I Survived Vaganza 2006

Vaganza VI was AWESOME! I had SUCH AN AMAZING TIME! We all put a lot of effort getting this thing to work and it was such a success in the end.

We charged 3$ (5$ for non-students) and had a bake sale with REALLY good deserts and snacks. Our good friends from Ottawa, the Carleton Improv Association came all the way down to give us a helping hand. In return, we gave them a couple of full hours for them to perform alone. Montreal's Without Annette also had a full hour doing their famous UNO long form show. After every hour, we got all the performers together for a group photo. Each photo was the reenactment of a different book. During the middle of the night, those that were still around, had the opportunity to see us all dressed up for our ANIMALS theme.

In the end, we ended up raising 300$ and because I work for the Gap Inc., the Gap Inc, will match what we raised and make it a total of 600$! All of which is going to the Juvenile diabetes Research Foundation.

Once Vaganza was over, I got a lift home by the Carleton guys since they were going my way, which I was grateful for sine I had visions of me passing out on the metro and riding the car back and forth for hours. Once at home I had passed out for a solid 2 hours, slept again a little bit later, went for dinner and finally called it a night at 11pm. This morning I woke up at 10am feeling great. I had asked for the day off work and probably could have worked after all but am glad I now have a day to relax and remember all the fun times I had the last couple of days.

Ona personal note, I don't know why but I find that whenever I am thrown in a situation where there is maximum fun, it is like being on a high, and when the fun is over, I feel a bit sad or lonely and it takes me a while to get back to normal (Is this normal?).

I've been with McGill improv for 3 years now and have really gotten close with everyone on the team. I have the best time when I hang out with those guys, such a good groups of people, and it saddens me that by next year we will all be split up and spread all over the place. Not only did this Vaganza mark 24 hours of improv, but it also was the last big event that all of us will have been together. It was a pleasure performing and hanging out with all of you!

For pictures of the night, click HERE!

24 hours is a LONG time and from being so tired I don't even remember everything that went on but here are some highlights of my Vaganza 2006 experience (in no particular order):

-I show up at 12pm to help setup and drop off my stuff. 10 minutes after opening the room with Andrew and Adrienne, a bunch of construction workers come in with all these tools and things trelling us they have to fix a window. Thankfully it was only for an hour that they would be making such repairs.

-Having heard from Andrew that the total costs for the event were cut down to only 70$!

-I show up just in time to perform for the 4pm hour and started performing well from the beginning.

-A lot of my friends had shown up including Norm, Caitling, Shing, Joe and Katherine, Nadine and Sophie!

-A few people I knew but didn't expect to come were there as well including Dave from chemistry and my brother Lorne!

-I learnt that my brother is just as crazy as I am. When he was asked to give suggestions for the game "Choose Your Own Adventure", his suggestion for "How to dispose of the Ewok" was to "Boil it in it's own mothers milk"...

-Carlton Improv showed up on time and didn't get lost! They also put on an excellent show at 7pm.



-Without Annette came and also put on a very funny show.



-For one round of 187 the object was Moose Heads and seeing my brother in the audience inspired me to say "187 Moose Heads walk into a Russian Bar and the Bartneder says "What, no Squirrel?". I think only my brother got that joke.

-For City Slogans, we got Chawanagen. After a few jokes, asked for another place and was given Chicoutimi... Also, City Slogans is now my favorite line up game.

-Everyone had brought really awesome props and we had used a lot of them. Most of them were weapons.

-During Ilya's hour, he decided to try really crazy stuff and made our performers do a rendition of Puppets where the puppet master couldn't move as well which basically resulted in an actor who couldn't move being moved around by someone else WHILE having someone on their back doing nothing.

-Ilya and I were doing a scene about a boy and his Bar Mitzvah making lots of Jewish jokes. Him and I were the only Jews around...

-For the book suggestions for the hourly photo, A Tale of Two cities was ALWAYS suggested.

-During the hour I hosted, I decided to try different games. While introducing the first game, Story Tell or Sing, Mariana got SUPER excited until she realized we were going to play Story Tell or SING and not Story Tell or DIE and looked completely disappointed.

-Joe was picked for Family Dinner and it was probably the BEST skit for that game that I have EVER seen.

-I gave Shing prize for participating in one of the games I picked. Only later on did I realize the prize was an electronic game that needed a TV to work. Shing has no TV...

-The celebrity that I had to guess who I was portraying in the manipulation game Celeb Cafe was Jim Morrison.

-By the middle of the night I finally realized why everyone was wearing jackets. The window to be fixed was in fact only removed and boarded up (badly) with wood, causing gusts of extremely cold air to enter the room slowly (Yeah it took me like 10 hours until I realized there was even wood in the room...).





-I got to play Dolf Lundren in a Party Quarks game

-It took an EXTREMELY long time to get Merav to say "Making out" while trying to guess that Andrew was a French teacher who like to make out. Ilya's reference to both "first base" and my saying "kissing him is like a party in my mouth and everyone is invited" didn't help...

-Arvinds costume for the Animal theme was pinning several sheep to his clothes.



-Both Andrew and I decided to wear an Animal from the Muppets T-shirt for the Animals theme...

-Noelle had to guess "Elated Slinky" was what Arvind wanted to buy in Shop Keeper. After my first attemp, which was coming on stage, saying I my buddy Ted and I were driving to L.A., purchasing a map and then screaming "We're going to L.A, TED!", didn't work, I came back on as a kid needing to purchase a My Little Pony doll because my friend Elle, ate ming. Arvind and I had to repeat "Elle, at it" like 10 times until she finally got it...

-Going down to Gerts for a beer with Carlton people.

-Having a conversation with a few girls about thier breasts.

-Constantly being bugged about my mom making sandwiches.

-Carlton having performed 2 shows. The first show (at 7pm) being packed with audience members and Improv members. The second show (at 1am) having the same exact people minus the audience memebers...

-Having paid money to eat bagels from Tim Hortons before realizing that in the morning we will be serving free bagels. I being the one who suggested free bagels in the first place...

-The last hour ended up being a giant line up game fest with 15 performers on stage!

-Giving away all the gifts last minute because we forgot to during the night...

-Hearing from the audience member who one the Old Navy gift certificate for 25$ (Neale) that he really needed new clothes and was really appreciated to have won that gift card.

-The fact that for some reason, the first and last picture I took at Vaganza involves Mariana looking dead on the floor...

-Hearing my mom tell me on Saturday once I was home at 1pm that she wanted to come down the night before and bring sandwiches for everyone! (But couldn't because she didn't have the car...)