There are two things I remember most about the tent shows:  
Stress and Cold!  When we were doing these shows, they were 
the six Thursdays before Eric and I were going to be married. 
In fact, the only reason there wasn't a seventh Thursday is 
because of our rehearsal dinner!  A lot of those shows are 
a blur.  All I wanted to do was get them done (not the best
attitude, I know, but it's true), because I had eight million
other things to plan, family from Ireland coming in, and lots
of placecards to write out.  Plus, the tent was SUPPOSED to 
be heated, but they didn't have the tent properly closed off,
and the one (yes, only one)  torpedo heater they had didn't 
help much.  So by the third or fourth show, my shorts and 
sandals were not cutting it at all.  Of course, it didn't 
really matter, since at the third performance NO ONE CAME!  
We decided not to do it.  Everyone else was pretty upset, 
but I just couldn't think about it.  All I could think about 
was, Yes! I'll be home early.  There were fun times to the 
shows, though.  It was the first time I sang "American Guy", 
much to my father's chagrin (he really hates that song).  I 
love that feeling of newness.  It was also my first "best 
of" show, and there were some classics I was excited about 
that I hadn't done before, such as Spiderback, Girl Talk, 
Stereotypes (Zima, man!), etc. My favorite memory, however, 
was probably the worst moment of the shows combined!  We 
were at the last performance of the shows, and there were
THREE people there:  Kris' sister & brother in law, and 
Steve's wife, Pat.  So these people had seen all these 
things before, and we were stir crazy. The last sketch 
was Knight School.  It started out iffy because Steve 
had this silly Lone Ranger-type mask on when he came out.  
And I of course missed the apple like I always did.  When 
it came time for Eric to go off on us, he ripped the mask 
off of Steve's face.  Steve them mumbled something about
it being for his acne.  I could see Eric was about to lose 
it.  I should point out at this point that I was actually 
higher up than the rest of the cast on a stool in 
the back of the "class", since there were not enough chairs 
for all of us, so I was trying not to do ANYTHING that would 
draw attention to myself. Anyway, Eric is losing it, and I'm 
holding my breath. I was doing pretty well, until I 
looked over and Mo was sitting next to Steve with her 
shoulders shaking like she was laughing.  That's when I 
lost it.  When it came time for us to "say it!", we were 
muttering, and Dale was yelling, and Eric had a bottle of 
RC.  When we had died down, Eric went to take a sip of 
the RC, and Dale yelled "Shut Up!".  Well, Eric spit out 
his pop, and I almost wet my pants. We were all laughing 
and totally broken up.  I was a mess.  Between trying
not to laugh and then laughing hysterically, my eyes were 
watering, my nose was running, and again I cannot stress 
enough how close I came to wetting my pants.  While this 
may not have been Gag's most shining moment, I can't help
but feel that moments like these are what makes this kind 
of thing fun sometimes.

- Millie

****************

These tent shows sounded like a great idea, to me. I think it was
Steve who brought them to the table. I'm not sure. What was 
offered was a 6 month run (Sept - April), Thursday nights at 8,
in a heated tent, they'd do the advertising and no worries. 
It sounded like a sweet deal, I know Dale thought it was a 
bad idea, but it gave us a home.

The tent was a giant deal used for fashion shows and wedding
receptions. It sat in wooded surroundings adjacent to a 
park district building that housed night classes and art 
showings. It was also stuck between one of the larger
minor league baseball parks in the midwest and some train 
tracks. Baseball wouldn't be a problem and we hoped the
best for the trains. 

The first week was pretty full, mostly Park District
big wigs and our families. After that it slowly
careened downhill. There are tons of memories that 
flood back at the thought of the tent. I work only
5 minutes from there so I would go there straight 
after work and sleep on stage. I remember the night
something went wrong with our sound and all the 
transitional music was taken from the radio.
I remember cleaning and recleaning the fucking Rehydrator!
I love ya Josh but I could shoot you for that sketch. 
I remember being interviewed for the newspaper and 
equating my joining Gag with Hagar joining Halen and 
laughing to myself that they'd never print that (and 
didn't). 

Like Millie the best memory was that last night when
we just screwed around with everything. It was a long
time coming. We knew it was the last show. After 4 weeks
of almost no audience and catching wind of our PD contact
going to the board and claiming that we hadn't fulfilled
our part of the deal (which was a lie), we opted out of the
rest of the run. 

To give you some idea of what a shithole operation this is...
several papers are still showing us as performing there every
Thursday. It's been 2 and a half years. The idiots have
never even bothered to take it out.

SIGH...oh well. 

- Eric

****************

Did I really think it was a bad idea?

I remember Steve and I going to the place to make the deal. Wasnąt that
Steve staring at some risque poster on the wall and being caught doing so by
the woman who cut the deal with us? I knew her because she used to do media
for the Paramount and I used to hang out in their offices a lot for some
reason (well, we rented the Copley Theater on occasion and I was just trying
to be familiar so we wouldn't get screwed, I guess). Anyway, I donąt
remember any foreboding. We had discussed performing out on their deck, but
we decided the lack of seating, and tech stuff, and the bugs and that train
and ... The tent seemed like a better idea.

But they did totally fuck us over by not heating it as promised, and by
doing ZERO publicity.

Here are the bad memories: the cold; setting up, tearing down (that stage
was a bitch to carry to the shed every night); knowing nobody would show up;
the Spiggitz! chips commercial; freaking out at Steve and Eric one night for
shtick I never knew they'd done in 'Italian Love Song'.

The good memories? Debuting 'Morning People' singing 'Exposing Time' right
before it that one night (no-one in the cast had heard it before or since.
It felt good to hear them laughing backstage); My friends, co-workers and
design dream team James, Jamie and Jeannine in the audience one night; Ben
Lundy checking in; and just getting another chance to be on stage with my
friends.

Also, we got a good review from the NIU paper (at that point, though, we had
forsaken the tent and decided to perform inside the facility itself.) Oh,
and 'Night Food' rocked in there, too. Strangely, I recall NOTHING about the
Knight School incident. Weird, huh? 

- Dale


************************

I had some fun doing this... In the course of the run I got a flat tire, 
sick, and had the rare privilege to preform for only three people.  
That show was the best by the way due to the lack of concern we had 
towards running the sketches in there usual way.  We ad-libbed, we 
changed people around.  It was a lot of fun.  I think we also knew it 
was our last show there - so we just had a good time with it.  In 
Knight School, we all lost it when Steve confessed to having really 
bad acne.  It was great!!  How often do you get to have that much fun 
on a weeknight?

Mo Gannon (Gag 1996 - 2000)