San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival 2006

Ten West recently performed as part of the fifth annual San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival. This festival draws some pretty big names in the comedy world including; Mr. Show's David Cross & Bob Oedenkirk, Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall), Will Franken, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Horatio Sanz & Fred Armisen of past & current SNL casts and many more! We performed Tuesday, Jan. 24 in Mill Valley at the 142 Throckmorton Theater as part of the Tuesday night Mark Pitta & Friends Show. Dana Carvey & other celebs are regular drop-ins for this show and it draws huge crowds. We were told there were over 300 people in attendance! We had a great time and would return any time! Mill Valley is beautiful, the theater was beautiful and it was a sort of homecoming for Stephen as he is from nearby Novato, CA.

We also visited Stephen's alma mater, San Marin High School for a Wed. morning show & Q/A with the kids. It was a great experience. Stephen's teacher & mentor, Emily, is such a sweetheart & we hope to visit Novato and San Marin HS again soon!

Wed. night, Jan. 25, we performed at the Eureka Theater with the Cody Rivers Show (Bellingham, WA) and Kaspar Hauser (SF - big bonus points if you know who or what the origins of the name Kasper Hauser is!). It was another sold out show and we had a great time. The COdy Rivers Show has invited us up to Bellingham in April & we look forward to performing with these two incredibly talented gentlemen!

Thanks to Cole Stratton, Janet Varney & David Owen - the producers of the festival and to the rest of their amazing crew!

2006 Chicago Sketchfest

Ten West just returned to LA after performing two shows at the 2006 Chicago Sketchfest.
It was our third time performing at the festival and, though I'm sure one exists in German, there is not a word to best describe our experience at this years event. I'll try to bullet format some things that come to mind for easy note taking.

• THANK YOU BRIAN POSEN & STAFF...THANK YOU!
• The talent just keeps getting better and better - we saw & loved Meat (we always love Meat. We are in love with Meat, Meat is love to us, Love Meat is what we are do...). Last Call Cleveland - a very fun & funny show. I laughed out loud...a lot & that's not easy to make me do b/c I'm very depressed. Commedia della Principessa - these three girls are flat out FUNNY! PS Jon has a crush on Liz. Cupid Players - a brand new show that appeared to have been performed for years. Set in a bar and all about the relationships between the bar regulars and so real and so funny and all done in musical format. There were approximately 478 other groups that we REALLY wanted to see but it is virtually impossible to make that happen. I cannot see any show immediately prior to mine b/c I have to pee a lot before I go on stage. We do know that we heard only amazing things from people about all the other groups that performed the weekend we were there and there is still a whole other weekend of great funny coming to Theater Building Chicago!
• That bullet was entirely too long for effective note taking.
• Brian Peterlin is a technical GOD. Thank you for the amazing work you did on our show.
• Tim Soszko, what the heck kind of last name is that, Tim?! How do you even pronounce that?! SOSSZEEKO? SOSHZECKOO? I though my last name was hard to pronounce but geez! Thank you Tim for so efficiently managing the theater we performed in both nights. Thanks to your crew (we apologize for not naming names. We're dummyheads) which was so amazingly on top of things that we only noticed the blur of black T-Shirts and weird stocking caps much like magic elves saving the shoemaker from ruin. What? Shut up!
• Brandon Campbell is a very special man and deserves a balloon bouquet or 20 million dollars.
• Ten West received two standing ovations. Thank you audiences for sharing your love with us!
• We are very grateful for the chance to spend time with so many of our friends from the sketch comedy world. We LOVE everybody from Chicago's The Animal Club, the aforementioned Meat & Elephant Larry from NYC, Competitive Awesome (welcome to LA gentlemen!), Noelle Romano of Becky & Noelle (Jon has another crush), The Waitstaff from Philly (Jon may be in love with Sara), Boiled Weiners from Toronto, As always it was a pleasure to see Triplette & there are many more who will be showing up next weekend.
• We saw & chatted with (not met for the first time as was erroneously pointed out to us by Karla!) the girls from Karla , & Sam from The Defiant Thomas Bros. (we haven't met Seth in person, yet, but these guys are amazing performers), and Superpunk - we spent an hour in the green room talkin' bout nothin' with these gents. We only hope that the things we said don't end up as a joke in one of their shows!
• Every year we meet & make great new friends. We also meet and make great new friends. That's really cool.

We could go on & on...Thanks, Chicago for an amazing sketch comedy festival!