The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi - #232 Murder Mystery Dinner Theater with Scott Seiss (Patreon Excerpt)

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

In this Patreon exclusive excerpt from our first East Coast tour, Gianmarco & Russell are joined by special guest Scott Seiss to discuss the downsides of being an improv actor at a murder mystery dinner. Join the Patreon free for 7 days to watch the full recap of the East Coast tour. We revisit on-stage antics and conversations with guests additional guests including Dan Bougler and Zarna Garg! https://www.patreon.com/downside You can watch a video clip of this episode HERE! Join the Patreon free for 7 days for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and MORE. Follow Scott Seiss on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube Follow The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi on Instagram Follow Gianmarco Soresi on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, & YouTube Subscribe to Gianmarco Soresi's email & texting lists Check out Gianmarco Soresi's bi-monthly show in NYC Get tickets to see Gianmarco Soresi in a city near you Watch Gianmarco Soresi's special "Shelf Life" on Amazon Follow Russell Daniels on Twitter & Instagram E-mail the show at [e-mail] Produced by Paige Asachika & Gianmarco Soresi Video edited by Dave Columbo Technical production by Chris Mueller Special Thanks Tovah Silbermann Original music by Douglas Goodhart Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Red One... We're coming at you. ...is the movie event of the holiday season. Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're gonna help us find him. You can't trust this guy. He's on the list. Is that Naughty Lister? Naughty Lister?

Dwayne Johnson. We got snowmen! Chris Evans. I might just go back to the car. Let's save Christmas. I'm not gonna say that. Say it. Alright.

Let's save Christmas. There it is. Only in theaters November 15th. You are a man of the theater. I'm a man of the theater. A specific kind of theater in particular. Well, I started out, I did improvisational murder mystery dinner theater. Fun stuff. People just laughing at the existence of such a thing.

Just laughing at that. Laughing at my experience. So has anyone here been to Improvised? It's a long name, I gotta say. That's correct. The longer the name, the less legitimate the art form, in my opinion. The bigger of an ask it is to go to the show.

Where was this? This was in Baltimore. This was in Greektown at a Greek restaurant. But they also did private events, like birthdays, corporate parties. But it was a restaurant first and foremost. It was a restaurant first. It was not created for improvised murder mystery dinner

theater. Improvised murder mystery dinner theater was added on to restaurant. Okay. was added on to restaurant. Okay. And so, talk to me, I walk in, it's murder mystery night. How much are tickets, by the way? So this was like a big thing on Groupon, so people would buy like... I bet.

Yeah. Basically, the cheaper the better for this situation, okay? Yeah, yeah. And basically it would be like, you would get a binder and a fedora and a silly name. You would get a name like Dixon Cox or Detective Peter Ness. P-Ness. Okay. Thank you.

Hold on. I didn't write these. This is something I experienced. Wait. Can I just say when I heard Peter Mess, I thought Peter Mess, and I thought it was like penis making a mess of cum. That's where my mind went, I'm just saying. Oh my God. So it wasn't that.

It was just Peter Ness. Peter Ness, Bill Loney. Okay. Okay. Some of them are really crude, and some of them are really cute and sweet. How many characters? There would be maybe like 12 to 15 characters. They're paying all these actors to do this?

No, so it would be like... There's where you're wrong. No, no, no, no, no. You're overestimating. There would be like three actors, okay? And then the other characters would be played by people in the audience. So you'd be improvising it with them,

with audience members. You know, in a way, that's kind of what we just did here tonight. Correct, yes. This is really murder mystery improvised. And people were like, my grandma just died, please don't do a murder mystery.

We were like, oh my God. Did you find when the audience had to be the actors, did people ever abuse that? Because we did a show where that would happen, and sometimes the women would, you know, touch. Yeah, I mean, yeah, some people took the role of like, oh, I'm a mob boss. I'm having an affair with the lounge singer way too seriously. You know, and it's like, that's a stranger to you, okay? But basically, the worst part was when we would go to to do like a work, like Christmas party or something like that.

Sure. And the corporate, the bosses would be like, listen, we haven't told anyone we're doing a murder mystery tonight. And we go, okay. And they go, so we want you to walk around like you're just a comedian, and then we want you to die. Wait, what is that prison? I love the idea of walk around like you're a comedian. It's like the silly walk guy.

So I was like, whoa, why are there 12 comedians here tonight? Oh my God, one of them died. I don't think that was a weird walk. I think he was having a seizure, perhaps. So, okay, did you ever have to be that guy? I had to be that guy. They were like, just go around. We told them it was a comedy show, okay?

We didn't tell them it was a murder mystery show. You announced it like, hey everyone, we're doing a comedy show. Exactly. We're gonna walk around now. Yeah. They were like, mingle, mle before the show. Pre-show. And then they start the show.

And you're doing it in character, the mingling? I'm doing it in character, which they don't understand that my character was often supposed to be alive in 1935 or something. So I'm trying to stay deeply in that character. And I'm like, what even is a Tesla or whatever the fuck?

You know what I mean? What happened was they would say it's going to be really fun. We're going to surprise them. You're going to die. And then we're going to stand up and we're going to say we're doing a murder mystery. And I would say to them, I would say, it's not going to go well. I would say it's not because no one wants to go to a work party where it's like, oh, I'm going to get free drinks and food. And then have your boss stand up and go, we're actually doing a three and a half hour puzzle.

Oh, my God. As a team. So when you died, how did you do it? Like, did you grab your heart? Did you just, could you reenact it? You know exactly what it was. It'd be like a fucking. Please, please.

It would be like a, hey, is this my drink? Oh, dang it. Oh, no. Wow. Now, could they tell you were acting, or did they believe that you were going to die? Did they think that? For a second, I was like, wait, what happened to Scott? Stop the show. Stop.

Someone call 911. Yes. But if you died, did you have to lay there for the rest of the evening? What happened was the other two actors that were with you would then drag you out of the room. And then you were done?

You couldn't go home? And put you in a closet. No. Because if you... Hold on. If you died, then you also played the detective. So I would change clothes.

I would put on a trench coat. And I would come back in as the detective. And everyone would say, you just faked your own death. And I would say, no, they didn't want to pay a fourth actor. I think this would work, it would be fun if they didn't at any point

announce it was a murder mystery theater and so you just re-entered as a detective and everyone was like... theater and so you just reentered as a detective and everyone was like so and then it's it's that long it's a it's a it's like a long night it was a lot it depended on how good the people were you know what I mean sure like it was like okay this it was a puzzle they had to solve it and you know we would give clues i'm sure at ikea they were good at putting it together yeah god damn it some people got into it some people got into it i i did so we would go on the road with it and like i would so i like i was a you know struggling actor whatever i would eat all i would eat was like nine mcdonald's hash okay, in the morning. And then I would go do the show.

And I remember specifically one show, I was walking around as the detective, and I had a McDonald's receipt in my pocket. And I threw it away during the show. And this table saw me do it, and they dug through the garbage. They thought it was a clue.

They thought it was a clue. They fucking poured the garbage out, dug through it, and they came up to me and they were like, how do you explain this? He died of obesity. Oh, my God. They were like, what does this mean? And I said that my life is sad.

Oh. And tell me, so what are you getting paid for one night's work? You're getting 50 bucks a show. Don't tell him how much you're getting for this appearance. So I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from the Patriot. Wow. We do two the Patreon. Wow. We do two every month. Yeah.

And if you want to see the rest, there's more. There's probably a full episode. And it gets juicy later on. It gets juicy. Someone might show hole. And that's when we say the things we really think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we go, well, no one's going to hear this on the Patreon.

But you know what? You could. You could hear it. You could. Patreon.com slash downside.? You could. You could hear it. You could. Patreon.com slash downside. You get two bonus Patreon episodes every month. You get access to my comedy special, The Rats Are In Me. Who gives a shit about that, though?

It's about the new Patreons where we record and release really back to back. So we get into the weeds. We get topical. Yeah. Whatever Trump said that day, we're repeating it again and again. Yeah. And patreon.com slash downside. Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you. Or watching. Downside. You're listening to The Downside. The Downside. With Gianmarco Cerezi.