Day 2: A Crapload of Ocean

Day two was a sea day, basically the ship making the long trek down into the cluster of islands in the eastern Caribbean that will make up our ports for this cruise. For us, it’s 10 hours of rehearsal, both the sketch show (an hour of sketches from Second City’s archives) and the improv show.

In case anybody’s wondering, here’s how the whole process behind putting one of these shows up works:


3 Weeks Before Embarkation – Running orders and PDFs of scripts are emailed out to the cast. Ideally, you’ll show up to rehearsal totally off book. Bios and headshots for the poster and program are sent in, along with passport info.

2 Weeks Before Embarkation – Videos of the sketches are (hopefully) sent out, as there’s a lot in, say, a musical number that you might not get off the page.

1 Week Before Embarkation – Fly to Chicago for rehearsals. These are four 8 or 9 hour rehearsals of improv and sketch work, focusing mainly on the sketch show. In these four days, you’re expected to go from zero to having the show as close to ready for public consumption as possible.

Embarkation: Fly to Miami, get on the boat, check out the theater, and realize you have to completely re-block everything. You have at most three days until you open, usually less. The reason you want everything completely down before you leave Chicago is that you’re going to have so much new stuff and details to deal with that there isn’t a lot of time to be going over basics.

Show Day: Tech all morning, run all afternoon. First show is at 7:30, second is at 9:30. There’s a well-earned drink after that, but you’ve got an improv rehearsal tomorrow afternoon, and a show that night.

Basically, you’ve got eight days of rehearsal to put together an hour-long sketch show, and an improv set. If you get a break, you walk out on the deck, light up a smoke, and stare out at the bluest water you’ve ever seen in your goddamned life.