T-shirts and Eliminations

So this reality TV show has been filming on the ship this week. It’s a competitive show about gambling that hasn’t been sold to the networks yet or anything so it might never see the light of day. We haven’t seen too much of them, apart from one night at the disco when they were shooting two of the contestants grinding on each other as thirty teenagers from New Jersey danced on the other side of the dance floor in mild disinterest. Anyway, we shot an improv challenge with the remaining contestants this morning. We were all nervous about it beforehand, since we weren’t too sure of what was going on, but it ended up being a blast. The contestants all bucked the reality TV stereotype and were very polite and gracious people, so it will be fun to see how they get transformed to conniving powermongers in editing. Paul spent forty-five minutes teaching them some improv games and then we did a show with them for about two hundred passengers. The contestants did an awesome job, especially considering they only had an hour prep time before they went on stage.

The best part of the day was we got t-shirts from the theater we work for to wear during the challenge (that’s called branding in the biz, and I was able to do it much more knowledgeably after seeing the product placement fest that was “The Island” earlier this week). We all got different styles, as if to advertise the plethora of merchandise available at the theater and online. Mine was a retro soccer t-shirt made popular in the early 80’s, and that combined with my longer, slightly feathered hair (it’s all the rage in the Bahamas - I won’t defend it) made me look like Rudy from “Meatballs.” Perhaps a savvy casting agent in Hollywood will see me and put me in a buddy cop comedy with Chris Makepeace when this thing goes through the roof.