CheekyChicago

It’s another Wednesday night at IO’s Del Close Theater, and on stage waits a shrouded black box labeled “Felt” in furry orange letters. Lights fade to black, Metallica wails over a cheering house and out pop eight head-banging puppets. They’re cute, they’re cuddly and to get started, they’d like a suggestion.

It’s been about four years since improv team Atticus Finch created this fully-improvised, not-for-kids puppet show at The Playground. In 2006, Felt got a run at long-form improv mecca IO, where it has gained a cult-like following. With veteran improvisers pulling the strings, Felt reaches beyond the obvious appeal of cute creatures dropping F-bombs to offer meta-commentary on the craft itself and create moments so true to life you completely forget you’re laughing at fabric.

In a recent chat with cast members after a performance at IO, we learned about the puppets, the humans behind the curtain and the case for boxed spinach.

Cheeky: How has the show evolved since you began?

Cesar Jaime: I think once we moved here, the idea was that these are kids taking classes, just learning the fundamentals of improv. So we were free to just really mess with each other. And a lot of the first year or so was just that – they were just known as dirty puppets who would do really weird stuff. And then we started to get more serious about their improv. It was like, well, they have been studying it for a while now, and we were improvisers ourselves. So we started to throw that into the show, like, “Let’s try to do a real Harold” or mess with different forms and really concentrate on that aspect of the show, while never letting go of the goofy side.

Cheeky: So the conceit was that the puppets themselves were going through improv classes.

Matt Nelson: I think the conceit was also, like, they were all from Pennsylvania or something.

Cesar: Yeah, they had seen Atticus Finch perform at a festival and they thought, “We can do that.” So they put a team together and they came to Chicago and stayed.

Cheeky: That’s awesome. I have so many questions about the mechanics backstage — how the communication works, how you orchestrate the act of just putting on a puppet show and knowing who’s coming in next.

Cesar: I think it’s just organic. I think we’ve become a team just like any other team here, where you just know “I’m gonna go out there.” Sometimes you do have an idea and you point at someone like “come with me.”

Jon Forsythe: Yeah, the added benefit of being screened off from the audience is you’ll be able to tap people and whisper something, which you would not be able to do without that scrim in front of you. And sometimes the actors will actually make eye contact behind the scrim.

Cheeky: And I guess you can see through the scrim, right?

Matt: Yeah, we can see about six feet in front of us. So we can see, obviously, the puppets on the other side and the other players. A lot of times you do have to look at the human face behind the curtain to know that you’re both on the same page, so to speak.

Vanessa Bayer: And since you’re playing on one field, if you’re at one side of the stage and a puppet at the other end does something funny, generally you can’t see what it is, so sometimes that’s a little bit rough.

Matt: And then we’ll play that for a joke, like, “Oh, we missed it.”

Vanessa: Yeah. The puppet just didn’t see it.

Cheeky: How about the choice of puppets. Did you all come with your own puppets?

Vanessa: I had a puppet in college that I brought with me when I moved here. And then when I saw this show I was like, “Oh, Shoshana should be in this show.” Which really meant “I should be in this show.”

Jon: Yeah, Nathan’s actually Nathan 2.0. The first Nathan kind of fell apart.

Cesar: Jesse’s 2.0 too. The first Jesse’s at home.

Louie Saunders: I brought one too. The old guy with the glasses. I actually used him back in college at a public library to read stories to kids . . . but with the same accent. The same kind of . . . gay, German accent.

Jorin Garguilo: Kristen bought the fat cat puppet.

Kristen Studard: Oh yeah. That one I brought.

Cheeky: Did you guys take classes with a puppet specialist, or did you just figure it out?

Jon: During the rehearsal process three years ago, our director [had us] animating balls with eyes on them, just to see how the positioning of the head will convey a certain thing. And then we also brought in Saskia Volkers for one workshop. She had done professional puppetry before and she just took us through the basics. But for the most part it’s instinctual as far as being able to match what your mouth does with the puppet.

Cesar: It’s also on-the-job training. As Matt said, we can see. So a lot of the time we could see the puppets and see what we were doing wrong. Or right.

Kristen: Yeah, I think the hardest part when I started doing it was remembering to close the puppet’s mouth at the end of a sentence. Your natural instinct is to just leave your hand open, but you have to close it. But, yeah, I feel like it was mostly on-the-job training.

Cheeky: Any favorite moments that come to mind?

Cesar: I think almost every week is a favorite, depending on what ends up happening. Like, sometimes we’ll do a form without talking about that form . . . We just surprise each other.

Louie: Yeah, a few weeks ago, we did a show that was pretty much all in a high school.

Cesar: Almost “Close Quarters” [a form in which the action jumps around in time while remaining in the same defined space.]

Louie: Yeah. Two scenes happened in a high school, and then, I don’t know where it started but . . . all the scenes pretty much involved the same, bizarre high school. Which was kind of awesome, that it just kind of grew.

Cheeky: And here it is, our final nosy question: What is the cheekiest thing you did this week?

Cesar: I think this week – and I don’t know if this falls into that category, but – I finished To Kill A Mockingbird today. And my eyes teared up a little bit at the end.

Jorin: I spend a lot of time traveling. So I guess, probably, the cheekiest thing is wearing these pants [note: they are pink] cause people can’t seem to not comment on them.

Kristen: I made someone put me on a list for a concert this weekend. I just told them that they were going to. So I’m getting myself on lists.

Cesar: Is this cheeky or gay: Twice this week, I fell asleep to Say Anything, and then once to Some Kind of Wonderful.

Vanessa: I was at Trader Joe’s, and you know how they’re really nice when you’re checking out? And the guy was like “Did you find everything you need today?” And I was gonna be like, “Yes,” but then I was like “No! You know what? You didn’t have spinach in a box, you only had it in a bag.” And he was like, “There’s more preservatives when you buy it in a box.” And I said, “Well I’ve bought it at other Trader Joe’s in a box.” So, you know. I told him.

Jon: I’m really dull, and I didn’t do anything within those parameters this past week. But I will cheat and say a while ago, I was on a flight and I was sitting next to a girl from Italy who didn’t know any English whatsoever, and I talked her up. So that was fun. And she was very beautiful.

Jorin: I had my first airplane beer. It was a Heineken. And they couldn’t believe that I was 34.

Louie: There was a drunk guy on Clark Street and he came up to me and called me a “faggot” and so I grabbed him by the shirt and I threw him up against the wall. And he fell.

Cheeky: And Matt?

Matt: I kind of lied in an email, which in turn earned me a spot at a private concert to see ZZ Top on Tuesday night. VH1 Storytellers.

Vanessa: What was the lie?

Matt: I lied that my girlfriend bought me a ZZ Top tape and called me her Rough One.

Vanessa: I guess that wins.

You can catch Felt every Wednesday at 8 pm at IO.