BIG in every sense of the word: An interview with Rueben Medina
with Ames Doyle
From his involvement in Ed, Tom, and Rueben to directing the 2023—2025 Invasion: Christmas Carol productions, Rueben Medina has left his mark on some of Dad’s Garage’s most notorious (and infamous?) spectacles with an off-the-wall charm and big heart. Right now, he’s the lead director (and one of the primary GMs) for The Tight Acquaintances: Chaos Quest. We pulled him aside for some table talk about the show and his approach to direction and storytelling now and throughout the years.
DG: What's new and unique about The Tight Acquaintances this year? What are you most excited about? Can you give us any spoilers?
RM: We're running an actual campaign! Sort of! In the past The Tight Acquaintances has always been a mix of Game Masters (GMs) improvising their way through the show right along with the player characters, and we've had some incredible moments but it made it difficult to build long story arcs and cohesive narratives. Directing this season, I wanted us to really focus on the narrative and how we can accomplish that when we have multiple GMs. So I built out a campaign with myself and Maged (fans might better know him as Krirg) working as showrunners and the rest of our GMs acting as a writer's room. This means the shows will keep the same surprises and off-the-cuff nature that our improv is known for but also weave a satisfying season long story. So it’s still a blast for one or two time viewers, and a huge payoff for the dedicated fans that show up almost every week.
The things I'm most excited about I can't talk about yet, largely because they may or may not happen. Part of having a campaign is knowing where we start and knowing where we end up, but every week the player characters are making choices that require us to recalibrate the direction we're going. That's the joy of tabletop! It's truly collaborative and while I might have an idea of where the story ends, the players are going to make how we get there a complete surprise to even me. They might even have the story end up somewhere entirely different than I expected!
No spoilers! Illegal! Not allowed! The only thing I will say is that the finale, wherever we end up, is going to be BIG in every sense of the word.
Rueben as Graves, his player character in The Tight Acquaintances.
DG: What is your approach to directing?
RM: Have a vision. Whatever it is. Have a strong, crystalized vision and establish your goals and your moonshots. I purposefully aim for both. You'll be surprised how often something you think is impossible is actually very possible when you have the right crew and cast with you. Even if you don't achieve those moonshots, you might get 80% of the way there, and that is 80% more than if you never tried at all. It will only make your work better.
The real magic is once you've communicated your vision to your cast/crew, you get to watch them come up with way cooler ideas than you ever had. It is equally exhilarating and humbling to watch a collaborator make a brilliant choice and realize your original idea was garbage. Weaving that new idea into your vision is often the hardest part, knowing how much you can change it without sacrificing what you want. You have to remove your ego, know when to kill your favorite ideas and know when to push back. Ultimately, you're coming to your friends with a silly idea and they're all going to help you not only pull it off, but make it better. If you approach directing with that attitude, it is incredibly fun and fulfilling.
DG: What is your approach to storytelling in general?
RM: Subvert. Surprise. Fulfill. I wish that third one was also an S, but "Sulfill" sounds like an anti-depressant/boner pill. Ahem. I love heady, obtuse, painful storytelling. There is a reason why Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of my favorite works ever. It is absolute self-indulgent wankery in the best way. I also love simple stories that are largely built around the obvious, hot-blooded emotions of its characters. Like Naruto. Only the latter really works for improv. I like to keep it simple and clean because, without question, the improv will complicate it and goof it up. And yes, I'm aware both of my examples are anime. And yes, I do engage with other types of media. Sometimes. I swear one day I'll write up a whole paper on how shounen anime and improv use the same storytelling methods. If Keith Johnstone can do it with wrestling, I can do it with anime.
Anyway, let me get back to the question. Restraint is a virtue.
Audiences largely know what they want and my job isn't to drag them along and force them to like my newest obsession or "genius idea". My job is to take them where they want to go but to do it in ways that surprise them, delight them, and sometimes hurt them. First and foremost, I want to make them give a shit. If you can make an audience, in any medium, give a shit, you gain their trust and they will follow you down paths they otherwise would not. That lets you take bigger swings, surprise them in bigger ways and maybe even expose them to ideas they normally wouldn't like. But for them to give a shit, you have to give a shit first. They will quickly sniff out whether or not you care, and if you don't, why should they?
Ultimately, the "awws" are just as important to me as the laughs. We had a great cliffhanger at the end of the first episode of this season and multiple audience members loudly groaned realizing they'll have to wait until the next show to find out what happens. That made me happier than any laugh we got that night.
DG: What drew you to improv? How does storytelling impact that?
RM: I'm terrible at memorizing lines because I hate memorizing lines. Improv seemed like a convenient way around that.
Improv, to me, is reawakening the part of you that forgot that you have the power to create whatever you want with your mind whenever you want to. And that you can do that with your friends and strangers alike, if they are willing to look silly with you. We play and have imagination time all throughout childhood. It is how we learn, how we experience, how we empathize with things unlike ourselves and experiment with ideas we have yet to encounter.
And then we stop. It becomes uncool. Powers that be tell us that money and power and winning are the only cool things. So we stop. We become incurious and we rot. There is a reason why billionaires, with limitless resources, are incredibly boring, frequently out of touch and seemingly have no friends. They're incurious, they believe they know everything, that they have won it all and that has atrophied humankind's most important trait: curiosity. They've rotted and move as joyless liches through life. The world tells us that is what an adult must be.
Why do we tell stories if not to discover, to empathize and to sate our endless curiosities? How can you tell a story if you have rejected those values?
DG: Between you, Ed, and Tom, which of you has told the most dick/cum jokes?
RM: An impossible question; impossible to answer. Would you ask the Trinity how many creations upon this Earth it has made? Would you be able to discern where God, their Son and the Holy Spirit begin and end even if you were told? Would you comprehend why each of them create as they do? Is this question (and answer) not blasphemous or, at minimum, heretical?
Probably Ed.
Rueben onstage at Dad’s Garage alongside Ed Morgan, likely contemplating a dick/cum joke.
DG: What's your dream project?
RM: If it hasn't already been made obvious in my previous ramblings, working in some capacity (directing, writing, voice acting, etc.) for a video game or animated project would probably be the job that blissfully kills me. If some irresponsible soul ever lets me anywhere near the Gundam franchise I will either ascend or become a baser being than anyone could imagine.
At the risk of sounding sentimental, improv and Dad's Garage has already given me so many "dream projects" to work on. Working on Invasion: Christmas Carol three years in a row was a dream. Being trusted to reinvent how we do The Tight Acquaintances and (fingers crossed) take it from a great show to an undeniable show is a dream. Creating improv formats with Ed and Tom that are so stupid and effortless that it almost hides the fact that we pour buckets of blood into them is a dream.
I could have said "buckets of cum" but I'm practicing restraint. I deserve a cookie.
DG: If you could add a (non-improviser) celebrity to The Tight Acquaintances party, who would it be and why?
RM: Is Sonic the Hedgehog a valid answer? Probably not, he's voiced by Ben Schwartz who is an improviser. Hmm. I think ex-wrestler turned surprisingly great actor Dave Bautista would be a fun pick. He seems like a nice guy who is down to get both goofy and heartfelt. You see, what's going to happen here is that I'm going to name a celebrity who will be milkshake ducked shortly and this interview is going to age poorly. So, actually, I'm just going to stick with the concept of Sonic the Hedgehog, who can do no wrong. I hope.
Catch Rueben in The Tight Acquaintances Saturdays at 8 p.m. this August and September!
