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Lenny Dee Grows Up
15 years ago, Aaron Leconte and Charles Ansell took it upon themselves to create a sketch comedy group, and the result was Lenny Dee. While there have been growing pains, including accusations of racism and a complete restructuring of how the group puts together a show, Lenny Dee has become Carleton’s premier sketch comedy group. The following history is the result of interviews with past members of the group and looks at the evolution of how the group chooses members, writes sketches, puts on shows, and has arguably too much fun while doing it.
The Founding (2001-02)
Lenny Dee was the brainchild of two men, Aaron Leconte and Charles Ansell. Both had frustrations with the existing theater and comedy communities on campus. Aaron had directed plays with the Experimental Theater Board, but due to the antics of a friend of a friend after a show damaged the Little Nourse Theater, Aaron was blacklisted[1]. When he approached the board the next fall hoping to direct a show of “Kids in the Hall” styles sketches, he was turned down with little explanation. He then approached Charles with the idea of forming their own sketch comedy group. Charles at the time was involved with Chelsea 11:17[2], a student group which meets weekly on Fridays at 11:17 to cold-read sketches people brought in. He was frustrated not only because of a tendency for other members of the group to bring in what Aaron described as “year-long fantasy epics,”[3] but also because he wanted his writing to have more purpose, to be in a show. Both men were also dissatisfied with the quality of the improv comedy groups on campus, Cujokra and the Harriers, and so felt that there was a comedy void that needed filling12.
The first step was finding members. Aaron and Charles reached out to friends and acquaintances who they thought had comedic skill, including people who Aaron had directed in plays as well as members of the improv group Cujokra1. Though they held auditions that first year, they were really just a formality2. Sketches were accepted from anyone who wanted to submit, though at first that mean sketches were written mostly by Charles and his friend Tony Anderson12. As for the name of the group, Aaron had spent a lot of time diving in to the bargain bin at record stores and had come across the ’80 jazz organist Lenny Dee many times2. The name had a nice ring to it, and has stuck with the group ever since. Aaron scheduled the group to debut Winter term 2002, during the intermission of a singing knights concert. They performed two sketches, one of which involved talking chairs and onions being thrown onstage2. The offbeat humor of their first show was an intentional choice by the group, wanting to do something to stand out and differentiate themselves from the other comedy groups on campus2. This theme would continue during the early years, with the Dee going as far as to eat raw meat onstage during one of their first shows2.
Following the somewhat positive response to their first performance, Lenny Dee’s second show set up many of the standards for shows in the years to come. Most sketches in the show were written by Charles and Tony, and the show was put together by Aaron and Charles[4]. Aaron took on most of the directorial and production duties, including advertising for the show and running lights and sound during the show1 . This was the first Lenny Dee performance in Little Nourse Theater, a space well suited to sketch comedy. It allowed the group to foster an “underground” vibe, with a late start time, drinking encouraged during the show and people crowded into the space[5] . This style of show would become Dee’s trademark, and continues to this day.
The Early Years (2002-2007)
The success of the group’s first real show gave the group high expectations for the next year. Auditions were held in the fall and advertised around campus. Around 30 people showed up that first year, enough for the Aaron and Charles (who remained deerectors throughout their time at Carleton) to be selective with who they took into the group2. They chose people who were good at acting, but weren’t actors per se; Charles remembered wanting the group to be non-pretentious, but still very strong2. Brennan Taylor, and early member of Lenny Dee, remembers her audition as follows: “ It was group auditions, I went with one of my friends. You’d meet down in the Little Nourse Theater and then get called up to the lounge upstairs to read a sketch or two. Aaron was there managing everything, kind of sour and cynical. Charles was more loud and rambunctious.”[6] Once Aaron and Charles graduated auditions changed slightly, moving venues to upper Sayles and adding a sketch-writing portion during callbacks3[7]. The sketches read during auditions were the same every year, and always included the very first sketch performed by the group in Little Nourse, which was a riff on The Jungle and meatpacking called “Meat me in Purgatory”[8][9]. Once new members were chosen by Aaron and Charles, the group would wake them up in the middle of the night to let them know they had made it into Lenny Dee1[10]. Later this welcoming ceremony involved the new members peeling and eating an orange while old members chanted “Eat the Orange! Eat the Orange!” 2[11].
Sketches were expected to be written outside of rehearsal time, and were chosen by the deerectors early on in the term1 , since most of the term was spent rehearsing sketches. Each term involved a new set of sketches, aside from Aaron and Charles’ final term, when they did a “best of” show1. Little discussion or editing of sketches occurred during the rehearsal process4 , as many sketches were submitted or written by people who would not be performing them, like Charles or Tony. (Though after a year or two the writing burden fell more on members of the group like Andrew Biliter and Dave Holman.) 1 4 Final say with sketches fell to deerectors, as Aaron and Charles wanted to push boundaries more than they felt a democratic process would allow1. Typically shows had around 8-10 sketches (though this number increased over time to as many as 20) of varying lengths, one-liners to 5 or 6 minutes as well as non-verbal sketches. Performances were on the Thursday-Friday-Saturday of 6th, 7th, or 8th weekend of a term, whenever Lenny Dee could get the Little Nourse space1 2. Shows continued to be late at night, crowded, and alcohol was present both in the audience and backstage4. Costumes and props were used with relative frequency, though tech was limited to just lights up, lights down, and music between sketches.
A somewhat infamous product of the early years was the Lenny Dee naked calendar. Conceived by Aaron and Charles as a way of raising money to bring back Sonya Kolba ’03 for their final show in spring ’04, it was a parody of a naked calendar done by farm house a year earlier[12][13]. Brennan Taylor ’07 took all the photos, which involved members of Lenny Dee posing in a variety of “tasteful” nude poses3 . Aaron remembers significant difficulty in getting the calendar published, as the printer had “an eagle eye for genitalia” and so many edits had to be made so that no indecent parts were showing1. The calendar sold well and raised over $300, more than enough to bring Sonya back to Carleton. However, with the foresight that Lenny Dee is known for, neither Aaron nor Charles had contacted Sonya to see if she would be able to come back to Carleton. She couldn’t, and so alternate plans had to be made1. After negotiations with the rotblatt committee, it was arranged that Lenny Dee would sing the national anthem in exchange for buying $300 worth of donuts for the event1.
The Katrina Incident (2007)
Lenny Dee carried on with this method of show production for five years, with sketches being written outside of rehearsal and deerectors having final say on what went into the show. It took one sketch delivered in very poor taste to drive the group to evolve into its current form. That sketch was “Confronting Katrina,” a riff on the school-wide seminars that took place instead of classed for two days following the events of Hurricane Katrina. It was written in the term following those seminars, which were called “Confronting Katrina,” but wasn’t performed at the time2. It was only when deerectors during winter term 2007 needed sketches to fill out a show that they went back into the archives and pulled out the Katrina sketch2. The first night of that term’s show the sketch didn’t land well, but didn’t cause immediate anger in the audience, at least that Dee members noticed[14]. Trouble came the second night, when an audience member who Dee members believed had been informed about the sketch by the previous night’s audience, stood up during the sketch and yelled at the performers onstage that they, as white people, had no right to be making light of the serious events of hurricane Katrina and walked out of the show[15]. While the performers finished the sketch, the group elected to take a break after the sketch and came out and apologized to the audience1. They finished the show, and the next day were summoned to the dean’s office for a conversation1.
At first, members of the group were indignant, believing that there was nothing wrong with the sketch and that, in fact, it had been the audience member who was in the wrong for interrupting their show[16]. Through multiple conversations with the dean and members of the Office of Intercultural and International Life about appropriation and diversity in comedy, the group came to the realization that they were in the wrong, and something needed to change12. At least one deerector quit the group as a result1. There was no system currently in place in the group by which members could give feedback on sketches, and so the new deerectors in the group took it upon themselves to make cleaner, tighter, more democratic comedy12[17]. It was the beginning of a new era of Lenny Dee.
The Changing Times (2007-2012)
The year after the Katrina Incident (2007-08) brought significant changes to the process Lenny Dee used to put together a show. Deerectors Ali Reingold and Tim Carroll made the decision before the year began to focus more on collaborative sketch writing, and to give the group as a whole more responsibility for picking sketches to be in the show2[18]. While auditions remained the same, involving reading past sketches and team-writing a new sketch during callbacks, the group put more effort into choosing sketches for auditions that pushed auditionees to show off more comedic range1. More attention was paid to promoting diversity in the group, via encouraging people to audition or even holding auxiliary auditions winter term in order to bring in additional funny people from less represented groups in Lenny Dee1. In that first year of trying to be more democratic with regard to writing and choosing the show, much of the writing process took place during Dee rehearsal time (10pm-12am Monday/Thursday) and relied a lot on idea-generating improv games2. So much relied on improv, in fact, that many of the sketches for that first year never really made it onto the page, at least in the form in which they were eventually performed. In the following years sketches became better documented as the group moved away from improv as a writing tool while still maintaining a focus on collaborative writing[19]3 .
While in the early years deerectors would choose sketches themselves and make casting decisions in order to balance out parts, the new system, at least for the time in which it relied heavily on improv, led to a more organic system of choosing and casting sketches for the show. Tim Carroll describes the new role of deerectors as “ not so much curating the show from a pile of sketches, but rather guiding the process, pushing some sketches along and making the call to kill others if it didn’t seem like they were going anywhere[20]”. As the process became more formalized and a greater quantity of sketches were written and able to be performed, the show-choosing process became more complicated. The group would discuss the relative merits of each possible sketch, trying to put together a show with different kinds of humor and different kinds of sketches (shorts, vignettes, musical numbers, etc.) [21]. This would often lead to a long and arduous debate, sometimes lasting for as many as four hours while people, often passionately and loudly, defended their favorite sketches[22]. Though stressful in the moment, deerectors felt that this was a better alternative to the process pre-Katrina, or at least more democratic.
While many things about the shows themselves during the changing times remained constant, several new innovations occurred. Shows still took place mid-late in the term, but now officially were scheduled to run the same weekend as Carleton Players shows, due to an agreement between ETB and the Players2. This was 6th weekend for a few years before moving to 7th weekend, as it is currently2 . They would still begin at 10 or 11 pm, take place it a full to packed Little Nourse Theater, and drinking in the audience, while no longer actively encouraged, was certainly be prevalent[23][24]. While costumes and props had been used in the early years, its was during this time that they became widely used and occasionally extravagant, with one costume deposit reaching in excess of $5002. Animal costumes in particular were a favorite, including a particular bear suit that had a recurring role, and another show featured an entire canoe as a prop1[25]. The uniform of black shirt and jeans was started during this era as well[26]. Tech, lighting, and sound became more integrated with sketches as Lenny Dee began having a dedicated tech person, starting with Hal Edmonson, who was able to turn a member of Dee into Jar Jar Binks, and carrying on with many other very talented lighting and sound technicians12. With the advent of being able to do fun things with lights and sound, Lenny Dee began closing many shows with some kind of song and dance number, including a choreographed dance to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance2. As the quality and production value of Dee shows improved, they began getting doing more shows and getting asked to perform at more events. A yearly show for new students, as a way of advertising auditions began, as well as performances during Admitted Students days in the Spring began to occur12. Additional shows took place during senior week, and once during an OCS banquet2.