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Jul 09, 2012

After Hours: The improv comedienne/actress

In this latest installment of "After Hours" — a series about faculty and staff who balance their work lives with fascinating hobbies or side jobs — meet Kelly Goodman, an outreach manager for ASUCLA who indulges her love for improv comedy and acting on the weekends.
 
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Name: Kelly Goodman
 
Day job: Campus outreach manager, ASUCLA
 
Second life: Headlining player with comedy troupe "2001: An Improv Odyssey" at the L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre in Sherman Oaks; performer/director with The Goodmen (improv troupe); theatrical and film actress.
 
How it all began: "I always knew I wanted to be an entertainer because I wanted to be so many different things. I realized, if you’re an actress, you get to be all those things. Remember that show ‘Julia,’ with the nurse? I had such a girl crush on her. I thought, ‘Oh, I want to be a nurse.’ And then I thought, ‘No, I don’t really want to go to nursing school, but I want to do that. I want to do what she does and be an actress.’ "
 
Education and training: Coast College Conservatory; South Coast Repertory; Second City (Chicago).
 
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Goodman performs with Dave McCarren at the L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre in Sherman Oaks.
First big break: "The first paid acting job I got was a Miller Lite commercial for the Super Bowl. It was the job that got me my SAG card, and I think I was 21 years old. It only ran for about two weeks and I made enough to buy a car. It was a fluke that this was one of the most watched commercials. I appeared as an opera singer. While I was at Coast College, I was in an opera company and at one point that was really what I wanted to do. So it’s kind of ironic that the first acting job I got was as an opera singer."
 
High-profile jobs: "The first film I did was ‘Another 48 Hours,’ with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. I was about 22 years old, and I kept waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Oh, we made a mistake. What are you doing here?’ The whole time I was thinking, ‘They’re going to send me home!’ But it was great. And then one of the producers on the film, Ralph Singleton, became a really good friend of mine. He put me in [a film he was directing], and it was Stephen King’s ‘Graveyard Shift.’ So I got to do a creepy slasher film. It was a lot of fun."
 
Longest-standing gig: "I became a member of the L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre in 1987, so I’ve been performing [improv] since then. I did a show last Saturday night, so what is that? Twenty-five years? ... We do what are called ‘games,’ which are like ‘skits’ or ‘bits.’ We usually have a lineup of about 15 different games that we do in a night. Within each game, we get the audience to suggest ‘a relationship between two of us,’ or ‘a location where this will take place.’ Or we do one where we have the audience write out lines of dialogue that we’ll use in our scene."
 
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At the original Comedy Store in Hollywood, Goodman performs her stand-up act.
Next up: "I’m currently in a play that opens Aug. 11 [at the SkyPilot Theatre in North Hollywood]. It’s called ‘War Bride,’ and it’s set during World War II. It’s about a small community in California where one of the guys brings home a Japanese war bride and the townspeople are scared and the pitchforks come out. The really exciting twist is there’s going to be kabuki and butoh dancers on stage with us the entire time. It’s a very straight play, but the character of Yumi doesn’t speak English, so all of her lines are interpreted by kabuki and butoh dancers. It’s really cool! See, I don’t go for plain, straight theater. That’s no fun!"
 
All in the family: "I never knew my father was an actor until I got really involved. [My parents] came to see every show, no matter how big or small the part. And my dad said, ‘You know, I just miss it so much.’ And I was like, ‘Miss it?’ I came to find out that when my parents met at L.A. City College, he was an actor, a theater major. He gave it up and went into accounting because he thought, ‘I want to marry this woman and have a family, and being an actor isn’t responsible.’ So for his 50th birthday, my brothers and my sister and I chipped in and got him acting lessons. For the last 20 years of his life, he was actually a working actor."
 
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Goodman's improv group, The Goodmen, performs at the Universal Bar and Grill in Universal City. From the left: Goodman, Brian Baldini, Russell Towne and Javier Ronceros.
Life as a UCLA staffer: "We go out to campus departments to see how ASUCLA could better serve them. I work with professors on some of their course materials and let them know the options, like digital or rental options. ... If a professor wants something custom, I can get them in touch with the people who can customize their course materials. I try to put myself out there and meet people as much as possible. But over the years, I’ve been asked everything from how I can save students money on their books to what restaurants on campus have no peanuts!"
 
The best of both worlds: "I still get to be a cut-up in meetings. I’ve perfected being a class clown and moved on to being a corporate clown! You know, I’m so blessed that I can have the balance; that I can be Corporate Kelly Monday through Friday and on Saturday night, I get to be Comedienne Kelly. And it’s so great that I don’t have to give up one for the other. Like my dad did for so many years!"