Shawn Bowers: The Website

A few weeks ago, I was asked to do a few scenes for one night of the Second City Works By Women Festival, a cool little thing in its first year to celebrate the late Mary Scruggs.  I got a chance to work with one of my favorite directors again, Bina Martin, who wrote one of the scenes and directed both.  The other, coincidentally, was written by a friend of mine, Jennifer Mitchell.  Go figure!  Friends write things!

Anyhow, they filmed the whole thing, so check out the clips below to take a peek at my wildly varied performances.
 
Sex Talk
WRITTEN BY: Bina Martin DIRECTED BY: Bina Martin
PERFORMERS: Jen Malinsky, Shawn Bowers, Jo Feldman

Surprise!
WRITTEN BY: Jennifer Mitchell DIRECTED BY: Bina Martin
PERFORMERS: Jo Feldman, Shawn Bowers, Adam Claus, Jen Malinsky, Jeff Hedges

You know how things are creepy on the Internet? Cool, then you’re familiar with truth!

Here’s the deal. I run a site called Babies For My Son. It’s all about how my son Brand got kidnapped by a mysterious man named Stexxx and is being held for an insane ransom of 500 photos of babies in costumes. The site was created as a way to pay off the bounty, collect the photos, and take up valuable space on the finite internet.

I haven’t been a great dad…I’ve been pecking away at the project forever (like a work chicken), but I want to finish, and I want content to become more regular, so I want to see if anyone wants to staff up and contribute to this stupid project.

What do I have to do?

Great question. You’d be asked to contribute one piece a week, 300-400 words in length, with an accompanying image. This may possibly come in the form of an assignment, or you may find your own that you’re passionate about.

So what do I get paid?

Nothing! It’s just like every other project that you do onstage in town, except the stage is a computer. Unless you consider exposure to be currency, at which point you can make upwards of a dollar a week in comparative value.

For real, though, you’d always get by line credit and be listed as a full-time contributor on the site. You’d also participate in the creation of any live or video content down the line.

Is this real? Do you have a son? Was he really kidnapped? Why haven’t police been called?

…

Okay, I guess I’m interested. What do I have to do?

Right now, the site is written by myself as myself. The goal is to bring more characters into the world…FBI agents, friends, concerned citizens, etc. Then, you would post in character with a consistent format. For instance, my format is simple:

1. Lead paragraph contextual to the costume
2. Second paragraph analyzing the logistics of the costume on a baby
3. Third paragraph a blind rant against the kidnapper of my son

The first two paragraphs should generally stay the same from post to post, and that’s the place to get in whatever you’ve got on the photo. The last paragraph is more character-specific…say you’re an FBI agent, your last paragraph can be a Tip On How Not To Have Your Child Kidnapped. Things like that. This is way too specific for a novelty blog, but you get the idea.

So I would ask that you give me a one to two sentence description of the character you’d want to play, along with a sample write-up for this image:

The Goldfish Baby

Also, include some contact info! Duh! Send it all to babiesformyson@gmail.com and I’ll respond back in short order.

If you want to check it out to see if the whole thing fits your style, go to BabiesForMySon.net.

That’s all I’ve got. Tell your friends.

Everywhere, man. Everywhere. The last couple of months have been a bit of a whirlwind. Scuba Mission wrote a brand new show that we premiered in August at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival. It was a big hit, which was a nice, reinvigorating surprise, and we met a lot of good people over the course of two weekends. We also learned way too damned many lessons about how to promote a show when nobody in a city knows who the hell you are. Our first three shows with a cumulative 20 people at them were balance by our last three shows with 50-60 people each. The power of a good review.

Back on the home front, I’ve been hard at work on writing and directing my new show, The Graduation, which is opening a week from tomorrow for a 3 week run at Studio BE in Chicago.  I’m very excited, I have a wildly talented cast who is knocking it out of the park, and I encourage the ten people who read this site to come check it out.  The show is a half play/half sketch show that takes place over the course of a high school graduation commencement ceremony.  It’s broad, it’s stupid, it’s exactly what I want it to be and more.   It’s this, also, in poster form.  Come see it?  Please?  A FULL DEBRIEF IS TO COME.

Earlier this week, the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers got put onto Netflix.  The whole series.  It’s just sitting there, wanting you to watch it just like you did when you were a kid.

So I decided to do that.  By “that,” I mean watch it all again, except this time I’m documenting the process.  I’ve created a new blog called Let’s Watch Power Rangers, where you can journey with me episode by episode through the beauty and stupidity of this wonderful program.  Check out the site, let me know what you think and what you want to see and spread it around to friends.  I have a long road ahead.

I was featured in an article for WBEZ Chicago recently about the creative community at Groupon. Check it out at the link below.

At Groupon, Employees Don’t Sell Out, They Sell In via WBEZ Chicago

I was also featured on the Groupon blog this week.  Check out that fun little piece here:

Meet A Groupon Employee via Groublogpon