'And Then What Happens?' (Part V)

Editor's note: Click here to catch up on our series.

The lightning-fast warm-up started before the students were finished arriving.

“I want everybody up there, on their own, to speed through your story exactly how you're going to do it when you perform your piece,” Marc Unger directed the students as they walked in the door for the final class of the five-week seminar, "The Art of Comedic Storytelling," at .

He pointed to the stage while they stood, a bit blindsided, still holding purses and car keys.

“We'll start when you guys are all done,” Unger said. 

Bruce Clara mumbled his way through a low-key rendition of his piece, onstage, looking like he was talking to himself. Danielle Baird hopped up next, pacing and speaking under her breath, while Vera Gabriel stood in the audience and presented her piece, silently, to a row of empty chairs.

“I'm trying to speed,” apologized Baird, a few minutes later, to the quietly waiting students. “I can't go so fast.”

Everyone seemed nervous. The stakes were high, and Unger and fellow director Rain Pryor had both promised the students last week they would spare no punches tonight.

Four of the students had dropped out. The pressure got to Chrisy Baylor, for one, and she will no longer be ranting onstage about her grandmother's portable toilet.

The dwindling numbers were sobering to rest of the class. Unger's directives last week to memorize their words left the students anxious.

“Oh, I'm always nervous about being onstage anyway,” said Noah Halle, one of the remaining seven students. “There's more pressure tonight because we have to have it memorized. And I've done standup a couple of times, but I always forget what I'm talking about. I like doing it, and I like making people laugh, but the anxiety of it, it's like, why did I do this?”

Zack Green stood onstage next and spoke in an earnest undertone to the stool.

“Who's next? Who's up? Who hasn't gone yet?” asked Unger, before Green was done hopping down from the stage. “No paper! This is the class where you gotta know your stuff, or there's no point in doing a performance.”

Halle, still worried about memorization, asked, “Can I just bring a bullet point note in my pocket?”

“No!” Unger and Pryor said in unison.

The gloves were off.

Class Begins

Vera Gabriel went first.

“I've had this dirty little secret,” she began, just as she had done every week. “I had bed bugs. I don't know why I was so ashamed. Anybody can get bed bugs! Bed bugs don't discriminate.”

Gabriel went through the story, much as she had before, but with a practiced fluency and a good sense of timing.

She did not forget her lines.

But Pryor cautioned her not to overact.

“I don't want you to tell it like you're telling a bunch of kids,” she said. “You're cute, but don't be cutesy.”

Unger agreed.

“You're a really good storyteller,” he said. “The issue though is, it does sound at times like you're telling that story to children. This isn't a kids' story.”

Neither was Zack Green's story—he took the stage next and told a story about being humiliated by his parents' sex lives on a family cruise.

The cruise director had organized a type of newlywed game, and Green had to watch his parents spill secrets he'd rather have never known.

“'Where did you go on your first date? Where did you propose marriage?'” said Green, loftily imitating the cruise director's posh accent. “As the night went on, the show got progressively more risque. 'If you had to go to Victoria's Secret and buy your wife a bra, what size would you get?'”

Green continued, “And then there's my father, the OB-GYN. '34 double D!' Says it like it's his phone number. I sank lower in my chair. I just learned a nice piece of information about my parents I could have done without.”

Gone were Green's awkward mannerisms from the previous week. Pryor was stunned.

“To watch the progression, from where you came in to right now, it's such a joy,” she said happily. “It's wonderful to see.”

Unger added, “I'm really really proud of the way you've developed since our first class.”

But then Bryant McCray, who was up next, did the unthinkable—he forgot one of his lines.

He recovered quickly, and did not lose his poise or his command of the stage.

The dread was palpable, however, as he and his classmates waited for the hammer to fall.

Instead, Unger praised him.

“To me, this was a great example of everything that I've talked about, getting you guys to understand that you know your stories,” said Unger. “You even did exactly what you should do, when you had that moment when you lost it for a second. You backed up, you said your line again, and it came to you. You kept going. You did exactly the right thing. You handled it perfectly.”

Danielle Baird, telling a story about a petrifying motorcycle ride, did not handle it perfectly when she forgot her lines.

She panicked.

“I'm completely drawing a blank,” she gasped, when she got to the part of the story where the motorcycle ride finally stops.

“It's okay,” said Unger briefly, trying not to break into Baird's still-salvageable performance.

“So as we come to a stop,” Baird began again, and then broke off.

“Ahh! I can't believe I'm drawing a blank! I can't cheat,” she added, with a glance down at her notes, lying on a table offstage.

“Nope,” said Unger and Pryor together.

Baird struggled through the rest of her story, eventually pulling herself together enough to whip out one-liners like, “This certainly can't be heaven, because it smells like ass, gas and hot pretzels.”

When she finished, she dropped her hands to her sides.

“Okay,” she said. “Beat me.”

Unger gave her a compliment.

“You have great stage presence,” he said. “We want to hear what you have to say. You have that natural ability to make us want to hear you. When you get on that motorcycle, and you're on that motorcycle, let us be on that motorcycle with you. Give it to us, and give it to us big.”

Want to see if Baird can give it to you big? Want to see the rest of the performers, too? Come be in the audience this Sunday night, August 7, at Magooby's Joke House. Seven “graduates” of the seminar will be performing their pieces, along with anecdotes from Marc Unger and Rain Pryor, too. Doors open at 6 p.m., and showtime is at 7 p.m. Click here for tickets. And tell the storytellers you read about them on Patch!