The Men's Support Group: No Shame Theatre, Arts Center, Carrboro; 2 Aug 2014

The flash video plays in Firefox (Linux, WinXP), IE v8 on WinXP (two installations), Safari on MacBookPro and Chrome (WinXP).

The protagonist wants to join a men's support group, but first has to pass a test.

Another cell phone execrable quality video.

Players in order of appearance: Guy, Joe, Caroline, men's ensemble

script and video (C) Joseph Mack 2014, released under GPL v3.

• script: Men's Support Group

  I wrote this after hearing a reading in a sketch class, of a sketch by a woman about a cavemen's support group. In it the men were discussing their problems; one's man's wife wasn't fertile, another man wanted to gather rather than hunt and a third man was only there because his wife made him go. Maybe this is funny to women. Maybe this is what women think men talk about in a support group (it isn't). Humour has to be based in reality. I wrote this as an antidote to the woman's sketch. I had to come up with something that men really worry about. This is it.

  After I wrote the sketch, I went to my weekly DSI company practice, where you start with news. I announced that I'd written a sketch, where men were worryed about their penis size. That was all I said; I didn't go into the content of the sketch. There were 10 men in the room; the 3 women members of the team hadn't arrived yet. Knowing this was a difficult problem to tackle, I expected everyone to go "Wow, how did you do that?!". What I actually got was stone cold silence. Even the voluble coach was stumped for words. I saw that I was in a company of male comics, who couldn't laugh at their penis size. As far as I was concerned, you aren't a comic till you can laugh about your genitals. By this stage I was having lots of problems at DSI, but hadn't found an alternative place to do and learn Improv and sketches. As far as I could tell, I was trapped at DSI and would have to make do.

  I didn't attempt to peform this sketch at DSI and performed it about 6 months later at No Shame Theatre.

• mp4 video: mens_support_group.NoShame.20140802.mp4 300MB