Wednesday, 5 July, 2006 - "Naked Tales at The Company of Angels"
The Company of Angels presents Naked Tales
An Evening of Merciless Confessions
Produced by Sergio Castillo
Written by Sergio Castillo and Spencer Howard
Six Shows Only
July 19 - August 4
Wednesdays & Fridays at 8:00 PM
Posted by SDH [Link] [12 comments]
Wednesday, 21 June, 2006 - "Episode 409: Shining"
For the love of god!
In this episode, we finally see the fruits of Spencer Howard's and Lionel Lyons' labor: a complete shot-for-shot remake of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Will the critics be kind to it? Will Spencer win the hearts of the moviegoing audience as a bona fide film star? And what of Lester and Walkinschlausse? Has Lester found the secret German WWII transmitting device beneath the studio floor? Will Walkinschlausse stop haunting his dreams? How much time does Lester have left before Walkinschlausse loses patience?
Confused? You won't be after this week's episode of The Spencer Howard Show!
It's about time, you say? I've been slacking off and selling out, you say? Maybe. Just. May. Be. I think this is an above-par episode, myself. It's all shiny and neat and color timed. Just like a real movie! I've completely rewritten the episode that will come after this, so everything I've shot will need to be reshot or left outside in the cold to freeze. But now that the actors and I have no school to go to, things should be happening much faster. You're lying to me, you say? You won't have the next episode ready until another two months have passed, you say? I'm putting words in your mouth, you say? Maybe. Just. May. Be.
Posted by SDH [Link] [61 comments]
Sunday, 28 May, 2006 - "The 2˛ and Only"
Once more we drop down into the darkest parts of the human psyche, dredge up what muck we can find, and place it—naked and shivering—onto the stage. What that is generally called is "theatrical parodies". This one, titled The 2˛ and Only, features darkness, despair, suffering, and slightly rude behavior. Par for the course, you may say. You may say that. As a matter of fact, you're perfectly at liberty to say whatever you feel about the previously considered untouchable topics that I dare, in my derring-do, to do. In this particular parody, we discuss the soul of man under socialism, why Socrates was such a bastard, and a startlingly original take on the Last Supper. You won't believe your sensory apparatuses (that's an awful way to pluralize that word, but apparently it's in the dictionary, of all things).
Make with the clicky, as the vernacular goes, and you shall be dazzled. You shall be bedazzled. You shall and will and may be (maybe) bequeathed, betrothed, besmirched; and because of all this verbal miasma, I shall extricate myself from an excruciating explosion, setting an example for the ex-cons and ex-wives of my extraneous and extrinsic extremities.
It's late.
There hasn't been much going on here at the S-D-H Enterprises, and I am just as hurt and bemused and befuddled and bewildered as all of you. I have set a deadline for myself, against which I shall endeavor to put up the final and new and finally new episodes of The Me Show. If I sail past this deadline, I shall still try very hard. If you can't count on The Spencer Howard Show being regular, you've still got these plays going online every two months.
Until then, enjoy Brian, Zack, Kathryn, and me in this new parody. It's our longest and most complimented-on-the-writing yet. It also features a first in the history of our great theatre company: real, live honest-to-goodness ventriloquism. See if you can spot the part where I screw up. It's really hard to notice.
Posted by SDH [Link] [2236 comments]
Friday, 14 April, 2006 - "How I Have Been Disadvantaged Because of My Detachable Facial Features"
Meeting First Lady Rosalynn Carter
For a long time I was an advocate of First Lady Carter's Mental Health Systems Act. At that time I was director of medicine for Danvers State Psychiatric Hospital in Massachusetts and was a firm supporter of reform in the field of mental health, as the medical advancements made since the sixties were exclusive to the wealthiest of the private psychiatric hospitals. I once attended a dinner held by the National Mental Health Association in Boston. The First Lady would be speaking that night and she and I sat next to each other on the dais. When she arrived, I stood up and introduced myself and went on to say what an honor it was to have a woman of her dedication support the reforms that were finally taking place. After her speech, we had stimulating conversation about her volunteer work before her husband was elected. I was just about to ask if it was true that the President really put solar panels on top of the White House when my nose fell into her wine glass. The Secret Service agents nearly crushed my windpipe when they brought me down. It took me two hours under interrogation to convince them to let me have my nose back.
Imperial Navy
I was serving on the Star Destroyer Predator as an admiral. Darth Vader choked me with his Force powers when I failed to send out a detachment of TIE fighters to quash a small Rebel fleet I felt posed no threat. He lifted me clear off the ground. Once I began seeing stars from lack of oxygen, all my teeth fell out and rattled to the floor. Disgusted, Lord Vader threw me down a nearby bottomless shaft.
My Role on "Survivor"
You may remember me as "the weird guy" on a season of the long-running reality television show "Survivor". The producers, when I was cast, gave me the outline for my character as being someone terminally strange, spouting non-sequiturs, and not working with the rest of the team because I'd be too busy arranging coconuts or something.
On the first day of shooting on the beautiful island of Ni'ihau, I was supposed to be on the beach shouting and carrying on about celestial prophecy and their adverse effect on grapefruits. I had gotten through about five minutes of that and the crew was setting up for shots of me dancing in circles when my left eyeball popped out. I'm much more nearsighted in my right eye than my left, so I spent the entire time on the island crawling over the beaches looking for my eye. This made me seem crazier that I was on my hands and knees all day, so I wasn't voted off for several weeks. I couldn't break character and tell anyone, obviously, so I had to keep looking. I got close to winning the prize, but the naked guy voted me off.
First Kiss
Under the dwarf maples of the glen separating our respective boarding prep schools, the light was dappled on the ground and the air smelled sweetly of spring. It was one week to the end of school, before the students went off to the "thirteen through eighteen" boarding schools, hundreds of miles apart. She and I had been meeting after Sunday services for three weeks to hold hands along the river where frogs chirruped long into the night. We were nervous, worried if we would be caught by either one of our headmasters.
We looked deep into each other's eyes and leaned forward at the hips because we were several feet apart. We kept our eyes open. Hers softened into a gentle smile when our lips met and she let out a delicate sigh. Her hair smelled like lavender. Quite suddenly, her eyes grew wide as she felt something was wrong. She pulled back quickly, her mouth open in quiet horror. Well, it was actually my mouth that was open, but it was on her face. She felt my lips with a shaking hand and threw them to the ground. She let out a bloodcurdling scream and ran crying from the meadow. I picked up my lips and carefully flicked off a blade of grass before I put them back on my face. I never saw her again.
Posted by SDH [Link] [1122 comments]
Friday, 7 April, 2006 - "Episode 408: Undergarments"
WWW dot Spencer Howard Show has a new episode up dot ALL RIGHT! That's right, folks. This episode, numbered 408 in a series, so far, of eight, is bigger, better, badder, and more not an April Fools joke than any other! In this episode, we learn that Spencer is not cut out for a movie career and everything pretty much goes up in smoke, as predicted in the stars. We hear from a character that we thought had left the fold. And Horatio, dear sweet Horatio, has found religion again.
Posted by SDH [Link] [2328 comments]
Saturday, 1 April, 2006 - "Episode 407: Arcana Imperii"
Arcana Imperii: Secrets of the Empire
Posted by SDH [Link] [463 comments]
Wednesday, 15 March, 2006 - "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls"
PARODY ONLINE!
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. This is the greatest, most fantastical, phantasmagorical, absofabicalagicalilligically wonderful parody to ever be seen by human eyes. And stuff.
At just over half an hour, we have made our longest, most ambitious parody yet, replete with light and sound cues up the wazoo, and two cameras, one of which is moving and zooming in and stuff! Watch, enjoy, imbibe, in this, the parody of The Glass Menagerie. The Glass Menagerie, by the way, is often cited as one of the best American plays of the last century, and The Colony's production got excellent reviews. Just thought I'd throw that in. There wasn't, you know, any pressure on us or anything.*
There was a little surprise I hinted at a while back to go online when this parody did, and that's The Grand Tour parody... with subtitles. I haven't gotten such responses from people from anything else I've put online. No one can hear the dialogue in the show, which is perfectly understandable, because I set up the cameras poorly. So now, for your viewing pleasure, we have the new parody, all subtitled up, located here.
* - The next play, which is an autobiographical one-man show about a ventriloquist, should be interesting to parody.
Posted by SDH [Link]
