Zero Untitled’s Premature Punchline improv comedy troupe performed our 103^rd production at Angel’s Italian Ice and Smores on July 22, 2016. The show was lead by co-director Beth Marie Cantu-Castillo and newcoming director Robert Trujillo. The cast involved were Julio Martinez, Michael Verderber, Beth Marie Cantu-Castillo, Andrea Lorin, and Robert Trujillo.

PrePunch opened the show with a classic game of Alphabet and began the set with Freeze Tag. The cast went on to play Dating Game and a brand new skit called “Pokemon Go Reviewed by Stace”, which was performed by Lorin. The one-woman piece was a comic review of the hot new app game. Following that was a couple of rounds of “What’s My Pitch?” and they ended the show with Quoteline.  – Robert Trujillo.

Katherine Orozco-Verderber leading class

Following are successful Education classes in previous years (Mimes, Grace, etc), we introduced our two latest one-day class workshops focusing on global accents: “British Accents” and “Irish and Russian Accents” over a two day period.

On Monday July 18th, ZU Main Stage Director Katherine Orozco-Verderber and Michael Verderber team-taught a three-hour session on utilizing the British accent. Actors introduced themselves and created dialogue while practicing accents.  Afterwards, the actors watched film clips for mimicry and tongue-placement practice and performed in an improv game to test their newfound abilities.

On Tuesday, July 19^th, both Verderbers team taught Irish and Russian accents. The class began with Michael Verderber teaching Irish accents, with a heavy focus on tongue placement. As before, the class used conversational dialogue and learned terminology to aid in the learning process. Katherine led the Russian class, also utilizing clips and language to assist. By class’s end, the class was split into two groups and were challenged to play improv games in the accent they felt weakest in.

Auditions for a staging of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” were held on Tuesday, July 26^th.

The play will be led by two new ZU actors, Katherine Villarreal and Nick Wommack, playing the roles of Vera Claythorne and Phillip Lombard, respectively. Wommack was last seen in “Dr. Faustus” and Villarreal has been rehearsing with Premature Punchline (but has not performed yet).

The play is under the direction of Katherine Orozco-Verderber, who will adapt it for the performance space. The play is produced in special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.

Set List:

“Do Robots die and go to Heaven?” / Poem – Julio Martinez

“The Vanishing Heart” / prose by Michael Verderber

“By The Numbers” Premature Punchline (feat. Elie, Verderber, and Julio)

OPEN MIC – “Violent Eyes”, “To The Shore”, “Era in Disguise” and “Untitled” / poems by Nicholas Sollitto

“Still Lingers” poem by Michael Verderber

PLAY – “The Suppressed” (written and dir. by Michael Verderber)

Waitress – Rebekah Ramos

Ophelia – Ryann Haese

Yoel – Robert Trujillo

“Orlando” poem by Katherine Orozco-Verderber

OPEN MIC – “Casual Tragedy” and “Didn’t” / poems by Andrea Lorin

“Middle School Dating Game” Premature Punchline (feat. Robert, Elie, Beth, and Drea)

“Reskin” Poetry by Julio

“Poems by Marlowe” / read by CJ Lillie

PLAY – “The Legacy I Want To See” (written by Julio Martinez, dir. Andrea Lorin)

Claire – Beth Marie Cantu-Castillo

John – Robert Trujillo

SONG – “Tonight, You Belong To Me” (perf. by Andrew Saldivar and Beth Marie Cantu-Castillo)

“Molting” Poetry by Julio

“Quoteline” Premature Punchline (feat. Julio, Verderber, Robert, Elie, Drea, and Beth)

PLAY – “Seeing is Misbelieving 2” (written by Verderber and dir. Robert Trujillo)

Professor Ford – Julio Martinez

Cory – Andrea Lorin

Emily – Beth Marie Cantu-Castillo

Juanita – Elie Andrade

SONG – “The Name Song” Michael Verderber

Our “Three Hour Theatre” (ZERO-102) event went over swimmingly. With around 30 people crammed into Fresh Café in Corpus, we mounted several new plays written by local playwrights and two outside of the Coastal Bend area. Our featured playwrights were Anel Carmona from New York City and Gabriel Ruiz from San Antonio. Carmona, who has done several off-Broadway plays, live-streamed her play in. The other featured playwright, Mr. Ruiz, attended the event. The playwrights were given one hour to write a play, the next hour to rewrite/edit/workshop the play in the rehearsal process. Finally, the plays were presented after the workshopping has been completed.

In no particular order, these are the following plays and their respective casts:

“Wait For It!”  directed by Beth Marie Cantu

Logan – Josue “Zeta” Villarreal

Bel – Tabitha Perez

Old Man – Emanuel Ibanez

“Fact: The Stars Are Dead” by Julio Martinez, directed by Emanuel Ibanez

1 – Emanuel Ibanez

2 – Andrea Lorin

“Grandma Muscle” by Josue “Zeta” Villarreal, directed by Julio Martinez

Commentator – Julio Martinez

Millie Jordan – Katherine Orozco-Verderber

Grandma Muscle – Robert Trujillo

“A Lifetime Game” by Anel Carmona, directed by Michael Verderber

Walter – Lane

Wanda – Denise Deleon

“Fair Warning” by Gabriel Ruiz, directed by Micah Blain

Lane Joiner

Deniss Delgado

Zero Untitled has so many assorted ideas and bits, that we often run out of places to do/perform them. Thus, the brainchild project of Katherine Orozco-Verderber, #ZeroLife was born. Essentially, #ZeroLife (our 101^st production) is the culmination of several of our bits, clips, outtakes, songs, and other assorted goodies that don’t quite fit in our lineup. Although the releases are still coming, here is what has been released thus far. All of these can been seen on the Zero Untitled Facebook page. So far, this is a summer project, but more projects will be released in the next few months.

Check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/Zero.Untitled/

ZERO-101.1 – Hamilton “Satisfied” cover (recreational cover song)

ZERO-101.2 – ZU Blooper reel

ZERO-101.3 – “Poodle Insults Verderber” (behind the scenes)

ZERO-101.4 – “I Wanna Try That!” (short film)

ZERO-101.5 – “Tonight, You Belong To Me” (live cover at Textual Overture)

ZERO-101.6 – “Middle School Dating Game” (live performance by PrePunch)

Well we had a busy summer and did not have much time to update our website. Our utter apologies. So today we will be updating with a ton of new information on the summer projects we did! Read up on what we did!