Critic's Choice! The Reader Review: This is the funniest small-group sketch show I've seen all year. Jet Eveleth and Holly Laurent, improv instructors and members of long-running I.O. house team the Reckoning, have taken their first crack at writing in a show loosely representing episodes from a fictional 80s sitcom, "I Live Next Door to Horses." Playing everyone from kids to geriatrics, British socialites to American soldiers, the two adopt distinct voices, mannerisms, and attitudes to create characters, at once esoteric and identifiable, that appear to spring from deeply personal takes on humanity. One sketch, about a woman who writes letters to TV personalities, is so deliciously incomprehensible it belongs in any discussion of the most courageous bits in I.O.'s storied history. Director Pat O'Brien provides clever finishing touches, including a fantastic sound track of eclectic pop. --Ryan Hubbard
“…a wide variety of scenes and characters that came together beautifully in the end. My favorite part of the show was watching the characters’ transformations between scenes, along with the intense physical comedy they used, Eveleth’s clown training showed… it was hilarious and a bit of a refreshing change from the other improv-centric acts.” --Erica Jackson, Charleston City Paper
“It’s terrific…I like the mystery while I’m laughing. If you like surreal humor, this is for you, because you can enjoy the hard-to-find discovery of what it’s like to laugh and then cringe and then laugh some more and then grow bored and maybe get disgusted and then laugh until you’re laughing the deepest, darkest laughter that you had no idea lived inside of you. That’s the suspense of Roseville.”—John Stoehr, Charleston City paper
Television
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/section/comedy
Comedy
Time Out Chicago / Issue 198 : Dec 11–17, 2008
The Reckoning women are at hand
Two stalwart Harold experts herald the next generation of long-form.
By Steve Heisler
Jet Eveleth and Holly Laurent are always in agreement, even when they’re not. When we meet the pair at our office, Eveleth compares the benefits of mastering the Harold—iO’s signature storytelling long-form—to a poet mastering different verse forms to achieve a personal style. “Ooh, I never thought about it like that!” Laurent exclaims, excitedly countering that she tells her iO students to think of it like jazz: Study it, then make like Miles Davis and play the notes that aren’t there.
“I’ll have to steal that,” Eveleth says. They both laugh, the hearty kind borne from years of friendship.
Their full embrace of the “yes, and” spirit would’ve made Del Close blush, though neither Eveleth nor Laurent—two of the foremost Harold experts and members of the venerable iO house team the Reckoning—ever met the guru of modern improv. Yet nine years after his death, Close’s spirit lives on in them, part of a new generation of improv scholars and teachers.
The Reckoning’s longevity attests to his legacy. The team formed in 2001, when iO owner Charna Halpern cherry-picked 12 improvisers from various teams—including Eveleth and Laurent, the only two women—to make up a Frankengroup to stand the test of time. Eveleth, now 31, had arrived two years prior from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst; now 34-year-old Laurent had attended Indiana’s small Anderson University. Both hungered for the chance to play on a dedicated Harold team.
After two members left, “we decided no one would be added, no one would be taken away,” Laurent says. “It’s always ten people, period, and we’ll always exist.” So even if members get too busy—like Brad Morris, currently on Second City’s main stage—they simply return when their schedules allow.
The commitment has paid off. “We started becoming riskier on stage,” Eveleth recalls. The Harold form consists of three groups of three scenes each, with amorphous “game” slots for group scenes in between. But the opening—a slot that explores the suggestion’s themes, abstractly or not—is often overlooked; the Reckoning attacks it boldly, even in high-profile situations. During iO’s star-studded 25th-anniversary performance in 2005, the group deconstructed a hospital scene, including all the equipment’s beeps and movements, and ended by carrying out a dead member above their heads; the audience, which apparently wanted to watch famous people say funny things, was baffled.
Then in 2003, just before auditioning for Lorne Michaels at iO, the Reckoning members had a thought: Wouldn’t it be hilarious to perform an uncomfortably long dance to Mr. Big’s “To Be with You”? So they did, eating up eight minutes of scene time. “No one on the Reckoning will ever say no,” Eveleth proudly proclaims.
Nothing came of that tryout, but the group’s mentality has served Eveleth and Laurent well. Last year, the pair launched I Live Next Door to Horses, a collection of sketches loosely based on a fictional ’80s sitcom. In a brilliant moment within a restlessly creative show, Eveleth played Barb Lamenter—a whimsical, ponytailed girl who hobbled around like a dog, broke out into spontaneous movement and penned letters to TV personalities—with Laurent as the skippy mailwoman. Eveleth and Laurent later added characters, shadow puppets and a Mike Birbiglia stand-up soundtrack, and spun it into its own successful show at iO.
It’s with the seemingly dusty Harold, however, that both hit the ground running. Their characters vary widely, though Eveleth often plays high-status, mysterious types (with her film-noirish drawl), while Laurent, who boasts a punky physicality, experiments with quick-fire emotion. Despite the group’s size, the two always seem to find each other onstage; the resulting scenes can’t help but pop.
Yet it’s surprising they took to the form so well, given some of their teachers’ propensity to fear the Harold—many of whom learned directly from Close himself. “I remember one saying, ‘Here’s how to fuck the Harold so that it doesn’t fuck you,’?” Laurent says. “I was like, ‘The Harold is trying to fuck me?’?”
The instructor’s admonition implies all the commonly held beliefs about the Harold (it’s too limiting, it’s too rigid, it beats creativity senseless), which are precisely what Eveleth and Laurent’s work counters. These iO devotees have found that structure—poetry, jazz or long-form improv—can make way for endless possibilities, a discovery that’s very…well, Del. “The Reckoning is the team he’d talk about,” Eveleth says. “It doesn’t matter that we didn’t experience the teacher. We get to experience his vision.”
Not surprisingly, Laurent smiles and nods.
Face iO’s Reckoning Thursday 11, 10:30pm in the Harold slot and Tuesday 16, 10:30pm in its weekly experimental show.
Books
Thanks DollarBill! On Dec 14, 2008 Austin Improv Collective member DollarBill wrote: "I saw one of the best shows I've seen in a long time last night. Beeler and Roy saw it too. Tim Meadows played with some iO brass (Jet Eveleth and Holly Laurent) and Greg Hollimon, the guy who played Principle Blackman on Strangers with Candy, played as well. It was great. Tim Meadows was incredible. Roy classified him as the ultimate straight man. We agreed that it was because he was able to not only fulfill the normal heightening role that the straight man performs, but also was saying things that were extremely witty/funny/smart/etc. Jet plays amazing characters, and I'd say her talents are easily SNL worthy. Holly's an actress and Greg Hollimon was just plain fun. It was a perfect mix and a great show."
Heroes
Spoleto Today 08
3 stages, 2 connections, 1 day
I Live Next to Horses, Piccolo Fringe, Theatre 99
"It’s not threatening when the wild improvising of character and situation is done by a brilliant goofball like I Live Next to Horses actor Jet Eveleth, rolling around on the floor in character as “Barb.” But are we less entertained when it’s a trickster god on a morphing stage in the middle of an opera that’s unstuck in time and refusing to stick to a stage and play nice Euro-classical music? Why is that exactly?"
I Live Next Door To Horses's Details
Status:
Married
Here for:
Networking, Friends
Hometown:
Chicago
Zodiac Sign:
Virgo
Education:
Grad / professional school
Occupation:
Improv
I Live Next Door To Horses's Schools
Columbia College Chicago
Chicago,Illinois
Graduated: N/A
Degree: Master's Degree
Major: Interdisciplinary Arts
Minor: Comedy Writing
2005 to 2007
Masconomet Regional Hs
Topsfield,Massachusetts
Graduated: 1996
Student status: Alumni
Degree: High School Diploma
1992 to 1996
I Live Next Door To Horses is in your extended network view more
About me: Check out: http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A45888
Who I'd like to meet: Holly and Jet perform in Chicago with The Reckoning at the iO Theater and at The Second City. For more information on The Reckoning go to myspace.com/improvsketchcomedy.com, iochicago.net,
myspace.com/michaeljkeaton
Jet, did I tell you my yoga teacher is a improv actress/stand up comedienne and she knows you and Holly from io west. small world she also know Eric in LA. just wanted to let you know. love, Dawn
hi! I think you got hacked...unless you really want me to take an online Karma quiz. But thank goodness you spammed me, because it made me go look at your Alaska pictures and I'm blown away. Please tell me where you were in those pix and how I can get there.
