The Don’t We Boys with Dubalicious
Compass College of Cinematic Arts, Grand Rapids
March 14, 8 p.m.
$10
laughfestgr.org, (616) 735-4242
As far as benchmark goals are concerned, The Don’t We Boys are ahead of schedule.
Shortly before recruiting Scott Erickson as their third member near the end of last summer, sketch comedians Joe Anderson and A.J. Schraeder of The Don't We Boys wrote up a list of goals for 2015.
"One of our goals for March of 2015 was that we wanted a 'feeling of inevitable momentum,’” Anderson said. “The great part is, right now we're early. We're ahead of schedule on that.”
Shortly after San Francisco's SF SketchFest, the trio wrapped up filming a pilot episode for a new TV series produced by Squirm.tv and Waterfall Productions. Filmed in the Holland-based Haworth Corporate Headquarters building, The Don't We Boys! pilot crafts an alternate reality where sketch comedy is a highly valuable, globally traded commodity and in this world, and Erickson, Anderson and Schraeder — appearing as Mr. Don't, Mr. We and Mr. Boys — are billionaire proprietors of a multinational company.
The TV show, which Anderson calls a "sketch comedy in a sitcom skin-suit" builds on the trio's existing comedic brand — an abrupt, yet goofy misdirect from any given extreme to another. For example, what at first might seem like a carjacking may end up being a high-strung friend reiterating seat-belt safety.
“One of the things I always say is that we perform comedy the only way we know how — with one foot in the grave,” Anderson said. “Which is this idea that we're going to try to do things like taking extreme situations and making them relatable or taking relatable situations and making something extreme about them — but that relatable part is the constant.”
And according to Anderson, that performance is made easier by the other Boys.
"You get to take chances knowing that you've got, in our case, two other people on stage that are going to make sure it works," Anderson said.
"You keep the scene moving, if something happens, you keep going," Erickson added. "It's like the Mighty Ducks when they're skating in that V. You can cycle out — it's not about keeping the same person at the tip of the spear the whole time. We're cycling out, we're dancing, we're misdirecting."
