Kyle Kinane + Sean Patton

Hey New Orleans.  Last weekend we opened our comedy theater, The New Movement. What are we doing this weekend, you ask?
A shit ton.  We are doing a shit ton.

This is Sean

@The New Movement (1919 Burgundy)
Fri 3/9 and Sat 3/10 (9pm and 10:30pm)  

For those of you in NOLA hungry for comedy you’ve got nothing but the goods to choose from.

Our good friend Sean Patton is in town performing this weekend.  Having performed on Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, VH1, and a bunch of other stuff, the dude is a powerhouse in his own right.  Every few months he comes down to TNM and brings some badass stand ups with him for the show Sean Patton and Friends.  This weekend, he brings Kyle Kinane (Voice of Comedy Central, Conan, Comedy Central presents, Live at Gotham).  Joined by some great special guests, this show is a must see.

Off Off Broadzway

@The Shadowbox Theater (2400 St. Claude)
Fri 3/9 and Sat 3/10 (11pm)  

Our other friends, the members of Off Off Broadzway are also in town.  One of Chicago’s premier sketch groups, the broadz once again stagger down to New Orleans to present their gleefully inappropriate revue, Kinda Big and Really Easy (Part Doo).  We’ve seen these ladies multiple times and dig them pretty hard.  The show is a brash, balls-to-the-wall hour of song and dance served up as a mock burlesque show.  Trained at Second City, iO, and the Annoyance, these ladies are comic minds dressed up in that kind of uncomfortably sexy woman you always see on Frenchman who always asks you if you are a “hard boy.”   You should see it.

If you are outside of New Orleans, try catching TNM to on the road beginning this weekend

Stupid Time Machine

@Houston Harold Weekend 
Sun 3/11 (11pm)

Stupid Time Machine is traveling to Houston to perform as part of TNM Houston’s Harold Weekend.
Our theater in Houston has got a bunch of badass visiting improv teachers Matt Donnelly (NYC’s Executive Monkeys) Eric Muller (iO Chicago) Julia Morales (the PIT) for a weekend of Harold master classes and shows.  Stupid Time Machine will be performing at 9 on Sunday.

 

Grand Opening: March 3rd

Two years ago, the members of Stupid Time Machine teamed up with improvisers Chris Trew and Tami Nelson on an idea: let’s open a badass comedy theater and training center in New Orleans.   

A theater requires two things: a community and a physical location to house that community.  As we set about locating and raising money for a permanent space, we got to work building a community.  We spent two years teaching classes out of cafes and borrowed theater space, we did shows wherever we could – bars and empty screen-printing shops, we gathered  a family of badass fearless performers and students, and we even started two major comedy festivals in New Orleans.  And now, after all of that, we finally have a permanent home.

This weekend, join us in celebrating
THE GRAND OPENING
of
The New Movement NOLA
1919 Burgundy Street

Thu 3/1 – Press Preview
Fri 3/2 – Friends and Family
Sat 3/3 – Open to the Public   

For a schedule of Grand Opening festivities, click here

We are the cover story on the Gambit.  The article is about our improv theater and training center, The New Movement, and the things we are doing to turn New Orleans into the next great comedy city outside of the traditional three hubs of Chicago, NY, and LA.  You should read it.

If you are far away, you can read the full text of the article online here
If you are close, then you can grab a sexy paper copy on newsstands all over the city.

Study with Jet Eveleth

If you don’t know about Jet Eveleth, you should.

In short, she’s an improv titan out of Chicago.  She’s taught at Second City and iO, she performs with The Reckoning, and has done a ton of other notable awesome things including this pilot.

Right.  So this badass is coming down to New Orleans this weekend (Feb 3-4) to perform and teach workshops at our theater, The New Movement.  It all goes down on Saturday, Feb 4th

• 12:00pm – 2:00pm @ The New Movement: Playing Honest Improv Workshop
• 2:30pm – 4:30pm @ The New Movement: Physical Improv Workshop
• 10:30pm – 11:30pm @ The Shadwbox: Show featuring Jet and TNM all-stars

As a theater, we try to find moments when we can expose our students  to some of the brightest minds in improv from across the country.  This is one of those times.  Whether you’re a current student, an actor too busy to take regular classes, or just some stranger, you should get in on this.

More info here.

Review of our SF Sketchfest Show at the Dark Room

Bay Area music/comedy-philes Spinning Platters reviewed our set at the SF Sketchfest.  This is what they said on their fancy internet website:

“From the depths of the Louisiana Bayou, Stupid Time Machine surfaced in the bowels of the Dark Room. The New Orleans-based sketch troupe made complete use of space and time to produce a show of hilariously juvenile imagination. Sharp writing, pitch perfect performances, goofy, and unfiltered: Stupid Time Machine were ‘rimming’ with ambitious, crass, tongue-in-cheek humor. Every character, while appropriately idiotic, was thoroughly three-dimensional, gliding through taboos without a clue or conscious. The entire group impressed but CJ Hunt particularly shined, performing with guttural convention and passion that put many scenes on edge.” – OJ Patterson 1/25/12

For full text of the review click here.  The article also covers our new friends/talented sketch duo Charles.   It is surprisingly difficult to find people who write about comedy without reducing it to just a list of what happened in each sketch;  Spinning Platters nails it with their concise well-written coverage of the whole Sketchfest .  There.  Take that Spinning Platters; we just reviewed YOU!!

What a month.

While STM was off representing at two big sketch festivals, our theater, The New Movement, has been staging the epic Raising NOLA Comedy Awareness Campaign.  Performing 19 shows in 19 days in 19 venues across the city,  this public service campaign was waged to let the people of New Orleans know what a badass comedy city they live in.  Drawing on this momentum, The New Movement will have the grand opening of our new theater space at 1919 Burgundy on March 2nd.  Until then, you can still catch STM on Tuesdays at the Den.  And you can enjoy repeatedly watching these PSAs.

 

 

STM heads to San Francisco and Chicago Sketchest

Fresh off of performing and leading workshops at the Improv Wins conference in Austin, Stupid Time Machine is hitting the road once again to perform at two of the country’s best sketch comedy festivals.

This weekend, Stupid Time Machine is at Chicago Sketchfest.
We’re playing at stage 733 at the following times:
• Fri, Jan 12th – 8pm @ The Box
• Sat Jan 13th – 8pm @ The Box

Next weekend, we’re at San Francisco Sketchfest playing at
• Fri, Jan 20th, 10pm @ The Dark Room Theater
• Sat Jan 21st , 8:00pm @ The Dark Room Theater 

Here is STM’s latest video, Turning Points: The Horse.

 

If you are watching us and want to know more about what we do, check out our theater The New Movement at tnmcomedy.com.  With locations in New Orleans, Austin, and Houston we aim to transform the gulf coast into the next great comedy frontier outside of NY, Chicago, and LA.  Here’s a sample of  two badass upcoming TNM events:

• Megaphone Marathons (July)  – an open improv marathon held over three consecutive weekends in all three New Movement cities.
• The Megaphone Marathons Training Camp (July) – a one-week summer improv intensive with a rigorous focus on stage time.  Spending their days in classes and nights performing for paying audiences, training camp participants end the week with a festival performance at the Megaphone Marathons. Email TNMcjhunt@gmail.com for more info.

 

 

 

 

HELL YES FEST: New Orleans Comedy Week (11/9 – 11/12)

It’s here, folks.  Hell Yes Fest has touched down in New Orleans.

Beginning on Weds, Nov 9th, Hell Yes Fest will bring New Orleans four days of non-stop comedy including local talent and national fame from NYC, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Austin, Houston, The New Movement, The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and iO.   Held each year in Austin in April and New Orleans in November, Hell Yes Fest seeks out some of the nations most talented comedians, improvisers, and sketch groups, and brings them to our respective badass cities for four days of greatness.  The concept is simple: There is no call for submissions. There is no selection committee. There is only awesome comedy shows and parties. Hell Yes.
For more info on performers, visit: www.hellyesfest.com

You can catch Stupid Time Machine performing in Hell Yes Fest’s Thursday night improv mini-marathons.  8pm @ The Shadowbox Theater.

JUST PLANE FUN

 

With the holiday travel season approaching, many of us anxiously await those dreaded travel days filled with impossibly long airport lines, invasive pat downs, exorbitant airline fees, and so much else that has stolen the joy from the flying experience.  In an effort to brighten up the many hours wasted in transit, we bring you this edition of

When on airplane, here are some fun things you can do to make your fellow passengers…

1.) …Terrified

After the plane reaches a comfortable cruising altitude and the peanuts/pretzels have been handed out, stand up from your seat suddenly.  With a shriek, hold your backpack over your head.  While nervously fumbling with the zipper to open the bag, proclaim “attention infidels, prepare to die.”

• Variation:
  Continue the sentence, “prepare to die…of laughter.”  At this point, produce from your bag a pair of comically large novelty glasses. Put them on and stumble about the cabin, groping the air in front of you as if you cannot see well in these glasses.  The audience will quickly come to love this and may even begin chiming in “it’s the glasses; take off the glasses; they are too big for you.”  Also you won’t get arrested.

2.) …Uncomfortable   

After the plane has reached a comfortable cruising altitude and the cabin has grown incredibly quiet, pull your legs up to your chest so that you are bunched into the fetal position in your seat.  Turning away from the neighboring passengers in your row (preferably towards the window) announce in a soft quivering voice just loud enough be clearly audible in the silence of the cabin: “I’m going to cum.”  Then maintain 100% eye contact with anyone who turns to look at you.

• Variation:
  Add a hooded sweatshirt

3.) …Excited

After the plane has reached a comfortable cruising altitude and the passengers have enjoyed their complementary in-flight beverage service, stand up suddenly in the main aisle of the plane.  In one grand motion, throw into the air a handful of one-dollar-bills that you have taken from your wallet, and in your best game-show-announcer voice, declare, “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to money plane!!” (be sure to stretch out the vowel sound in the last word so it is more like “plaaaaaaaane”)  Then sit down.  While people may be confused about what is happening, they are guaranteed to be excited.  It is the confusion itself that will excite them the most.  “Am I going to get money on this plane?  Is the plane made of money?  Whatever it is, I love it!!”

• Variation:
  After throwing the money into the air and making your announcement, remain in the isle and begin to clap.
  Continue clapping until 70-85 percent of the other passengers are clapping.
  Then put on the glasses. 

Enjoy your flight.

Love,

Stupid Time Machine

AIRSEX Tue, July 12th (10pm – 1am) @ One Eyed Jack’s (615 Toulouse Street)

Dear STM/TNM Family,

This is a big week.  Our good friends Chris Trew and Tami Nelson have just moved back to New Orleans.  In addition to being our friends, they are badass improvisors and the genius brains who started The New Movement.   Having built TNM up into an improv juggernaut in Austin, they have returned to their home city to join us in building the comedy theater this city deserves.  It is ON in NOLA.  And, boy, have we got a packed week for you.

Airsex: Shhhh....its a secret

After the weekly Stupid Time Machine show at the Howling Wolf Den, head on over to One Eye’d Jacks for Airsex.
What is Airsex, you ask?  Well, it’s a lot like Air Guitar, but instead of rocking out with an imaginary guitar, you’re making sweet and/or filthy love with an imaginary sex partner. You choose a clip of music, you show up in whatever sort of wardrobe you like, and you come up on stage and show everyone how you do it. Or how you wish you could do it. Or how you once had it done to you, and oh my god was that a bad idea and while it’s embarrassing to show that act to a room of strangers, you know that you need to do it now in order to make sure that no one else falls down the same rabbit hole you got stuck inside. Or, you know, just do it however you want.  The night will be hosted by Chris Trew, and will feature a half-time act by New Orleans native and nationally touring comedian Sean Patton.

• Find out more about the rules here.
• See some video of airsex athletes here.

MEGAPHONE NIGHT
Wed, July 13th (7pm – 10pm)
@ The Shadowbox Theater  (2400 St. Claude Ave) 

Every month we host Megaphone Night – an opportunity to check out the classes, shows, and community at The New Movement.  It’s like a one night stand with improv that will leave you feeling wonderful the next morning.

7:00p: Improv Zero – Free
Our free intro-to-improv class. No experience or RSVP necessary – just show up and we’ll show you our style of improv!

8:00p: The Shootaround – Free
Our open-to-anyone improv show featuring performers from The New Movement and people who have never performed before. Seriously, just jump up and play with us!

9:30p: The Megaphone Show – $5 (or FREE if you participate in Improv Zero)
Our flagship event takes the monologues of a local celebrity and spins them into live comedy. Featuring members of Stupid Time Machine, Chris and Tami and more.

This month’s guest storyteller is Lauren Thom from Fleurty Girl!

For more info on The New Movement, visit http://nolaimprov.com/. We teach improv comedy classes and are building a full time comedy theater in NOLA.  We’re now registering summer  classes (Weds 7:00pm ) and (Sun 12:00pm).  To register or find out more, contact Tami Nelson at: tami@newmovementtheater.com or (504) 302 8264

CHRIS AND TAMI DEBUT IN NEW ORLEANS
Sat, July 16th (8:30 – 9:30)
@ The Shadowbox Theater (2400 Saint Claude Ave)

Chris and Tami are New Orleans natives who have spent the last 5 years touring the country, headlining comedy festivals and starting The New Movement in Austin, Tx. They are officially back to join the Movement already in progress in New Orleans.

This is their debut show as Nola residents. They are very excited and hope to see you there.

“A fiercely enjoyable brain warp of a time” – The Austin Chronicle

The show is $5 (free for TNM students)