Just the FAQ's
- Q: Who's going to perform at my show?
- A: Two answers: 1) If we are performing a comedy concert after a banquet. For example, Lesley and/or Dean will be involved and we will select other performers to make up a trio. All our comedians have worked together before. We select performers whose strengths best fit the profile of your audience. And B) Some shows require more than three performers and/or require special skills. We match these requirements to the skills of our cast.
- Q: Why Arizona?
- A: We take our show to our sponsors. Sometimes that means we travel to their city and sometimes it means we travel to the site of their conference. We work in all of the popular conference destinations: Scottsdale, Orlando, New Orleans, Canada, New York, San Diego, Bullhead City, etc. We have also taken our act to some real out-of-the-way places, like Osage Lake, Missouri. The point is, the majority of our performances are "somewhere else." This means we are in the fortunate position of living where we want. We have picked a nice place. Tucson offers a friendly place to do business. There is a quality of life there we enjoy a great deal: the mountains, the desert and Mexico! We have telephones, faxes, electricity and soon we'll have indoor plumbing. Call when you come to town and we'll treat you to a Southwestern dinner.
- Q: How much lead time do you need to prepare customized material?
- A: The short answer is between 30 minutes and 30 hours. We have booked shows in the morning and performed them that night; with only a 30 minute interview before the show with our sponsor. On some complicated shows, we have put in as many as 30 hours researching, interviewing, outlining and writing customized material for a 45 minute performance. We are good at thinking fast on our feet without much preparation time and we are good at getting into the subject in depth.
- Q: How far in advance do you book your shows?
- A: The only criteria is if the date is free. We may be available tonight and we have some dates already booked into next year. We recommend you put a date on our calendar as a tentative as soon as you know the date, even if you are not sure you can book us. There is no obligation to you, but it gives you right of first refusal. If no one inquires about the date you can hold it forever. If someone else calls about it, we'll call you first to see where you stand in your decision making process. Please pay us the courtesy of releasing any tentative date you will not be using as soon as you know.
- Q: Does your fee include expenses?
- A: Yes. And No. Yes, if it's within three hours driving distance here in Arizona and we don't have to stay overnight. No, if we get on a plane, or rent cars, eat meals and stay in hotel rooms out there in the world somewhere. It's purely geographic.
- Q: Do you have other jobs?
- A: Who has time? When we are not doing it, we are selling it. LaughingStock is our primary business and focus. We keep an office and it keeps us plenty busy. We do lots of related work under the LaughingStock name: workshops in improvisation, stand-up comedy, presentation skills, creative problem solving and team building; acting and voice-over acting for radio, TV commercials, training and industrial programs; copy writing and speech writing. Lesley writes for the theater and Dean plays in his garden a lot.
- Q: Are you married? Do you have kids?
- A: Lesley and Dean are married... to each other.
- Q: How far do you travel?
- A: How far do you want to go? We love to travel to new and fun places to bring our unique brand of improvisational comedy to our corporate and association sponsors. Most of our work is in the continental US and Canada, but we all have passports. Let's go!
- Q: Are you funny?
- A: Yes. We've never had to give any money back.
- Q: Do you really improvise everything?
- A: The best thing about improvising comedy for our sponsors is the variety. Every audience is different. We find out what makes each audience unique and we create material just for them. We use traditional improvisational structures as the skeleton for each show, but we do our research and are armed with background information for each scene. The scenes you see unfold up there on stage have never been seen before by anyone else, including us.
- Q: How did you get started doing this?
- A: Lesley was graduated from Northwestern and attended the Players Workshop at Second City in Chicago. She went on to form "Abrams & Anderson" and performed improv in clubs and colleges. Dean schooled in Boston, worked in radio as a DJ and then in advertising as a producer and copywriter. Fate brought us together in Portland, Maine. We moved the whole operation, lock, LaughingStock and barrel to Arizona in September, 1998.
- Q: How do planes stay up in the air?
- A: Lift. It's best not to think too much about it.
- Q: Do you know any good jokes?
- A: Sure. But so does everyone on Wall Street. Give us a suggestion for an occupation and an object and we'll create a very funny scene about it. Can a stockbroker do that?
