Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Slippery Levels & The Man Who Was Martin.

Kelly Leonard: waa waaa waa waa waa waa...no sight of moving up...waa waa waa waa waa waa...too many characters...waaa waa waaa waa...won't be using you....waa waa waa waa waa waa?

It's amazing how getting fired from Second City, sounded a lot like getting hired.

I told him it was okay. I was cool and I had a great time and I worked there. I had the paystubs and the awesome Second City Duffle bag to prove it.

My time at Second City was pretty un-eventful. I became an understudy in one of the touring companies. I was put into the last Second City Children's Show; went to the rehearsals and sat on the bench like the new understudies did to watch the shows. The people who got hired were Myself, Martin Garcia and Cesar Jamie.

At the Christmas Party, a month into working there without doing one single show? I was given a Christmas Bonus.

I was liking this place...a lot.

I was also starting my level five classes at Second City. I was still taking my classes and working there. In my mind I figured that I was not going to bail out on my level five class.

I wanted to do the entire thing all the way to the end.

My level five class was not happy. Not happy at all. And it was horribly apparent. I was treated differently. Folks stopped talking to me. It was pretty hurtful, and I didn't know what to do. One woman was especially pissed as hell at me. She treated me like shit every chance she could get.

She was a hardcore lesbian. Great. Is there lesbian dancing after your snark, too?

 We were then considered the promising level five, and that all changed pretty quick. We had teachers in our level five come and go for various reasons, so that did not help matters much.

The group started having writing sessions. Writing sessions, I had no idea about until I would come to rehearsal at Second City and see new material that I wasn't even in.

I was barely in the show.

Our then current level five teacher and our musical director noticed this. That was Jeff Richmond (The Husband of Tina Fey), and Stephen Colbert was our teacher. 

Stephen pulled me aside after class and asked me what was up with everyone and me. I said I didn't know what I did to make people so pissed at me. I then (not even thinking) said I don't know what do, between this and rehearsals for touring...

Colbert smiled and said You got hired? I said yes. He said It could be that, you know.

I didn't really care what it was. I wasn't going to leave my class because I got into Second City, and I certainly wasn't going to be written out of my class show because I got hired into Second City.

He asked me if I had any material. I said I had a ton of it from Oui Be Negroes. He said: Why don't you bring that in and we can work on it together with Jeff.

It was possibly the sweetest thing in the world. I brought in material and Richmond and Colbert helped me shine it up.

I wrote a song that pretty much summed up everything I was feeling about that show to sing. It was called "This Too Shall Pass." It went on a historical musical skeed of rotten shit in History, saying at the end that all the shit that was happening current day? That it too, shall pass.

It was really a big masked And the bullshit of me having to write my own solo material for an ensemble show, shall pass too.

I gave the lyrics to Jeff Richmond. He took one look at the words and there was this bouncy song to offset the evil lyrics in less than three minutes. It was the song in my head. That guy is brilliant.