New York’s subways were a little happier this morning. Today every commuter who couldn’t be bothered to pay for a paper got a little taste of the hotness that is Law and Order: etc.

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And in pdf. Don’t forgot tomorrow’s show! Submit witnesses now!

Law and Order: etc… led off today’s Pulse section of the New York Post. America’s favorite non-indie indie bands were the second item. Guess we’ll be taking your cab, Cutie – TO THE TOP! Here’s the article. And here’s a pdf.

KITSCH & MAKE-UP (New York Post)

April 15, 2006
GUILTY-PLEASURE FILM AND TV TAKES CENTER STAGE CANCEL your Netflix -now you can watch all of the brilliantly crap-tastic sex and violence of “Showgirls” re-created live and right in front of your very eyes.With a few creative liberties, of course.

It’s Ultimate GuiltyPleasure Theater – and it’s hilarious.

“It’s not so different from Broadway,” says actor and writer John Flynn, who co-created “Showgirls: The Best Movie Ever Made. Ever!” at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (307 W. 26th St., [212] 366-9176), which is running Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. through June. “Audience members know the story, and the stories around a movie or TV show. With ‘Showgirls,’ it’s just like watching a car wreck, but without any of the guilt.”

Three wacky adaptations of film and TV shows are taking center off-off-Broadway stage as sleeper hits in sending up the popular culture you know and love – or know and love to hate.

Keeping in the spirit of camp value, “Point Break LIVE!” at Galapagos Art Space (70 N. Sixth St., Brooklyn) allows an audience member to actually play the dim-witted undercover surfer agent made famous by Keanu Reeves. Over at The People’s Improv Theater (154 W. 29th St.), audiences also get in on the action – and solve the crime – as part of an interactive spoof on the ever-addictive Dick Wolf series “Law & Order.”

“Everybody secretly wants to be Keanu Reeves,” says “Point Break LIVE!” co-creator Jamie Hook, a 36-year-old Brooklynite who directs the play, running Sundays at 8 p.m. through the end of April. “Who wouldn’t want to be him? He’s a big great famous action movie star and ‘Point Break LIVE!’ gives you that chance. We are saying, ‘You don’t have to settle.’”

Although a procedural drama junkie probably could settle for sitting at home watching “Law & Order” almost 24 hours a day, the new live-stage parody at The P.I.T. allows audience members to solve crimes not so much ripped from the headlines but rather bastardized from the weekly news. One recent whodunit? A murder mystery involving Slobodan Milosevic on alternative Spring Break.The accused
culprit? None other than ALF.

“Our show is like fantasy camp for ‘Law & Order’ fans,” says co-creator Jamil Ellis, 28, whose improv group Experimental Troupe Comedy developed the show, which runs the last Saturday of each month at 7 p.m., through July. “People get obsessed with ‘Star Trek’ conventions and hang out with other people who are fans and dress up. So we’re up there dressing up in our own ‘Law & Order’ personalities.”

Indeed, obsession is a key factor in bringing these pop pleasures to the stage. In the UCB “Showgirls” adaptation, fellow die-hard junkies are often recruited to participate in the staged reading, with a new special guest every week. Legendary celebrity gossip columnist Michael Musto actually reached out to the creators of the parody to participate.

After “Valley of the Dolls,” he considers the bawdy box-office bomb to be his favorite movie of all time.
“I grew up not knowing good from bad taste,” he said before the show began last week. “I actually think ‘Showgirls’ is a quality film. The great thing is, people who have never seen it come here, and they’re on the floor laughing. It’s a guilty pleasure, no matter what point of view you’re coming from.”

(more…)

Law and Order: etc… is in Daily Variety Gotham this morning.

Off B’way troupe finds humor in ‘Order’
(ed: The link is provided: registration and a trial subscription required. or look at the pdf.)

THESE ARE THEIR STORIES: You know a show has imprinted itself indelibly on the popular imagination when comedians finally get around to parodying it.

That’s what’s about to happen to Law & Order as a group called ETC (as in Experimental Troupe Comedy) readies an Off Broadway spoof of the long-running Dick Wolf-produced legal franchise, now in its gazillionth year on NBC (and everywhere else).

ETC principal Jamil Ellis said all four of the troupe’s key players are fans, and have many friends who have appeared in one of Wolf’s skeins. (The franchise is the biggest single TV employer of Gotham theater actors ever.)

The show, which debuts at the Peoples Improv Theater March 25, is being advertised thusly: “Missing Jerry Orbach? Unable to handle a day without a fix of the only show that people still watch on NBC? Hungry for grotesque details about an impossibly complicated crime? Wait no longer!”

Ellis said the 11-year- old Etc. (which also includes Anne Johnson, Gene Perelson and Chris Chan Roberson) tackles the iconic drama by taking plotlines from audience suggestions — live and via the Internet (www.opensourcecomedy.net), and utilizing written sketches and multi-media video. Theater folk who have been on Wolf’s shows are expected to show up and participate in the performance as well, per Ellis.

Each “episode” of the play, as it were, will also feature an up-and-coming comedy act from the New York area.

A pdf of the article.

A jpeg of the article.