Last week my improv troupe had two performances in South County. During the Saturday performance at Barrington Stage, there was a game of Quotes* where I was playing a mad scientist**. For this reason, with no other prompting, I decided to threaten my enemy with a giant gorilla robot. Sadly, my invention was not perfected, and the robot stalled out and did not attack. A minute later in the scene, my partner picks up a quote and reads “Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape.” Needless to say, I was overjoyed to have proof that my evil gorilla robot was functioning after all.

Note to self: Never try to describe improv to people who weren’t there.

In other news, my column is about board games, my freestyle rapping is about the news, my friend’s new fantasy short story is about Odin’s ravens, my rhyming version of the Torah is about due for a shot at publication, and my bedtime is about now.

*Quotes is a game where we get our audience to write random lines of dialog on scraps of paper before the show. These papers are folded and not looked at. During the scene, actors will pull out random quotes from the audience, read them, and work them into the scene.

**Yes, I know, typecasting.