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March 29, 2006

Hey, College Humor and Gorilla Mask Readers!

First, a word from the sponsors:

NEW SHOW! THURSDAY, MARCH 30TH, at 7 PM

AWOK shares the stage with Freedumb At the Gene Frankel Underground (Formerly Juvie Hall) 24 Bond St (Click here for subway directions) $5. (There will be a brand new video debuting. Hot damn.)

Welcome to everyone who’s come here from Collegehumor and Gorillamask. This time, the video is Nature Footage: The Musical. Go ahead and take another look, just to make sure it’s as awesome as you remember it.



Posted by Nate Kushner at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2006

Phroth Phest 2006!

I know some of the readers here are students at our alma mater, Penn State, so if you’re in State College this weekend, come on by 111 Forum tonight or tomorrow night at 8. It’s Phroth Phest time.

Phroth Phest is what happens once a year when No Refund Theatre, the theatre group of which we are all alumni, and Phroth, the humor magazine of which I was a co-founder and some of us are alumni, get together and put on a sketch show. This year, they’ll be doing some AWOK sketches with our permission. Awesome!

Posted by Nate Kushner at 07:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 16, 2006

Welcome College Humor readers again!

Thanks to CollegeHumor for giving the Thumblettes some love.

Written by A Week of Kindness
Directed by Mike Still
Music for theme song composed and performed by Allysha Powanda and Kendrick Strauch
Featuring: Allysha Powanda, Mike Still, Erica Harsch, Dan Hopper, and Nate Kushner
Graphics by Mike Still and Nate Kushner

If you’re new to the AWOK site, check out our other videos. Or check out our latest, The Profane Gourmet right here for a start.

The Profane Gourmet
Featuring Mike Still (with a special appearance by Shayna Ferm)
Written by A Week of Kindness

Posted by Nate Kushner at 07:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

The Profane Gourmet

The video is below, but first, a word from our sponsors…

Dustin D’Addato, Shayna Ferm, and Nick Turner host Poker Night!
9 Great Jones St., between Broadway and Lafayette (Click here for subway directions.)
Cover is $5, and beers are reasonable.
Featuring:
Andrea Rosen (Stella, Variety Shac)
Liam McEneaney (Premium Blend, Tell Your Friends)
Sean Crespo (Jest Magazine)
Nick Kroll (Thursdays at RiFiFi)
And the one-year anniversary show of A Week of Kindness!
Come and make it special with us.

and now…The Food Network’s new late night sensation!

The Profane Gourmet
Featuring Mike Still (with a special appearance by Shayna Ferm)
Written by A Week of Kindness

(We are aware that the video downloads being generated by Google Video are slightly glitchy. We’re seeking a solution.)

Posted by Nate Kushner at 09:46 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 05, 2006

Happy Anniversary, Us!

On this day in 2005, A Week of Kindness performed its very first show at Galapagos Art Space.

Photo

The cast:
Erica Harsch
Dan Hopper
Nate Kushner
Devin T. Quin
Mike Still


For academic purposes, the setlist. It’s humbling to see how far we’ve come:
Heartworms Gnawing on the Heartstrings of My Heart, which we have not yet used a second time. (Erica, Devin)
Astronauts, in a draft that is almost unrecognizable to the way we use it now, and was twice as long. (Mike, Erica, Dan)
Late Night With James Joyce, with James Joyce interviewing Parker Posey for the first and only time. (Nate, Mike, Erica)
A Conversation About Differences (Full Cast), which along with various Late Night With James Joyce sketches, has become one of the bits we’ve used most often and most reliably, especially after a substantial trimming and rewrite that we did a month or two later. It has now been upgraded to a closer.
A Stand-Up Set by “Rotten” Jack Cutley (Devin, Dan). It was a good lesson we learned at that first show: The sketches that killed when we were in college will not automatically kill in New York. This one also has yet to be used again, but it’s not impossible.
Fresh Milk (Full Cast). The sketch hasn’t changed that much, other than the performances getting better almost every time we do it. We have continued to use this on occasion, but more often as an opener than a closer.

Notice that there were only 6 scenes in this half-hour set. Compare that to 7 months later, when Barnyard Jamboree had about 13 scenes in about 40 minutes. I would call this sketch show a good one, but only by the standards of what I imagine other sketch groups’ first shows are like. The photos are here.

Anyway, since then, we’ve done many more shows. We’ve just straight up gotten better at most aspects of putting together a sketch show. We’ve added dozens more sketches to our repertoire. We’ve incorporated short film into our arsenal. We’ve made some wonderful friendships, including quite a few with people we’re happy to call our sketch colleagues. We ran a moderately-sized comedy festival that went over pretty nicely. We got caught up in a scandal that unfortunately became quite a bit more famous than anything we’ve ever done on stage. And just this past month, we actually got slightly famous again, this time actually for a sketch that got viewed in the past few weeks by multitudes beyond our wildest dreams. It’s been a good year.

Some stats:

Distinct sketch revues created by AWOK: 4.
Total performances: 24 in 6 different venues.
Blog posts: 88
Visitors to this website: 394884
Membership of AWOK after one year: 4.
Total number of people who were once counted as members of AWOK: 8
Total number of people who ever attended an AWOK rehearsal: 8, but they weren’t the same 8.
Total number of people in AWOK who have had perfect attendance at AWOK shows: 2
Total number of people who have ever performed live in an AWOK show: 7
Total number of people who have ever performed live in an AWOK show without actually being in the group: Kendrick.
Total number of people who have helped out an AWOK sketch or show in some way: Immeasurable.
Average awesomeness of AWOK fans: Superawesome.

Anyway, we love you guys, and we’ll make sure AWOK: Year Two kicks even more butts.

This is also an anniversary of Chris O’Connor (of Fearsome) getting born. He’s one of those superawesome fans we talked about that helps us out a lot, and a great sketch comic in his own right, so a big happy birthday to that guy.

Posted by Nate Kushner at 03:02 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack