I have to go, but remember that your uncle that you've never seen before will be picking you up later.

Brothers Hines T-Shirts!

Seriously!

I designed Brothers Hines T-Shirts! These were inspired by the fact that Will and I are going to The Napa Valley/San Francisco area this weekend to perform a pair of shows. It’s very exciting, but it also feels ridiculous traveling across the country to perform twice. So at some point in the planning of this show Will said “we need to make tour shirts with the two dates on the back”. The rest is history.

You can order your own through Printfection at this store:
Brothers Hines Tour Shirts!

These shows are happening because Terry Withers is awesome. He books UCB TourCo shows, shows that as individuals Will and I haven’t done. But Terry was talking to someone who was looking for a smaller group. Terry mentioned us as a possible duo that could come do shows. After that it was just a matter of extending the tour to 2 shows by booking a second gig.

I think Will and I did our first show together because Sean Taylor asked us to perform as a pair at Variety Underground. (sidenote: this happened to be the same night veteran indie team Rogue Elephant did their first show). It was fun.

Will started at the UCB over 10 years ago, and I started shortly after that but I think that was the first time we ever performed together in any group. We’d go on to do a bunch of other stuff together, notably the indie team Primal Bias. Still only when we were alone on stage did we get to see where our seperate improv paths had taken two guys with such a shared history.

I think I often start the scenes with more information then Will. Will often does his best work in the middle of the scene making changes as necessary. I think I do great work catching what he is trying to do. Will is great about keeping the show’s physical (or as physical as too out of shape late-30 year olds can be). As we’ve improved over the years it’s become a nice mix.

Will’s a great improviser so obviously that makes these shows very easy for me. Unbeknownst to him he has become the type of performer who can get a laugh from nothing, or lift a bad scene on his back and find something worthwhile in it. I can just hang on during those sequences benefit from the recovered audience.

Over the years we performed in bursts here and there. A few years back we did Cagematch I think because I wanted a chance to do some longer scenes that I didn’t get tagged out of, or had to deal with tons of other performers bursting in. I love that style of play (I’ve had some of my favorite shows with uber-supportive teams like fwand) but it’s nice to get a chance to let a scene breath.

We decided to do Cagematch again this year. It had been a while since we had done a show but in the interm we had done some rehearsals with a group of talented folks (Brandon Gardner, Porter Mason, Chelsea Clarke, and the lovely Erik Tanouye). Those rehearsals weren’t for a show, they were just because we all wanted to work on some challenging stuff. Non-standard transitions and taking risks was the point. And this stuff definitely has influenced are most recent shows. We’ve had some great transitions and done a few things here and there that would have thrown each other a few years ago. It adds another layer to our long (but silly) scenework.

I think Will would agree that our shows over the last 6 months have been some of our best ever. I credit those shows (and working with Will) for helping me continue to improve myself as an performer. These shows are a blast, and push me to keep surprising myself. And now we are taking this new found energy to the west coast!

Wish us luck! (and buy our shirts!)