Improv Adventures in The Villages: Mike Roth and John Bawol

During season seven of 'Open Forum in The Villages, Florida,' host Mike Roth interviews John Bawol, a new member of the local improvisational theater club. John discusses his diverse career in the electronics industry and emergency services before retiring and relocating to The Villages. They talk in-depth about John's journey into improv, his experiences performing in Michigan, and his recent move to Florida. The episode also highlights the community spirit in The Villages, upcoming improv shows, and the club’s charity initiatives. The segment includes an Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis, emphasizing the latest diagnostic processes for Alzheimer's disease.

00:00 Introduction to Open Forum Season Seven
00:46 Meet John Bawol: From Electronics to Improv
01:52 John's Journey to The Villages
02:59 Improv Beginnings in Michigan
05:17 Favorite Improv Skits and Stories
07:25 911 Dispatcher Tales
08:53 Upcoming Improv Show Details
10:55 Audience Participation and Interaction
12:56 Funny Audience Suggestions
14:49 Alzheimer's Diagnostic Process
16:20 Favorite Skits and Backwards Interview
17:09 Improv Games and Techniques
18:36 Improv Festivals and Musical Training
21:21 Audience Participation and Show Dynamics
26:30 Upcoming Shows and Venues
28:57 Conclusion and Supporters Shoutout

FALL IMPROV - UNSCRIPTED FUN AND GAMES

 If you are a Villager, I wanted to remind you about our great new improv show coming up on September 29th at 6:30 pm at the Rohan Recreation Center.  The show is for Villagers. The funniest show ever.
Reserved seating at tables of eight. Bring your own snacks and favorite adult beverages. Get Your Tickets at My.AllEvents.in/improv92925   but remember  it is only for Villagers who like to laugh!

Have you heard about mature adults with Donna Hoover and Mike Roth? Yes. This is my second podcast and Donna and I are going to be addressing subjects which are significant for seniors, especially seniors living here in the villages.

The easiest way to hear the show is to look it up on Apple Podcasts. Look for mature adults with Donna and Mike. We'll be looking for you there. 

You can also find us on mature adults with Donna and Mike. All spelled out. Dot buzz sprout.com

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Transcript

Improv Adventures in The Villages: Mike Roth and John Bawol

[00:00:00] John Bawol: [Mic bleed]

[00:00:04] Nancy: Welcome to Season seven of Open Forum in The Villages of Florida. In this show, we talk to leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live in and around The Villages. We also talk to people who have information vital to seniors. You will get perspectives of what is happening in The Villages, Florida area.

We are a listener supported podcast. There will be shoutouts for supporters. 

[00:00:28] Mike Roth: This is Mike Roth. Listeners, I'm thrilled to share with you this podcast, my passion project for you. This podcast brings you knowledge, inspiration, and things you need to know about the people and The Villages here in Florida.

I'm here today with John Bawol. John, thanks for joining us. 

[00:00:49] John Bawol: Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:00:51] Mike Roth: John, has joined our improvisational theater club. and is going to be in our September 29th improv show.

 John, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your own background? What'd you do before you got to The Villages? 

[00:01:08] John Bawol: Before I got to The Villages, I originally started my career working in the electronics industry for 20 plus years,

and after that I moved to Northern Michigan and got a job as a 9 1 1 dispatcher.

I did that for a few years and worked my way up as a supervisor and became a 9 1 1 director. So I saw from the beginning to the end, and after that I decided that.

I had done enough and I worked for at and t as their 9 1 1 specialist and their product specialist actually, and was a troubleshooter for them for seven years. after that I decided to retire and my wife and I enjoyed our time in northern Michigan. We got tired of shoveling four feet of snow and having two and a half feet of ice on the lake.

we decided we were going to look for somewhere else. To live and we wanted a warm climate. we had family in Arizona and we did that for a few years. then we decided to come down to Florida and my wife says, let's try The Villages. So we did, and we fell in love with The Villages.

It was just.

A, great time. So much to do and it was like Disneyland to us and we did that. We came back for a second year and as we were driving down from Michigan, my wife says

We're not leaving. Until we find a house. And this last march, we actually found a house closed on it.

Went back to Michigan, sold our house, and now we've been in The Villages living here full time for a little over a month.

[00:02:46] Mike Roth: Good. It's not unusual for people to tell me that

they

moved to The Villages because they thought it was Disneyland for adults. And In many respects, it is.

John, why don't you tell our listeners about your experience? As an improv player in when you were in Michigan? 

[00:03:02] John Bawol: In Michigan we had a a instructor who actually taught at one of the schools. He was a theater instructor, and during the summer he said, I'm gonna teach an improv course. So I saw it in the paper and I would go, I'm interested in that.

I did some community theater. Prior to that, and I was always interested in improv just because it was quick-witted and actually being in the public safety sector, you have to be a little quick-witted. You have to be on your toes all the time. So it was almost like a continuation of that. And so I took the class and it was like a six or eight week class, about eight years ago.

And so we did the class and the instructor says, why don't we invite your family and friends and let's do a little show for them. So we expected 25 to 30 people and over a hundred people showed up. And so We did it. And it was absolutely amazing. It was a rush. It was you got done and you were hyped up like you'd run a marathon.

It was so much fun. And the crowds, the people said, we asked, should we do it again? And they said, yeah.

So we started doing a show every other month, and for eight years we did it. We would pass a hat at the end of the night. It was, we didn't charge anybody. We passed a hat at the end of the night, and in these eight years we collected over $40,000, which we donated to local charities.

[00:04:23] Mike Roth: Yeah. And what part of Michigan was that? 

[00:04:24] John Bawol: was northern Michigan, the Houghton Lake area. If you think of Michigan as a mitten, we were about three quarters of the way north in a little town that I lived at was called St. Helen. 

[00:04:34] Mike Roth: Okay. So that was in the Northern 

[00:04:37] John Bawol: No, it was the northern part of the lower peninsula.

Ah,

okay. The northern part of the, we were still a troll. We were below the bridge, 

[00:04:44] Mike Roth: Below the bridge, 

[00:04:44] John Bawol: Below the bridge. And the people who live above the bridge would call us. Trolls or fudges because they sold a lot of fudge on Mackinac Island, which is just not

that area. 

[00:04:52] Mike Roth: Yeah. I visited Mackinaw Island a couple of times.

Very nice place. In fact, Wayne Richards, who accompanies our improv group, wrote the theme song

that

the Girl Scouts used appropriated for Mac on Island. Oh, Yes. And, why don't you share with our listeners,

what your singular best experience was in an improv skit? 

[00:05:17] John Bawol: Probably the best one, that improv skit that we did that was.

The most fun for me actually was something called newscasters and I was one of the newscasters, and I was able to do a little comedy at the beginning of that lead story and then hand over the newscast to my co-anchor who would do a little comedy skit. And then in turn, we would have the. Weather person give the weather, and that way you could ad lib back and forth.

And we had a sports person that we could ad lib back and forth with. And that's my favorite skit to do, is that one? 

[00:05:57] Mike Roth: One of my favorite skits in our show is the customer service skit. 

[00:06:01] John Bawol: Oh. that is a timeless skit because we've all dealt with customer service, right? And we've all had the frustration of not getting good customer service.

And you think about it,

So many people, when you get good customer service you're really happy that you've gotten that. But we all go through the trials and tribulations and when we're doing customer service, people can relate to it because they've all had that.

And that's what's great about improv.

it's not just trying to be funny, it's taking everyday things that are funny that people can relate to. 

[00:06:34] Mike Roth: I remember one of the first times we did that skit Larry Rodkin our assistant director came up with it. We did it at a private party and the take from the audience what product we had customer service problems with was a vacuum.

So Larry begins the skit by calling for customer service and he tells the first representative, this thing just doesn't suck. 

[00:06:58] John Bawol: That's a good line a vacuum.

[00:07:00] Mike Roth: Right? And the, scene went uphill and downhill from there. 

[00:07:04] John Bawol: Yeah it's always great. And with my 9 1 1 background that I've had.

9 1 1, you can be very sarcastic when you're not talking on the phone or on the radio because it, it's a lot of serious things and it's sometimes used to just break the tension of what's going on.

So I rely a lot on that also. 

Okay. Can you give us an example of a funny thing that happened to you when you were in the 9 1 1 business? 

Oh, my, one of my favorite stories was I answered the phone, this is when I was a dispatcher. I answered the phone and I said, nine one one, what's your emergency?

And

we looked at the screen and the screen of course, tells you the address, the phone number, the name of the person calling, so I get the information. And it was one of our frequent flyers. 80% of the calls come from 20% of the population. It's that old 80 20 rule that happens in a lot of businesses.

And so this gentleman is on the phone and said, I'll take the call. So I take it and I go, 9 1 1, what's your emergency? And he goes, I'm out of toilet paper. And I said, sir, that is not an emergency. He had the greatest line that I'll never forget. He goes From where I'm sitting it is. And I said, can you hold on a moment, please?

So I put him on hold. I called the ambulance bar That usually responded. 'cause he was a medical patient and I said, are you doing anything right now? And they said no. And I said Mr. Smith. Called us and he says he has an emergency, he's out of toilet paper. And all I heard was uncontrolled laughing on the other end of the And they said, Hey, we're not busy. We will go check on him just to make sure he is okay. So they went and checked on him and he was okay. Thankfully. And they did bring him some toilet paper. 

[00:08:44] Mike Roth: That's a good story. Every once in a while here we have wellness checks in The Villages, and unfortunately, sometimes they don't turn out.

Successfully.

[00:08:52] John Bawol: Yes. 

[00:08:53] Mike Roth: But we are having a show on September 29th. There are some tickets still available. Good seats. It's a show with 32 tables of eight. And it's a reserved seat show. So when you go 

to our website, which is simply:  My.AllEvents.In/Improv92925  you'll be taken to the site where you can buy tickets.

Learn about the show. Our improv club, here in The Villages.

is a 5 0 1 (C3), and we're, dedicated to

helping graduating seniors from The Villages Charter High School, who have shown a propensity to do things in the area of performing arts, and we give out scholarships every year.

Last year we gave out $4,000 in scholarships. So

all the proceeds of the show go into this scholarship fund. 

[00:09:50] John Bawol: That's an amazing thing because we're giving back to the community. Plus we get something out of it too. As a performer, it's always great to see people laugh. It's almost like a drug.

Because. You see them enjoying themselves, even though when you're doing it to a crowd, you don't see into the crowd the whole time when you're up there on stage but you can hear 'em laughing and the more they laugh, the better we actually get. I feel that it is such a good thing because we feed off that, 

[00:10:17] Mike Roth: About we do about, I'm gonna say eight

public shows a year. Half of them are on stages where we have the lights in our eyes and we really can't see much past the first row.

And the other half are small private parties or other clubs

employers to do a show for them. We did a show for the

South of 60 Club recently.

We had one coming up for the So long, Long Island Club . I love that name. And the shows in smaller rooms. Where the audience isn't separated from the performers by a high stage A lot were a lot more interaction. 

[00:10:55] John Bawol: I love it when we're able to bring audience members up to the stage or up with the group to participate with us.

That's some of the highlights because they also find out that, you don't have to be funny, you just have to be yourself. That's right. And they sit there, they come up and they volunteer. You help 'em out a little bit, give them little hints what to say and how to say it, and they do it and they come back and they bring another memory back with them to talk about when they head back home or

when they visit other friends who didn't come to the show.

[00:11:25] Mike Roth: We've learned that we, in a 90 minute show, we'd like to get 12 to 16 audience members up on stage in various scenes. Some of the parts are very easy, where the audience member. Only has to do things on stage but not say a word. Other scenes, the audience members make noises as opposed to saying words like the sound of a gun would be bang.

[00:11:49] John Bawol: Oh, you were asking me earlier about one of my favorite things to do and sound effects is one of those. They get up there and they have to make the sound effects. And

They're going what does this sound like? And Make

it up. And they do. And sometimes you look at 'em and go, wow, you're funnier than I am.

[00:12:06] Mike Roth: Yeah. Sometimes when they gotta do the sound of a gunshot,

they go, bang. And the actor says. Oh, I guess I had a silencer on that gun. 

[00:12:13] John Bawol: Yes, exactly. 

[00:12:15] Mike Roth: It,

makes it a very funny scene and really there's no pressure on the people who get up. 

[00:12:19] John Bawol: No. It's all in good fun and they enjoy it and they become part of the show.

And maybe that's a future improv performer too. 

[00:12:26] Mike Roth: And we've had that happen, yes. Where some people gotten up on stage have joined the club. We meet every month of the year,

the

first four Mondays of the month. So if you take a month like September coming up,

that's got

five mondays. So the fifth Monday is a show.

Yeah. 

[00:12:46] John Bawol: Yeah. 

[00:12:46] Mike Roth: We, have a lot of fun on stage and our audience members have a lot of fun and we've discovered that the more audience members we can get up on stage, the earlier in the show, we can do that. That works well. And then there are audience members who don't want to come up on stage but have funny ideas.

So we put three by five cards on each table and we say on the three by five cards, write something that you'd like to see the players act out. And we put 'em all in a hat.

Okay.

Like the old TV shows, 

[00:13:17] John Bawol: scenes, from a 

[00:13:17] Mike Roth: scenes from a hat, scenes from a hat 

on. Whose line is it Anyway? And

What we do is. Backstage,

one of my ladies in the club will censor the cards.

Okay? If someone's put a bad idea up there,

we will not put that one on stage. Okay? Like I said, from the stage, you can't see Everyone who's in the audience.

So if there are any 13 or 14 year olds in the audience, we don't wanna say bad 

[00:13:44] John Bawol: No, definitely not. 

[00:13:45] Mike Roth: Okay. Definitely not. No.

So we censor those cards, if the audience member puts on the card

something like, what were the names of the seven Dwarfs that were rejected by Disney?

And we ask our members to come up with the names, what would be a name of a darwf that was rejected? 

[00:14:06] John Bawol: One of the names could be, I don't know how to do that.

Or I'm the cook. That makes people sick 

[00:14:13] Mike Roth: Or a dwarf named sleazy. That one always gets a laugh. 

[00:14:17] John Bawol: Yeah, I can imagine.

So now it's but you, the thing 

[00:14:21] Mike Roth: Another name that would get a laugh would be

Stoner. Yes. 

[00:14:24] John Bawol: Yes. That, and things you don't expect people to say is what is actually funny. one of the things that I always try to do is bring them up to a punchline or something and not deliver the punchline.

Let the audience come up with their own punchline and they all come up with different punchlines. Yeah. They finish it themselves.

[00:14:44] Mike Roth: Let's take a short break and listen to, an Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis. 

 We're talking about Alzheimer's disease. What is the diagnostic process to split the difference between someone who has Alzheimer's and someone who has a different form of dementia? 

[00:15:01] Dr. Craig Curtis: That's a great question, Mike. So Alzheimer's disease in the past was a clinical diagnosis.

 And we would talk to the patient and the family and they would tell us about this progressive memory loss and maybe other symptoms that have, been occurring over the past three to five years. . And we would simply test their memory and maybe wait another year or two and retest their memory to look for decline.

Nowadays. It's completely different. As a matter of fact, now our diagnostic process involves actually looking for amyloid in the brain, which we now know causes Alzheimer's disease. How do you see amyloid in the brain? We can see amyloid in the brain using PET scans. Which is the most common way.

And now we're working on using blood tests. .In fact, there's already one blood test that is FDA cleared to detect amyloid in the blood, which is reflecting amyloid in the brain. 

[00:15:56] Mike Roth: And that would be the differential between another type of dementia and.

Alzheimer's. Yes, sir. 

[00:16:02] Warren: With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, craig curtis md.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

[00:16:18] Mike Roth: Thank you Dr. Curtis. So we were talking about different skits that we've done in the shows and what our favorites are.

What is another one of your favorites, John? 

[00:16:28] John Bawol: Another one of my favorites. We've already talked about sound effects and newscasters. Another one is It's a interview, a backwards interview. And so you run it backwards and you start out with, thank you for coming and we'll see you next week show, and you back up the interview.

That is always hilarious because you don't know what you're thanking them for because you're saying thank you before the person actually tells the interview what's going on. 

[00:16:57] Mike Roth: And we ask the

audience

to tell the interviewer and the interviewee. What the interview was all about at the beginning, and then they go backwards.

It's terribly funny. another one I like is the experts game

where we bring in, an expert on the field, and we ask the audience what the field of study was that this person is an expert on. And they do the interview, but that interview isn't visually interpreted by a third player about half of the laughs in the scene are what the third player does. in the physicality. 

[00:17:31] John Bawol: Yeah, exactly. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Facial expressions that are done. Also, one of my other ones that we enjoy doing is one that's called press conference, where the person gets up and he's holding a press conference.

He or she does not know what the press conference is about, and there's a group of people that ask questions to the person giving the press conference what are you gonna do with your spare time?

And this person doesn't know what he retired from and he has to figure that out. He or she has to figure it out just by the questions we ask and we get the ideas from the audience. One was Santa Claus was retiring. 

And moving to The Villages. We did that once up in Michigan actually. And so we'd start out, why are you retiring?

Oh, I got tired of it. What about all your coworkers? Leading off to the elves and the reindeer and people like that. And he would have to figure it out without being told. And that's a lot of fun because the audience is laughing because they're giving nonsensical answers at times.

'cause they don't know what they retired from, 

[00:18:33] Mike Roth: We were always trying to get better at Improv.

In July, a group of about 10 of us went down to 

Sarasota Improv Festival in Sarasota for two days, and we watched five shows a night from improv troops from all over the world.

And all day Saturday, we took improv courses.

One of the courses that I took was on improv musicals, how to do an improv musical.

That's something we've shied away from. But we're probably going to in 2026, do that. I participated, I'm not a great singer, and

we learned how to do it, how to put it together.

In fact, the group that trained me is called Shit Probe,

S-H-I-T-Z-P-R-O-B-E.

And that's a knockoff of what on Broadway they call the first reading through a musical with the orchestra. And

in that seminar, which was fully participatory I

learned how we can create an opening musical number from an audience take.

[00:19:38] John Bawol: Wow. It's, that's something that I can't carry a tune in a bucket and when,

[00:19:43] Mike Roth: Believe it. You don't have to. 

[00:19:45] John Bawol: I understand that, whenever I get called to do that, it becomes funnier because I cannot sing. I cannot put that, that ideas together. I don't have that gene.

My wife has it. I don't have that gene in my body. 

[00:19:57] Mike Roth: Wayne Richards has done our musical accompaniment for many of our shows for the past few years. And when he started with me, he said, Mike, I can do anything on a keyboard, but tell me what key do you guys sing in? And I looked at him and said Wayne, we sing in the key of I for improv.

You'll just have to make it fit. 

Anyway this group Shitz Probe is, going to be at the Sharon, I believe, or was on February. 17th, I believe tickets go on sale in December. Make sure you watch that, because our opening number will be in their style.

And they've actually made a commitment to

Do a little bit of a seminar for us on the day that they're here in The Villages.

[00:20:41] John Bawol: I look forward to that. Definitely. 

[00:20:42] Mike Roth: Oh yeah. that should be a great meeting. We may need a bigger room. But we have fun in improv. 

We do our meetings in two halves. First of all, I have a theory of operation that, we're all little children in big bodies, and so we have to have a recess.

So midway through about seven we take a recess and have some snacks that we bring in. And I always tell first timers that the second half of the. meeting is going to be a lot funnier than the first that sugar rush really helps. 

[00:21:10] John Bawol: Happens. Yeah.

[00:21:12] Mike Roth: Now that's not an endorsement of sugar. It's just the fact that people get a little bit looser and it just makes the second half go a lot faster.

[00:21:19] John Bawol: Definitely. 

[00:21:21] Mike Roth: The we were talking about improv games that we play. One of the games that we've had up in show is called, inappropriate roommates, and that's where we get from the audience, three bad habits that each one of the roommates have. 

[00:21:36] John Bawol: Now you, when you look at that it goes back to we've all lived with somebody. It could be We live with them now. 

[00:21:43] Mike Roth: Yeah, yeah.

I remember this, the first take was they laugh too much. And we had an actress in our company who could laugh for about 30 minutes straight. And then we had another one that was, too much flatulence. 

[00:21:56] John Bawol: Bodily functions is always a great topic. Is definitely something that we have I tell my wife, it's not me it's the cats.

[00:22:03] Mike Roth: And then

the third habit in that scene was.

that particular player fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. And it was always hilarious when we put it on stage. 

[00:22:13] John Bawol: It's interesting because once again, we're taking from real life.

And real life can be funny, and it should be because we should all be enjoying life. Improv's another way of doing it. 

[00:22:26] Mike Roth: You're looking it through another lens. 

It's like when you go to, when you were a kid, you went to a fun house and they had a curved mirror, and all of a sudden you were very short or very tall or very fat.

[00:22:38] John Bawol: That's true. It's interesting with improv though that I like about it, especially in the group here in the village, we stay away from a lot of the political comment. Because people, we hear enough of that on the news and things like that, so we stay away from that.

And it's great because we don't have to worry about, we know what is funny. And politics nowadays isn't funny like it used to be.

[00:23:02] Mike Roth: No, you only get in trouble with politics and religion. So we leave those two subjects out. 

[00:23:07] John Bawol: Definitely. 

[00:23:07] Mike Roth: And. We make a decision. Are we dealing with a younger crowd or an older crowd? And we tune to them and what they write on those little three by five cards before the show makes a big difference because we actually, read them.

[00:23:23] John Bawol: Yeah. the funny thing is, and I've been a recipient of this, you pull a card out because we not only do it to help lines, but scenes from a hat and there's a show or a skit that we do where you've gotta incorporate things that they.

said, you'll go, my mother told me and you read what's off the card and you do that 

[00:23:41] Mike Roth: We call that 

pick up lines. 

[00:23:42] John Bawol: up lines. Yes. 

[00:23:43] Mike Roth: When the cast was younger, we used to throw the cards on the ground, scatter 'em around the stage, fold them in half on the stage,

make

it slightly easier to pick up.

Now because 

[00:23:53] John Bawol: I 

[00:23:53] Mike Roth: We're seniors here. We

put the cards out in piles and we ask each player to pick up at least five of them and put 'em in their pocket. Okay. When they finish with the card, they move it from a left pocket to a right pocket. 

[00:24:05] John Bawol: And people are really thrilled when you read their suggestion that they put on there and they'll go, you'll see 'em in the audience go, that was mine.

[00:24:12] Mike Roth: If it was a good one. 

[00:24:13] John Bawol: Good one. Other ones and I'm sure you've run into this before, Mike, I've picked up the card and I go. I can't read a thing they wrote on this 

[00:24:20] Mike Roth: Those are called doctor's cards. Yes,

I'll thoss those up in the air. 

[00:24:23] John Bawol: It's okay, whoever this is, I'm really sorry, but 

I can't read that handwriting.

[00:24:28] Mike Roth: And some cards come up to me to read. I just randomly pull a cart out of the. hat. And when I read it, I say, oh my God, I can't say that in front of an audience. I rip the card in half and throw it away. 

[00:24:38] John Bawol: Itself is funny too. 

[00:24:40] Mike Roth: We've done all types of scenes.

We sometimes ask the audience for what the genre of the scene is, and I love it when they say, I want to be a dark 1930s movie.

[00:24:53] John Bawol: Yeah. And those are fun to do or one where you have to give a narrative during the movie and you quickly, you stand up and say, she thinks she knows what's going to happen, but it's not really going to happen that way.

And then you back away and do the scene and then something else happens. So there, there's so many different things and you gotta be on your toes. Because the idea that comes in your head may be an idea that no one else had thought about, and it may go to a different way. And so you scramble a little bit sometimes.

And the rule of improv is you never say no.

[00:25:26] Mike Roth: Say yes, 

[00:25:27] John Bawol: And yes. 

[00:25:27] Mike Roth: And

[00:25:28] John Bawol: you continue whatever you're given, you work with it, 

[00:25:31] Mike Roth: You say yes. And then what we're looking for. Is something ridiculous. Okay. To get to what we call the game of the scene. 

[00:25:39] John Bawol: Yep.

[00:25:39] Mike Roth: If you think of the old Jack Benny show the game of his show was Jack Benny is cheap.

That's true.

Everything was about Benny not spending money. 

[00:25:49] John Bawol: Yeah. And, the thing is we look at all of this and we get the ideas from the audience. And the audience is participating just by giving us the ideas. And it's so important that they're participating because a lot of times the people out there are a lot funnier than we are, have a lot funnier ideas, but they let us then add our expressions to their ideas.

[00:26:11] Mike Roth: When the audience is asleep, it's a much more difficult 

audience. 

[00:26:14] John Bawol: is. 

[00:26:14] Mike Roth: So I always tell people when they come to our shows, 

bring your hearing aids, don't leave them at home. Bring an extra set of batteries so they don't die during the course of the show. And if you're a lip reader, sit closer to the stage, buy your tickets earlier. 

[00:26:29] John Bawol: Yes. But we do enough shows that hopefully people will come out and after a while we start to get a following, and people, oh, you're doing a show, great. When is it, oh, I'm gonna bring more friends. So hopefully you'll bring a lot of friends to our September show. it's a lot more fun when you're there with people, also sitting at the table because you've shared a lot of the same life expierences. 

[00:26:50] Mike Roth: One of the hardest things for me. Is when people call me, a week or two before the show and say, Hey I need six tickets for me and my friends. And I've gotta say the show sold out two weeks ago.

You waited too long. 

[00:27:02] John Bawol: Yeah, by early, by often. 

[00:27:04] Mike Roth: It, not unusual to sell out a show three or four weeks before the show date.

And that happens regularly here. This year we did one show at the Old Middle Playhouse. I don't know if we're gonna do another one there. The idea was at the Old Mill Playhouse, there are no seating restrictions in the sense that people who live in Beaumont or Wildwood or Leesburg can come to the show and they don't need a visitor ID or a

villager

id. Yeah, guest pass. Guest pass, right? Yeah. 

But. Probably in 26. We'll do at least one more show there. 

[00:27:36] John Bawol: That would be great.

[00:27:37] Mike Roth: Yeah.

And their theater has a few more seats,

but it's not table style, it's audience style. They've got about 280 seats in the theater. Those are good shows and they

Increase the size of the stage that was

there the last time we did a show this year.

So. That would be a better stage. 

[00:27:55] John Bawol: Oh, okay. That was the first one I ever did there. So I didn't know the old stage. 

[00:27:59] Mike Roth: That was the old stage? 

[00:28:00] John Bawol: the 

[00:28:00] Mike Roth: Oh, okay.

The platform in front of the movie screen was raised about two feet, and there's only one staircase for 16 players to get up and down from was a little bit difficult.

Now they have two staircases. Wow.

Yes. And they reinforced it. So when four people are dancing on the stage doesn't rock up and down. 

Yeah that would be a big improvement. But we are constantly getting better at improv.

And again, if you want to come out just to see a meeting we are going to be at Rohan the first four Mondays of the month from six 30 to about eight 20.

As a group, we typically go out to either Kumo or Pieasanos For a snack and something to drink after a practice. And probably before the end of 2025, we're going to be having some

performances in something called the Laugh Lounge over at, Bacall

the fourth Friday of the month. But more details on that to follow.

John, I want to thank you for being part of the show today. 

[00:28:59] John Bawol: Oh, thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed this and I look forward to doing it again. 

[00:29:04] Nancy: Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9:00 AM Should you wanna become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters, Tweet Coleman, Ed Williams, Duannne Roemmich and Dr. Craig Curtis at K two in The Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. The way our show grows is with your help. Text your friends about this show if you enjoyed listening or just tell your friends about the show. We thank everyone for listening.

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