Organizing Chaos: Local funny guy Patrick Schmitz teaches at First Stage Children’s Theater and ComedySportz Milwaukee
“OK, give me a minute here, I gotta get some money for that vending machine because I am dying,” says Patrick Schmitz as he rustles through his desk drawers for singles. “Do you want some gummy bears? They’re good gummy bears.”
He holds out a Ziploc bag filled with chewy colorful sugar, taking a fistful for himself. “I didn’t know there were bad gummy bears,” I say as I grab three.
“Oh, yeah, there are some bad ones out there.”
Some moments more than others, Patrick Schmitz seems like a kid in an adult’s body. This is one of those moments. He’s eating lunch from a vending machine and offering novelty candies, when stereotypically a comedian should share caffeine, alcohol or nicotine. He’s in his unofficial uniform of a gray Organized Chaos T-shirt, jeans and gym shoes: both practical yet completely devoid of age.
Patrick is an improv actor, coach and teacher. Teaching, for him, does not involve homework and books. Rather, it is rigorous in laughter, wit, creativity and observation. Can you learn to be funny? If Patrick Schmitz is your teacher, then the chances look good.
We sit at a table in the Milwaukee Youth Art Center. Snow is blowing horizontally on this Saturday, the day of the week when Patrick spends five hours teaching improv to high school students at First Stage Children’s Theater, the Milwaukee Youth Art Center’s theater school, in a program called Organized Chaos.
He is in an adult quartet called “The Gentlemen’s Hour,” coaches “The Meanwhiles” and teaches classes to junior high and high school students. He lives in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee and is 30 years old, although his personality seems like that of a enthusiastic, outgoing boy. His face is round and jovial, his hair light brown and cut short.
Patrick is the youngest of 10 children, and he says his siblings were a tremendous influence on his humor and imagination.
“Everything was theatrical growing up. It was all make-believe land. Now, to have a career in make-believe land,” Patrick Schmitz shifts to a whisper, “it’s f***ing awesome.” He says it like it’s a secret — he starts to laugh a little and rubs his palms on his knees.
Before picking up “The Gentlemen’s Hour,” his comedic quartet used to go by the name “Socially Awkward.” Patrick says the name suited the three other members rather well, although he wouldn’t exactly pin himself as awkward.
“That’s why I’m the one standing by the door greeting people when they come to our shows,” he says.
“There’s no ego in our group. They’re all very nice, all coming from genuine places. No one walks into a room and is loud just to be loud,” Patrick says.
Although competition may be an unknown concept in “The Gentlemen’s Hour,” it was prevalent in Patrick’s stint at Milwaukee’s ComedySportz, a licensed improv organization with more than 20 locations in the U.S.
The club has a similar format to Whose Line Is It Anyway? where teams of “actletes” compete in various games and are judged by referees. During his stint there from 2000 to 2003, he was not only the first new member in five years but also the youngest of all the players.
Comedy, while not the average cubicle gig, is not exempt from workplace hierarchy. In the early days at ComedySportz, Patrick, an actor, acquainted himself with students at the club by inviting them to his house on weekends. They would practice and he would give tips to help develop their scene work. Word caught on, however, and suddenly Patrick Schmitz was a threat. Teachers thought he was working against them, and they resented how students were approaching a new and young player for advice.
“No one was outright mean to me, but it was just this sense of apathy. They knew they didn’t have to hold my hand, but they wouldn’t shake my hand either,” Patrick says.
His facial expressions as he recalls make it clear it was psychologically and emotionally wearing. At times he looks at the table and shakes his head incredulously. “Phew, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve never felt so left out before. I started to think I wasn’t funny. It really messed with my self-esteem,” Patrick says.
After awhile it began to feel like he was leading a double life. He would get on stage and make people laugh with his humorous contributions. And then he’d walk off to a bitter clique and unsupportive environment – an ironic reality when it’s more intimidating to walk off stage than on.
“Oh yeah,” he says, summarizing a distinguished memory, “you go on van rides for 45 minutes where no one talks to you, and people just completely leave you out. And then you got on stage, and they laugh at you. Then you get back in the van, and it’s another silent drive.”
The exclusion got so bad that Patrick eventually considered giving up improv.
“But then I thought, you know, I can’t talk about cars, politics or sports,” he shakes his hand, indicating he wouldn’t really care to. “But comedy, I can sit and talk about it all day and analyze it all day. I couldn’t give that up.”
Teacher Knows Best
On Saturday, Patrick is donning jeans, gym shoes and his gray First Stage T-shirt with students’ messages and names signed all over the back.
He paces the sun-lit room with a clipboard and takes attendance while 15 kids do warm-ups. They arrange themselves in a circle and begin a game called “Hep.” After watching several rounds, Hep’s complicated rules and legalities remain unclear. The students go around in the circle, each taking a turn with hand clapping and verbal exclamations like, “hep,” “zip zop,” “woah,” “wormhole” and “dip dip dee.” To them, it’s as easy as simple division, even though they sound like adolescent martians.
The collective volume of the voices makes for an exceptional soundtrack. Most are wearing Chuck Taylor sneakers. Some have torn jeans or chains hanging from their pants. One girl is wearing purple acid-washed jeans with purple sneakers. But looks aside, they couldn’t be more opposite from the stereotype of an apathetic, unmotivated teenager. These are the kids who speak enthusiastically about everything. Simple hellos to classmates are so energized, it sounds as though they hadn’t seen each other in months.
After a few more minutes of the gibberish game, Patrick tells them to sit down in their seats, which are lined lengthwise across the wall. He instructs them to get into groups of four or five, preferably with students they don’t know very well. Together they must decide on a topic of conversation that they feel strongly about.
“Obviously, we don’t want to get into politics or religion,” Patrick says.
“Awww,” the students say in mock disappointment.
The students are to simply sit at a table in their groups and hold conversation without acting in character. Patrick encourages them to intensely voice their thoughts.
“What we’re looking for are strong decisions, strong opinions, strong choices. And natural and realistic reactions,” Patrick says. “Listening is a huge part of this.”
Patrick turns and writes the word “Funny” on the room’s white board in green marker.
“OK, let’s review. What makes something funny?”
It seems like a huge and daunting question, but it hangs for only a split second before students begin to answer.
“Truth!” One student throws out.
“Yes, truth, absolutely,” Patrick writes it on the board. “If I feel you are trying to be funny and trying to make us laugh, I will stop you. I will coach you. I will do my job.”
After listing other words like conflict and irony, Patrick asks who would like to go first. A brown-haired girl named Emily throws her hand in the air. The three other boys in her group, obviously annoyed with Emily’s eagerness, give out small moans and mumbles. The four sit down at the table in the front of the room, Emily on the end.
“OK, before we start, when you guys were getting up here, I heard some comments and noises. Why did you make those comments?” Patrick asks.
Emily dodges the question, saying she didn’t say anything. She looks at the three boys. One of them says he didn’t feel prepared enough to go first, while another says he would have rather gone second or third.
“Well, I know you guys really well, so it doesn’t bother me as much. But let’s stay away from the comments. It makes other people feel like you don’t really want to be here, and it just isn’t professional,” Patrick says in a calm and kind voice, like an older brother to sensitive siblings.
“We’re in a safe environment here, OK? You don’t need to do this whole ‘cool’ act. It’s much more professional to be like, ‘OK, all right, let’s do this!’ ” he says with a clap.
The students note Patrick’s mild scolding without wilting. This wasn’t the first time he spoke about professionalism — at the start of class he encouraged people to be more prompt when replying to his e-mails.
The groups discuss a variety of topics — music, modern art, weddings and why girls go to bathrooms in groups. While they talk, they build houses of cards to have something to do with their hands. One group tells Patrick they want to discuss divorce.
“Umm, hmm,” Patrick says, biting his pencil and moving his chair to another spot in the room. “I’m not really sure of peoples’ personal business in here, so I’d encourage you to go with a plan B,” he says. The group then decides to talk about high school social pressure.
Some of the kids are noticeably talented — their humor seems effortless, their facial expressions natural yet more entertaining than words. Some are natural leaders in steering the conversation, and the funniest ones don’t seem to realize this.
Such oblivion to their undeniable stage presence — or classroom floor presence, rather — makes their talent remarkable. They have learner’s permits in funny.
But not everyone is blessed with artfully furrowed brows or comedic faces. To some kids, funny doesn’t come naturally. It’s like cardio — lots of effort, some physical strain and intricate planning of what to do in advance.
In a discussion about music, Teddy, a lanky student who frequently speaks in an English accent, makes far-stretched analogies about pizza and pasta being like Galileo and Isaac Newton. He then sneezes to purposely knock down his house of cards. Nothing falls. He still looks around the room to see if anyone saw.
“Teddy, keep it honest, keep it honest,” Patrick says, sitting with a pencil and notepad in his lap.
When the group is critiqued, Teddy’s hamming doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Teddy, just a little bit of putting on a show there. Just a little bit. Let go of ‘being on,’ OK? It’s nothing personal.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Teddy says, still sitting at the table, nodding.
“I had this problem for the longest time,” Patrick says. “People would tell me all the time that I needed to turn it off, and I never knew what they meant. But then one day I realized it. I walked into a room and was just quiet, and people were asking me what was wrong. And I was like, ‘Nothing’s wrong! I’m just feeling quiet, you know? I’m just being human.’ It’s a weird feeling. It’s a weird pressure and expectation.”
As the day progresses, however, Teddy is not alone. It seems every group has at least one ham. It only takes a few minutes before it’s recognizable, evidenced by a laugh that booms louder than any other in the room at things that aren’t that hilarious. Or they will frequently throw themselves into scenes while others sit back and observe. Sometimes it’s painful, or uncomfortable, to see children trying so hard to reign in laughter.
After class, I ask Patrick if he ever gets annoyed with the stage stealers.
“No, I just have to tell them to watch it. And usually when I say something, they listen to me, because, well…” He pauses and raises his eyebrows. “They know I’m right, basically.”
Keeping it Clean
Two middle-aged women sit on a bench in the hallway of the Milwaukee Youth Center, leaning in toward each other while exchanging whispered opinions on a woman they both know. On the ground beside them, two little girls are playing with cards on the purple and taupe colored carpet. It’s noon on a gloomy Saturday in April 2009, with rain falling in sheets from a dark sky. Despite the gossiping women and playing children, the hall is quiet. Except for one voice.
It’s coming from the classroom across the hall. A booming voice, so full of energy that if voices could pop at the seams from spirit, this one would.
“OK, back to the game!” It says, followed by a handclap and the chatter of adolescents.
Walking in, Patrick is standing like an umpire in front of eight junior high students. He has got his hands on his knees, smiling and instructing the kids on the next step in the game. Two students are playing a hand game while the other six must act like street mimes, silently roaming about the room. The point is to reinforce improvisational focus — to be attentive to tasks at hand as well as the other people with whom you share the stage.
“OK, hug! Hug, hug, hug!” Patrick booms. The kids maniacally huddle and layer backs over backs and arms over arms, and then part, revealing smirks and crescent moon smiles that linger as they walk back to their plastic chairs.
“That was basically improv in a nutshell,” Patrick says. “Healthy competition and teamwork.”
He is once again wearing his gray Organized Chaos tee, jeans and sneakers. If the weather is any excuse to feel down or tired today, Patrick doesn’t buy it. One would guess he slept 12 hours the night before and/or drank a pot of coffee before coming to work. He is naturally revved, pleasant and animated in a contagious way.
He steps to the side as classes rotate, when the junior high students leave and the high school students come in. “These kids. These kids,” he says, shaking his head. “They keep me young, but they’re killing me. Killing me with their youth,” he says, laughing and ushering high school students into the room.
Although Organized Chaos classes feature games, skits and bizarre warm-ups where the students speak gibberish, there are also times when the class quits the act and sobers up from laughing fits. Today Patrick is kicking off class with the high school students with a class discussion: “What not to do in improv.” It’s written in messy handwriting on the white board, and Patrick wants to talk about taboos.
The idea came to him after Alex, from “The Meanwhiles,” experienced an uncomfortable moment when directing his student longform improv group at Brown Deer High School. A student took to the stage and began to speak in an offensive Asian accent, and Alex was a bit perplexed as to how to handle the incident.
“So, I thought, ‘I should talk to my students about this!’ So what are some things we shouldn’t do in improv?” Patrick asks the 14 students. “Obviously drugs and alcohol are out the window, and sexual innuendos, but what else?”
One of the kids raises his hand and says mental deformities.
“Yes, yes, mental deformities. We don’t want to go down that road. If you find yourself playing that character, I’d suggest you get out of it fast.”
“And physical deformities, too, I guess,” the student continues to Patrick. “But, I mean, you should just take a good look at your audience to make sure.”
“Uh, yeah … or you could just be a good person?” Patrick says, noting that there doesn’t have to be an individual in a wheelchair in the room for physical deformities as humor to be offensive.
“Yes! Anna?”
“Um, well, you should probably avoid anything that may not be offensive to you but could be to someone else,” Anna Wolf says in her high-pitched doll-like voice. She sits in her chair, wearing denim Bermuda shorts and striped pastel-colored Keds.
“Yes, be more specific,” Patrick says.
“Well, just like stuff that you don’t think is a big deal, but it can hurt other people’s feelings,” she offers again.
“Yes. Anna. That’s what we’re talking about. Specifics!” Patrick says, clasping his hands at his chest and chuckling at Anna’s earnest attempt to answer.
He tells his students to stay away from offensive accents, particularly those of the “gangster,” Asian, Indian and Native American. He also advises them to avoid body type jokes.
“We had a girl up here in the last class, and someone in a scene goes, ‘Oh, she’s so skinny, she needs to eat!’ And she was really little. And it’s like, hmm, OK, well now is she feeling self-conscious?” Patrick says, twisting his face into a sort of unsure but concerned look.
The students begin to balk after deformities, race, sexism and grotesque humor are all called off. “I’m not trying to put walls on your humor,” Patrick says. “Some things are playful in comedy, like stereotypes.” He notes shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons, which sometimes employ more controversial humor that is borderline mean. “I wouldn’t recommend you guys do that sort of comedy … like making fun of Helen Keller,” Patrick says, completely serious.
Patrick, as a teacher, doesn’t wait for a kid’s feelings to bruise before reigning in the jokes. He wants to stomp out that possibility, the chance that a kid would ever leave class feeling small or inadequate. After seeing him teach, act and coach, Patrick Schmitz knows a lot about what’s funny.
But what he knows isn’t funny, is almost just as telling.
Tags: children's theater, comedian, comedy, comedysportz, first stage, first stage children's theater, milwaukee, Mr. Funny, organized chaos, patrick schmitz
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