victoria: It sounds weird, but it’s true.

Dana: Right. We were undergrads during SNL’s peak early years.

Paul: That was a period where I didn’t watch much television at all. I actually was working on SNL and didn’t know that much about the history of it. There were a couple years when Lorne Michaels left and Jean Doumanian came in. They had the Charlie Rocket incident when he said the F-bomb on the air. In the couple years before we got hired, people were asking, “Is it going to survive?” When we came on, SNL was being revived, and a young Eddie Murphy was just starting to really break out, and they were putting a new head on Joe Piscopo every day of some different character.

We were really young. I was 24. Julia was just 21. Brad [Hall] was my age. Gary [Kroeger] was a year older than us.

Victoria: It was a big change to go from being in charge of your own theater company and being able to do whatever you want, including the musical component and the physical component, and then to come to New York and –

Paul: …  to write sketches and have to give them to the head writers who are your first gatekeepers. You get their notes, then it goes up next to the executive producers, and they’re the next line of gatekeepers. As the Practical Theatre, if we thought it was funny, we went on stage and did it. Sheldon Patinkin gave us guidance. He would help us focus and edit to get to the gist. He would always say, “What’s your target? What are you trying to say? What are you building towards?”, but he never said, “That’s unacceptable. That’s not funny. You can’t do that.”

Dana: Once or twice he did.

Paul: With Sheldon, we actually a couple times would come up with something that was absolutely horribly offensive and perform it for him just to see him get that wry smile on his face and say, “No, no, you’re not doing that.”

Victoria: Some night we’ll all do shots and we’ll reveal that subject matter.

Dana: We always made an effort to cross the line and offend somebody at least once in the show. That ethos went on –

Victoria: … to take something utterly and completely sad and tragic and turn it into comedy. But we’re much more polite now. Well, not much more.

Paul: There’s definitely some edge.  And, well, there are some things that we don’t do anymore. In the days of [acclaimed Practical Theatre production] Art, Ruth & Trudy, we would come out doing monkey rolls across the stage and we were flying drunks. We don’t encounter the floor quite as much as we used to.

Victoria: We literally had a sketch called “Flying Drunks.” We were drunk and we would do all these daring Gene Kelly moves, so there were a lot of near misses. My body was completely black and blue all over. The closest we get to it now is zero gravity sex.

Dana: Well, I fall down dead.

Paul: You do a lot of dancing and then you fall down dead.

Dana: I dance, I fall down dead, and I’m already worried about ruining my pants.

Teme: What were some of the founding principles that you took to SNL and employ today?

Paul: If it’s funny to us, we’ll do it.

Dana: The litmus test is whatever makes us laugh. We can tell what doesn’t land when we’re rehearsing.  Sometimes we fight tooth and nail over it. But nobody ever has any problem cutting something that’s not making us laugh. It’s never ego. It’s not who has what lines. Is it funny or not?

Paul: Over the years, we’ve gotten better about editing and tightening. The nice thing about that is you can get more material in the show because you’re spending less time beating one premise.

Victoria: What is that little button that Sheldon used to hand out?

Paul: Oh, it said, “Better to be an asshole than chicken shit” –

Victoria: … which means, have the courage to go out there and give it up and –

Dana: … put yourself out there –

Paul: … and be bold.

Victoria: There are several moments – I would say more than several – more like a hundred moments like that in this show.

Dana: I’ve already warned my children about one moment in the show.

LOVE. JOY. CELEBRATION.

Teme: What will the audience experience this weekend at Weird?

Victoria: Daring to have love and joy in a turbulent, weird world.

Paul: Love, and it’s going to be a cathartic, fun party.

Dana: And there’s a specialty cocktail.

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The Practical Theatre Company’s Weird: The 2024 Holiday Revue is December 20, 21 and 22 at 8:00 p.m. at Studio5, 1934 Dempster Street, Evanston. LIMITED TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

 Read about the Practical Theatre’s history at PAB58.com.