Saturday’s Tag Team Comedy features improv and stand-up
Improv group Jump Start first to perform at Heyler’s, our new venue
This Saturday, our Tag Team Comedy Show will be bursting with more funny people than ever before!
We had a great debut at Heyler’s last Saturday with our Family Friendly Show. Thank you to all who came out to help us celebrate our new home! We’ll be there again this Saturday night with our biggest Tag Team Comedy Show yet! Before you know it, Heyler’s will be known as the biggest comedy spot in LA! Or at least, the biggest on Pico Blvd. Surely somewhere between those two benchmarks.
We’re very happy to have three stand-up comics help us kick off the first Tag Team Comedy Show at Heyler’s:
- John Vargas made his debut at The Comedy Store and has been performing regularly at comedy clubs in and around LA.
- Vance Sanders is a Groundlings graduate who works the local comedy club circuit and is the host for the Scoomies, the award show celebrating stand-up comedy in LA.
- Pat Reilly is another regular of the LA comedy club scene, which helps him study sociology at UCLA.
- Ceci Noire came from Haiti to live the movie star lifestyle, and has unlocked the secrets of the universe.
A trio of comedians should be enough to pass the legal requirements of a comedy show, but that wasn’t enough for us! We’ve also got the improv group Distant Relatives! They perform every Friday night at The Improv Space, and now we’ve got them! All they need is one suggestion from the audience, and they turn it into a fully improvised long form show. The group includes former Meathand Eric Chad Ho, as well as Jason King, Tim Limbrick, Samir Forghani, and Stephen Perlstein.
To finish it all off, it’s the Magic Meathands! Yes, us! We perform a mixture of long form scenarios and short form games to create a lively and energetic show. So we’ll have you laughing one way or another!
See you Saturday at 8 PM!
Heyler’s
10659 West Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(one block east of Overland)
Tickets: $7
PARKING: The meters on Pico Blvd. do not need to eat after 6 PM. They’re on a special diet. Yes, that’s right, free street parking on Pico Blvd.! But look closely at the signs if you park on the side streets off Pico.
Bringing Improv Comedy to The Heyler Space
This Saturday night, the Magic Meathands will debut at our new home, The Heyler Space! Our popular Family Friendly Show with Jump Start Comedy Improv will break in the new performance venue on Saturday, May 12 at 8 PM. Tickets are still only $7 for adults and $3 for children.
Located on Pico Blvd. only one block east of the Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles, Heyler is owned by Heyler Realty, one of the community’s oldest local businesses. They just recently moved to this great new location and with their interest in giving back to the community, we knew they’d be a great fit for us and our community outreach. Heyler can be easily accessed from the 10 and 405 freeways.
Straight from their Facebook page, below is a peak at Heyler’s spacious offices, which will be transformed into a fun and comfortable theater this Saturday night! Bring your friends and the whole family to witness the start of a new age of madcap mirth-making from the Magic Meathands!
Family Friendly Show featuring improv comedy with the Magic Meathands and Jump Start
Saturday, May 12
8:00 – 10:00 PM
$7 ($3 for kids 12 and under)
10659 West Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(map)
Meet a Meathand: Elizabeth Gill
The Magic Meathands are full of creative, interesting and entertaining people both on and off the stage. That may sound like bragging, but we’re proud of our team, so we thought you should know more about us.
Elizabeth Gill has been a Meathand for a number of years, but when she’s not improvising her butt off, she’s teaching screenwriting at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the John C. Hench School of Animation and Digital Arts, and winning some gold medals in the Senior Olympics for women’s soccer. She’s also a screenwriter (she wrote this episode of My So-Called Life, along with a number of TV movies) and a poet (Blue Woman: Poems and Drawings). And now she’s an author with her newly released audio book Open 24 Hours!
Find out more about Liz and her book in the first of our Meet a Meathand series:
See more of Liz performing with the Meathands by checking out our Show schedule.
Download Open 24 Hours by Elizabeth Gill.
Fun and Games Video shows how to ruin a good time
To answer the question in the title of our last blog post, yes. Yes, yes that was our last show at the Mary Pickford Studio. It was a great night! Thank you to everyone that came out to help celebrate the wonderful run we had there, as well as the good work of The Mary Pickford Institute. They will carry on at a location to be determined, and we wish them the best of luck in carrying the torch of Mary Pickford’s legacy.
We will carry on, as well, as we always have. We’re looking at several promising locations for our new home. If you know of a performance space on the west side of LA that is interested in having two nights of comedy each month with a big and loyal crowd, as well as interest in community outreach, please email me. We’ll be sure to announce right here once we’ve got a venue finalized.
In the meantime, let’s take a look back at one of our most popular sketch comedy videos from our Magic Meathands Originals series on our YouTube channel. “Fun and Games” was written and directed by Mary Benedict, and features Mary, Nikki Turner, Corey Blake (me) and alum Travis McElroy. Wendy J.N. Lee shot it and the video was edited by Corey.
Is this Saturday our Final Show at the Mary Pickford Studio?
Change is certainly in the air for the Meathands.
This Saturday night, our Tag Team Comedy Show with the variety show Fun Night Live may well be our last time performing at the Mary Pickford Studio.
In case you haven’t heard, Indiewire initially broke the story and Deadline Hollywood has the most recent information. The basics is that the Mary Pickford Foundation cut off funding of the Mary Pickford Institute, which owns the Mary Pickford Studio. For those that don’t know, here is the Mary Pickford Institute’s mission statement:
The Mary Pickford Institute (MPI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating awareness of film pioneer Mary Pickford’s life, preserving her work, furthering her philanthropic legacy and honoring her creativity. Our community resources and services provide a bridge from early cinema to modern filmmaking. Our innovative outreach programs ignite an excitement for learning while building participants’ sense of accomplishment and self-esteem by utilizing teaching tools that are immediate, relevant and current.
There’s an online petition set up to ask the Foundation to reconsider. Please join us in adding your voice in support of continuing the legacy of Mary Pickford and the Institute’s (and our) efforts of outreach.
Truthfully, we don’t know much more than what’s been released in those links above, but we know that this Saturday night’s show will almost definitely be the last chance to catch the Magic Meathands in this great venue. We’re crossing our Meaty fingers for a last minute Hollywood ending. But in the meantime, we’re going to give the Mary Pickford Studio one heck of a blow-out for our final show! Please come out and help celebrate the good work the Institute has done. We have given a percentage of the box office from every show we’ve held at the Mary Pickford Studio to the Mary Pickford Institute. Maybe if we completely pack the house, we’ll send the signal to the Foundation that the Studio has value in the community and both the Studio and the Institute deserve to stick around.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
- Come to a special fundraiser at the Mary Pickford Institute tonight at 7:30 PM!
- Come to this Saturday’s Tag Team Comedy Show at the Mary Pickford Studio at 8 PM!
- Sign the online petition to Save the Mary Pickford Institute and the home of the Magic Meathands!
Help Save the Meathands' Home
Our First April Show Will Feature More Making $#!& Up
I’m writing about our first post-Bill show and I’m already cartoon swearing. And the show is Family-Friendly! Oh, we’re doomed.
Come on out and see us completely make… stuff up based on your suggestions. (There, is that better?)
Every second Saturday of the month, the Magic Meathands (that’s us!) and Beach Cities’ Jump Start Improv put on a full night of improv comedy appropriate for the whole family. While staying sharp we offer a night for grownups where they can feel comfortable bringing the youngsters along.
A portion of ticket sales is donated to the Mary Pickford Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating awareness of film pioneer Mary Pickford’s life, preserving her work, furthering her philanthropic legacy and honoring her creativity. Part of the organization’s outreach includes the Mobile Film Classroom, which brings cutting edge digital film technology and the opportunity to learn to children throughout Los Angeles.
Tickets: $7 ($3 for kids 12 & under)
Mary Pickford Studio
8885 Venice Blvd. Ste 102
Los Angeles, CA 90034-3242
Plenty of parking in the lot right there at 8885 Venice Blvd. (cross street National Blvd.).
Goodbye to Our Director, Hello to Our Future
Bill Johnson sees something he has to go do. Shane doesn't like it, Marshall ignores it.
Yesterday’s rehearsal was our final with director Bill Johnson. He was the original founder, teacher and director of the Magic Meathands improv comedy ensemble.
After 8 years of guiding us, he is leaving us behind to let us grow to the next level while he pursues his own opportunities.
Bill taught most of us for years and encouraged us to explore the absurd, the silly and the joyful. Because of that influence, the Magic Meathands have developed a dynamic, high energy that is unique among most improv groups. He also brought his focus to community outreach, making the Magic Meathands the only improv group in Los Angeles that regularly brings live comedy to the very people most in need of joy and laughter. Just this past Saturday, we played to an enthusiastic crowd at the Ocean Park Community Center, a facility in Santa Monica that serves the homeless and mentally ill. Next month, we’ll return to our friends at the Hathaway-Sycamores Child and Family Services facility in Altadena, where they house over 40 boys aged 10 to 18. We first performed for them in early 2008 and continue to visit them several times a year. And finally, because of the variety of our audiences and venues, Bill developed a team of performers comfortable with audiences of different age groups and content preferences. Not too many improv groups have their own rating system for their shows, but the Meathands do to make sure audiences know what they’re getting into.
So yes, Bill created a pretty magnificent thing but the time has come for him to go. So now what?
Always passionate about reaching out to the community and helping children, Bill is pursuing a teaching career at a school in the Coachella Valley where he’s teaching math to struggling kids. Yes, math. We don’t get it either.
We also expect him to continue his writing. Bill’s first novel, The Dark Province: The Son of Duprin, debuted last year to great reviews. We’re told a sequel and another novel are in the works.
Meanwhile, the Magic Meathands have been preparing for this day for some time. Over the last year, we became a self-directed performing group. That means we all share the responsibility of running different parts of the show, instead of Bill serving as sole director and emcee every show. In turn, our shows have been evolving into a completely new format that is bringing out the best in our cast. Simply put, if you haven’t seen the Meathands in the last 4 months or more, you haven’t seen the Meathands!
Your next chance is the popular Family Friendly Show with Jump Start Comedy Improv at the Mary Pickford Studio on Saturday, April 14, at 8 PM! See you there!
Welcome to the NEW MagicMeathands.com
High Five for technology!
And so the conversion is complete!
We’ve been building up a WordPress blog here for several months and eventually it just made our old MagicMeathands.com website redundant. So, the time came for us to merge the two and here we are: the new MagicMeathands.com!
If you haven’t stopped by before – welcome! If you’re a regular visitor, there’s been a couple of improvements recently. So how about a quick run through the site?
If you’d like to subscribe to get updates about our shows and any other exciting Magic Meatiness, put your email in the “Follow Blog via Email” box near the top of the column to the right. You can customize your subscription to get emails of what’s posted here as frequently or infrequently as you prefer. We usually post something once a week, every Monday at 10 AM, to let you know about Upcoming Shows and other things we think you’d like. (Don’t worry, your email address will not be shared with ne’er-do-wells or anyone else for that matter.)
Below that you’ll see a feed of our Facebook page, which has also gotten a better web address – Facebook.com/MagicMeathands. Please check it out, give us a “Like” and join in the Meaty conversations.
On the left, we highlight our latest video from our YouTube channel. If the screen is too small for you, just click on the YouTube logo and you’ll be taken to the video’s page so you can see it at a bigger size. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a comment to let us know what you think.
And then below that is our Twitter feed, which we must confess is mostly just a repeat of our Facebook page updates right now, but we’ll get that up and running with something worthwhile soon. What would you think of a live tweeting of our rehearsals? That might be a fun behind-the-scenes glimpse.
Before we go, let’s take a closer look at that prevoiusly-mentioned Upcoming Shows page. Check out that new fangled calendar we’ve got set up! Pretty life-changingly awesome, huh? Click on any show title and more information will drop down, including a Google map to the venue, ticket prices, and other Handy details. Right next door is the Show Ratings page, so you don’t accidentally bring Aunt Tillie to the wrong show.
We’ve also got a newly updated Cast page so you can get to know our team of Hands you’ll see should you make it out to one of our shows and/or watch our videos.
And we’ve still got our About Us page, which is hopefully fairly self-explanatory, and our Comedy Outreach Project page, which I talked about last week.
So that’s the quick tour around the new MagicMeathands.com! Come back any time!
Three Shows in Two Weeks and We’re STILL Not Done
We just completed a thrilling run of shows, as we teamed up with Jump Start and Danger Pants! (formerly known as The Callbacks), but we’re not done yet! We’re revving up for a special show at a homeless shelter in Santa Monica as part of our Comedy Outreach Project. We’re also in talks to help out fundraising for an elementary school and seeing about returning to some of our regular partners.
The Comedy Outreach Project is all about us taking live improvised comedy out to the community. Whether it’s a boys’ home, transitional housing for women, a halfway house, senior centers, or local schools, we bring our funny to them. For some, this is their first experience with live theater and improvised comedy, and the discovery of joy and laughter is powerful to behold. It’s not always easy to get through to them to share that joy and laughter, but after a few hundred shows of doing just that, the Magic Meathands understand how to use high energy and audience-appropriate material that involves them and encourages creativity in diverse settings.
Do you know of a group of people that could use some laughter? Check out our Comedy Outreach Project page and get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
