Lively Productions explores the intersection between theater and new media. Our current flagship project is our live comedy show, Blogologues.

Check out what our audiences have to say about Blogologues!

Note: This website is actually a blog that we update regularly, so scroll down for all sorts of fun and visit us again soon!

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Tweet of the Week: Father’s Day, NSA, and Cloonicorns

Happy Monday, folks!  We hope you spent the weekend paying homage to dear ol’ dad and saying very upright, clean-cut things into your telephones.  We also hope you have the privilege of seeing a “Cloonicorn,” a mythical creature melded with George Clooney (that we made up, watch below).  It’s cuter than a “50 Centaur” and more charming than “Chimera Sorvino.”  Enjoy!

Winners (for the week of June 14)

View them on Time Out’s website here!

And our runner-up.
New Yorkers must really like brunch.

 

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Tweet of the Week: The Tony Awards, Concierge Cab, and Secret Apartment Dancing

Hi, guys and dolls! It’s time for last week’s Tweet of the Week – we are almost caught up to the present and will cease creating Benjamin-Button-level questions of time in your heads very soon (namely, how do these Blogologues folks in the videos seem so young and fresh like it was last week or something?).

This past Sunday’s Tony Awards ceremony was a treat. You can see who the Twitter-verse was rooting for below, as well as how we like to celebrate NYC theater everyday by dancing secretly in circus-inspired outfits in our apartments to our favorite soundtracks.  Sometimes we even break out the kinky boots! Also, in a total nonsequitur, could NYC cabs be getting fancy? Answer: Maybe. And see below. Happy Tuesday!

Winner (for the week of June 7)

View it on Time Out’s website here!

AND OTHER OFF-THE-HEEZY TWEETS WE VINED!

RED CARPET YELLOW CAB SERVICE: 
See what we did there?


WE <3 THE TONYS: 

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Tweet of the Week: Weather Woes, Citi Bike, and more Arrested Development

Hi friends! Once again, we apologize that we’re a week behind in bringing you the Tweet of the Week. This is LAST WEEK’S TOTW. Much like Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, we are beating on, “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Much like those two, we also love fancy parties.

Speaking of parties, we are jazzed (*jazz hands*) to be performing Blogologues again this Saturday night to a sold-out audience at The PIT‘s Striker Theater (that’s 100+ peeps, yo!). If you show up at the door, we may be able to squeeze you in – but no guarantees! If you don’t have ticket yet, be ready to sit onstage or nurse a gin fizz at The PIT bar until we’re done, then party with us after the show!

Winner (for the week of May 31st)

View it on Time Out’s website here!

AND OTHER *WHIZBANG* TWEETS WE VINED! 

DRESSING FOR THE WEATHER:   


AND A WARM-HEARTED, COLD-HANDED WELCOME TO NYC:

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Comedy, Blogologues, and Girls’ Leadership

Fearless members of Andover’s Ladies Laugh-In.

On April 11, 2013, an article appeared in The New York Times exploring girls’ leadership and gender equality at Phillips Academy, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country. Though the school went co-ed 40 years ago, only four girls have been elected school president in that time. (That’s one girl for every decade, folks.)

Some of the usual suspects were bounced around as the reasons women generally fail to hold positions of power: Girls not being associated with leadership, girls being afraid to be seen as bossy, and so on. But a less-common argument caught our eye:

“[Student Daniel Feeny and] his group of friends agreed that the person elected president usually has stage presence and is entertaining, and they concluded that perhaps girls have to be more serious in order to be taken seriously, which makes them less electable.”

We then received a forwarded email from a teacher there, CC Robinson, who wrote of this same passage:

“This was not the first time I had heard this explanation for why only ten percent of PA’s student body presidents have been girls. According to the conventional wisdom, the student body president’s only real job is to be funny. And girls…aren’t funny?  (Wait, I thought Tina Fey settled this one for us already.)

The current student body president is also the director of the improv comedy group on campus.  I consider him a great guy.  In fact, I advise the group.  They make me laugh.  But they also have just about the same 9 to 1 male to female ratio as the student body presidency has had…Don’t get me wrong, advising Under the Bed is one of my favorite things about being here.  But I’d feel a little bit better about myself if I could help make PA a more fun and funny place to be a girl.

…Why is it so hard for girls at PA to be funny in those big public ways—presiding over the student body at all-school meeting or making a room of Under the Bed fans laugh?  Is it because they are working so hard to be perfect that there is no room for that messy fallibility that is the heart of humor?  Is it because they have too much to lose when they rev the driving engine of high school humor…sex?

…From my spot in the audience, being a girl at PA looks like walking a tightrope. You are gorgeous; you are talented (but you know how to downplay it so as not to threaten those handsome boys); you are a good listener, a good friend, a good dancer…the list goes on and on.  Let’s elbow out some space for these ladies to enjoy things a little more for goodness sake!”

Join the Ladies Laugh-In.  Boys, we need you too!  Come help me run comedy workshops for these girls!

Are you as inspired as we were, reading that?

And so, with the help of Awesome Without Borders and Phillips Academy’s Brace Center for Gender Studies, we went this past Friday. And we had an amazing time.

Amazing time.

We worked with the girls– and one brave boy, the student body president and director of the aforementioned improv club, actually– on throwing away their inhibitions, building (or faking) confidence and, in Blogologues style, working within the confines given to them, whether those are stereotypes, circumstances, or text on a page. We played with choosing the creative, unexpected, or unusual answer. We talked to them about being women in comedy, paving our own way, and creating and playing a million different characters– not just the girlfriend, wife, or floozy that characterize most shows.

CC Robinson summed it up wonderfully in her blog post following the workshop. We encourage you to read it in full, but here are some excerpts:

“We made ugly faces, we got loud, we got old, we got big.

…We got to try our hands at the Blogologues formula.  We took internet text and created monologues and then scenes.  Alli and Jen’s side coaching was phenomenal: “Try it again as a bitter hipster.”  “Can someone play the pirate’s wife?”  “Slam the door before you enter the scene.”

What did our crew have to say about the workshop?

“I liked not worrying about looking pretty.  I liked being the Golem character instead of the slut or the dunce.”

“Being the only guy here, there was a point when everyone was making a joke about me being a guy and I was like…..  Wow.   That’s what it’s like.  Oh my god.  For a second, I got it.”

“I like how you showed us you can be given a text that is so confining, but there are so many possibilities.”

Do you go to school somewhere where girls feel more looked at than listened to? …or where students like to laugh?  …or use the internet?  Ask Santa for a workshop from Lively Productions.”

Thank you again to CC, The Brace Center, Awesome Without Borders, and especially the inspiring students who joined us.

~Jen & Alli

Pure awesome.

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Tweet of the Week: Andy Warhol, Levain Cookies, The Bluth Banana Stand and more!

Oh dear, so much has been happening that we didn’t get a chance to post last week’s Tweet of the Week, EVEN THOUGH IT STARRED A BANANA. So this week, you get to view TWO winners– this week’s and last’s– alongside some other tweets that we brought to life in unusual ways, all using the still-kinda-new Vine app.

Check back with us this week for other exciting news, involving more Vines for a certain publication that, ahem, watches over you, comedy workshops for girls, and our next live show!

WINNER (for the Week of May 17!)

View it on Time Out’s website here!

WINNER (for the Week of May 24!)

View it on Time Out’s website here!

OTHER AWESOME TWEETS WE VINED! 

LEVAIN BAKERY: If you haven’t been, you must. ANDY WARHOL: New York icon!

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: Goes shoe-shopping!

HOMELESS MAN: Sorry, kids, but this is New York.

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