THE BERT FERSHNERS (cont'd)

Mark: We won't hold back compliments. We'll laugh at each other and encourage each other when we think we're on to something, or somebody else is on to something. I think that, unlike a lot of groups, we're not adverse to saying, "Hey, that's awesome. That's a really great idea."

Josh: It took us a really long time to learn how to actually criticize in front of each other. I think it's because we started by doing improv and everything in improv is about accepting everything that happens. It took several years for everyone to be able to freely say, "I'm not too sure about that. That sketch seems kind of off to me." But it's good that we got to that point.

AL: Was there a juncture when you realized that things were starting to happen for you? Has there been a point where any of you had to reaffirm your commitment to the group?

Josh: When we first started, we were 10 friends writing things and performing them after our improv show. We invited the audience to stay, and the rule was that you could pretty much do anything and everyone was allowed to write stuff. Some of us got more into it than others, and we realized we probably had enough material to branch off and have our own group, and that's when 10 of us sat in a room and said, "Hey, a bunch of us are really into this and we think it's going to take a huge commitment to do this on our own, outside of New York Comedysportz, and put on a show and have a name." And that's when we looked around at each other and a couple of people actually said, "Okay, I don't think I'm as committed as you guys, so I'm going to do my own thing."

AL: Are they sorry now?

Josh: Oh man, they're eating dirt. No, they're cool. They're very cool. They're very supportive and have been to all our shows and everything. Then it happened again. We started doing the Bert Fershners, but different people were involved in different groups while we were doing it and there came a point when that was distracting to the group as a whole. So we had to say again, "Hey, let's only do this. Does everybody here feel that way?" And the seven of us said, "Yeah, let's just stick to this."

Mike: We all continue to believe that this is the thing we're going to do. I mean, it's really a default mode. If someone comes up and tempts one of the Fershners away, what will likely happen is that at the next meeting that person will say, "Oh yeah, at the show the other night this person came up to me and said this or that," and there will be that discussion again for a moment. My guess is that it will likely be laughed off--it will be kind of like, "Yeah, well, they don't understand."

AL: So it's like being married.

Josh: Without the sex.

Mike: All of us became friends before any of us were on any sort of track toward a career goal. In other words, we met when we were kind of floating out in the wind. Some of us knew deep in our psyches what we wanted to do with our lives, but we weren't necessarily doing it actively. And so we formed our careers together.

Josh: Nobody auditioned to get into this.

Mark: In my audition, somebody said, "You better cut your hair, pal."

Mike: Yeah, when we auditioned Mark it was different. That's true. We've got to keep that in mind.

AL: The other day Mike called me from rehearsal and it sounded like a weird musical chairs party or something.

Mike: That was Chris acting up.