Spencer headed to New York a few days ago to see Jenna Fischer in Neil LaBute’s Off-Broadway play “Reasons To Be Happy”. Here’s an excerpt from her personal blog about the show:

…After that I headed to the restaurant where Carly [fellow The Office and Jenna fan] works to get some lunch. I ended up just hanging out until the end of her shift, after which we headed to the West Village [which is] pretty awesome. It’s quiet, with lots of green space, trendy restaurants with patios, a place where you can go and play board games for $1 an hour (we totally did this, btw), shops, and tons of interesting folks about. We wandered for a bit, played an Office themed game of Scrabble, grabbed some dinner, and then headed to the Lucille Lortel Theatre to see the first preview performance of the play Reasons To Be Happy.

I thought Reasons To Be Happy was excellent. It’s a play by Neil LaBute, and is a sequel to the his previous work Reasons To Be Pretty. A familiarity with Pretty may be helpful when watching Happy, but isn’t essential, I don’t think. The show follows its four characters (played by Jenna Fischer, Leslie Bibb, Josh Hamilton, and Fred Weller) through a complicated relationship crisis.

The Theatre

Each scene alternates between a basic set that takes the form of numerous locations using only two benches, coloured lighting, and a small collection of props; and a second, much more detailed set which slides forward and backward, that is the break room of two of the characters workplace. The scenes are broken up with a darkened stage and loud boom of rock music, including several Nirvana songs.

Hamilton, who plays the lead character Greg, appears in every scene of the two hour show and does an incredible job. I liked Greg, even though at several points during the show I didn’t want to. The sincerity of the character makes you feel bad for him, rather than angry at him, when he’s unable to make decisions on the messy situation he’s put himself in.

Bibb, playing the role of Carly, was delightful to watch. Carly goes through the ringer in this show, and Bibb transitions through her characters emotional journey seamlessly. I wanted Carly to come out on top, and I think in her own way she did.

Weller played Kent, the ex-husband of Carly and best friend of Greg. I honestly don’t know what I thought of this character. At first I was annoyed by him, and then I started to like him, and then I felt bad for him. Weller seemed a little over animated, which didn’t quite fit with the sombre feeling of the rest of the show.

Jenna Fischer played Steph and rocked it. Though I suppose my adoring her makes this declaration a bit bias… ; )

Seriously though, I love seeing Jenna in roles that are completely different from anything we’ve seen her in before, and Steph definitely fits that bill. She’s abrasive, swears like a sailor, and initially has very unclear motives that make you unsure of how to take her. I wasn’t sure if I even liked Steph until the second half of the show, when a very touching moment happens between her and Greg that made me trust what she was saying.

Steph is also pretty angry, which is something we don’t get to see Jenna play often. Though a few scenes from films like A Little Help and The Giant Mechanical Man come to mind, her characters have never been quite as consistently aggressive as Steph. She yells, she hits, and she swears throughout the entire show. And, naturally, Jenna is able to show about a million and a half emotions on her face while simply standing to the side watching other characters, which happens in the final scene.

Of course what I saw was the first night of previews, meaning there’s likely to be a pile of changes between now and opening night on June 11th. It’d be really interesting to go back and see the show after that to compare, but I don’t think I’ll be lucky enough to find a $5 bus ticket (no, seriously, I paid $5 for my return ticket!) again, which is basically my budget!

After the show Carly and I went and hung out by the stage door with a few other folks. The cast came out and were all really sweet and chatted with everyone for a bit. Jenna said that after the show ended she was flustered and didn’t even hug her costars, just ran straight for a brownie, which made everyone laugh. She chatted, signed Playbills, took photos, thanked everyone for coming, and then had to run off to the cast party. We took a couple photos, but they’re terrible, so I won’t be posting them anywhere! lol

Signed Playbill

After that we headed back to Carly’s place to watch the series finale of The Office, which was, you know, emotionally magnificent. When it ended we both sat there and cried. I’m really happy I was able to watch the finale with a fellow fan. I knew of Carly from another fandom years before I even started watching The Office, and I’m pretty sure she’s the first person I ever spoke to online in The Office community. So, it was really, really nice to be able to share that with her.

Friday was a late start, as we didn’t finish watching the finale until around 3am. We headed in to the city around lunchtime, had a bit of an adventure learning how Canadians cash cheques in US banks, and then said goodbye when she headed off to work.

On a whim I had a look on the MCC site and found I could get a super cheap single ticket (thank you under 30 discounts!) to that night’s performance of RTBH, and since my bus wasn’t leaving until midnight and I figured I won’t be getting back to see it again, I thought “why not” and grabbed it. So, I headed back to the West Village.

It was really interesting to see that there were already some changes in the show between the first and second night:

• Weller toned down Kent quite a bit, which I thought really improved my view on the character.
• Some of the music between scenes changed.
• Jenna’s costume in one of the scenes was different, though I’m not sure if something like that would have been an actual change, or if there were simply multiple costume options for that particular scene.
• They seemed to remove a number of props that caused spillage on the first night. For instance, Jenna stepped on a prop that on the first night caused a tiny liquid explosion and required someone to go and wipe up the stage between scenes. However, on the second night there didn’t seem to be any mess, which of course makes sense to opt for! This happened again in another scene where 2 take away cups and a bag are thrown away and Josh Hamilton fishes the bag out. There must have actually been liquid in the cups on the first night because the bag was sopping wet. However, on the second night the bag was completely dry.
• The name of a shop referenced changed from the first to the second night. On the first night is was “Costco”, while the second night was something I’d never heard of beginning with an “A”.

Curtain Call Friday Night | Faceless Cast

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Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, David Denman, and Mike Schur say thank you and farewell. Warning: This is really emotional!

Soulpancake recently released this beautiful video, which includes Jenna Fischer, among many others.

Zach Sobiech is 17 years old and diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer that takes the lives of a large percent of its childhood victims. Given only months to live, Zach turned to music to say goodbye. His song “Clouds” spread, and soon, Zach’s message was heard across the country. We wanted to help Zach spread his message, and bring awareness to increase support for finding a cure. So, we asked our friends to help out…they did.

I don’t normally post general The Office stuff, but I just loved this and had to share!

10 Things You Didn’t Know About NBC’s The Office

Bob Odenkirk as Michael Scott? An African-American Pam Beesly? A spinoff starring Ed Helms as suburban dad Andy Bernard? Those were just some of the possibilities considered as the hit British comedy The Office was adapted for American audiences.

Executive producer Ben Silverman first caught the show, a mockumentary chronicling a mundane workplace and its incompetent boss, on BBC2 during a trip to London. “I found it so blindingly hysterical and awkward,” he says, “that I immediately went to pursue the rights.” Creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant met with a panoply of producers, but Silverman was set on King of the Hill cocreator Greg Daniels: “I thought he was so brilliant in developing working-class characters.”

Daniels — who had been meeting with The Jim Henson Company about a new Muppet Show — agreed to sit down with Gervais and Merchant. “I stayed up all night watching Season 1 of the British Office,” he says. “I wanted to meet Stephen and Ricky, mostly to find out how they did it. It turns out their favorite Simpsons episode was one that I had written, “Homer Bad Man.” We talked about The Office and what to do with it.”

Nonetheless, Daniels was hesitant. “It took me a long time to agree to do it because I’m a cautious person,” he says. Once on board, Daniels was meticulous in crafting a version that both honored the original but was tailored for the U.S.

The show narrowly made it on the air: “It’s one of the worst-testing pilots ever, alongside Seinfeld,” notes star Rainn Wilson (Dwight). Despite the odds stacked against it, The Office cheated cancellation and went on to become a nine-season sensation.

With the comedy ending its run on May 16, the cast and producers shared some of the lesser-known secrets behind what it took to build and maintain Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton office.

The Office was originally developed with FX or HBO in mind.

At FX, then-entertainment president Kevin Reilly took a strong interest in Daniels’ adaptation. But when BBC America began running the U.K series, Daniels feared that on cable, his take would be overshadowed by the original. “I thought, ‘Oh crap, we’re going to be comparing the two versions here.’ Very few people watched the British show in America, but everyone whose opinions I respected and trusted watched it. It forced us to rethink where we were selling it.” When Reilly moved to NBC, he still wanted to buy it. “I said it didn’t feel like an NBC show,” Daniels says. “At the time, Will & Grace was their number-one show… I was kind of daring them to do the original British show.” For the pilot, Daniels stuck closely to the U.K. Office’s first episode in order to avoid any network notes.

Steve Carell almost missed out on becoming Michael Scott.

Then-Universal Pictures chairman Stacey Snider first suggested Carell to the producers. But Carell took a job on the NBC sitcom Come to Papa. Daniels also looked at Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad), David Koechner (who later played traveling salesman Todd Packer), Alan Tudyk (Suburgatory) and even Wilson, who was obviously more suited for Dwight. But Come to Papa quickly flopped, and NBC let Carell test for Michael Scott. “He nailed it,” says Silverman. “The rest is history.”

Jim and Pam might have been an interracial love story.

“Jenna [Fischer] was the perfect Pam,” Daniels says. “The only alternative to Jenna: I had a version in mind in which Pam was African American and so was [her boyfriend] Roy. It would have been Craig Robinson as Roy and Erica Vittina Phillips as Pam. I was flirting with that as part of Americanizing it.” Among other possible castings, Eric Stonestreet would have been Kevin if Brian Baumgartner hadn’t been picked; Parks and Recreation star Adam Scott tested as Jim; and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24) auditioned as Pam.

Dunder Mifflin branches exist all over the Northeast.

When Jim (John Krasinski) moved to the Stamford branch of Dunder Mifflin at the start of Season 3, Daniels came up with a list of the paper company’s other offices. “There was a Nashua branch and a Yonkers branch,” he says. “We picked a whole bunch of Scranton-sized cities in the Northeast that had slightly humorous names.”

The original Office spinoff idea: A parody of PBS’ An American Family.

“We were going to do a mockumentary version of the Loud family, with Helms’ Andy as the dad and Catherine Tate [who later joined The Office as Nellie Bertram] as the mom, living in a cul-de-sac somewhere in America. But in the intervening year, Modern Family came out,” says Daniels. “And they did it.” Among the other ideas considered but discarded: A Jim and Pam family show; Dwight on the beet farm (which eventually was attempted this year as the backdoor pilot The Farm, before NBC nixed it); Darryl (Robinson) headlining his own show; or even just another Dunder Mifflin branch. “The problem was you didn’t want to do anything that hurt the mother ship,” says then-executive producer Michael Schur. “In Season 4 you couldn’t take Jim and Pam from The Office.”

How Parks and Recreation could have been an Office spinoff.

Casting Rashida Jones in a different role than her Office character Karen kept Parks and Rec from being a spinoff. But executive producer Paul Lieberstein did have a unique way to do it: On The Office, a copy machine breaks and throughout the episode a repairman tries to fix it. At the end of the episode, the machine is loaded on a truck and refurbished in a warehouse. Then the copier is loaded onto another truck and taken to Pawnee, Indiana, where it’s dropped off in the Parks and Recreation office. In a twist on “spinoff” tradition, the character spun off would have been the copy machine. Producers briefly considered the idea, but ultimately Parks and Rec was its own creation.

Oscar (Oscar Nunez) wasn’t supposed to be gay.

“But wardrobe put him in a pink shirt at one point,” says Daniels. The writers had been working on a storyline in which Michael was trying to figure out who in the office might be gay — and that shirt led to Oscar’s big reveal in the Season 3 episode “Gay Witch Hunt.” Says Daniels: “A lot of our stories were trying to figure out what would be hugely inappropriate for a boss to do.”

Dwight’s backstory was inspired by Wilson’s family, Daniels’ grandparents and UPN’s Amish in the City.

“I brought to the writers a bunch of pictures of my family, a very eclectic and trailer park-y bunch,” Wilson says. “That gave them the idea that Dwight’s background might be more rural or white trash. It was introduced in Season 2 that Dwight owned a beet farm. That was based on Greg’s grandparents, who used to raise beets back in Poland before the war.” As for Dwight’s cousin Mose, “I had been really into this reality show Amish in the City and talked about how goofy it was in the writers’ room,” Schur says. “So Greg made me play Mose.” Schur donates all of the acting money he makes from playing Mose to charity. “The whole thing was so absurd I felt I couldn’t keep the money,” he says.

Fischer regularly hears from viewers who don’t like stronger-willed Pam.

“A lot of people turned on Pam when she became more assertive,” Fischer says. “That always made me sad. I’m so proud of her that she found her voice. But there are some people, particularly men, who are far more attracted to her as a wallflower. I think that’s so telling in what they’re looking for in a woman.”

Had NBC ordered The Farm to series, Dwight would have left The Office in midseason.

“Part of the plan was that Rainn would leave halfway through the year,” Daniels says. Had that happened, Tate’s Nellie would have “stepped into those Dwight shoes,” he adds. Cousin Mose would have become a traveling salesman, as Schur is busy executive producing Parks and Rec. “Mose would load up an ox cart with beets and go to roadside farms all over the state of Pennsylvania and be selling the Schrute family beets.” And Fischer says she’s certain that “at some point Jim and Pam would have visited.”

Wilson says he believes “NBC made a big mistake in passing on The Farm. I think there is a ton of potential. But if it didn’t get picked up, I knew it was time to let Dwight go, to hang up my glasses, mess up that hard center part in my hair and move on. That’s what happened, and I’m over it.”

The Office Star Jenna Fischer Talks About Transcending Pam at the Reasons to Be Happy Meet-and-Greet.

Fischer’s costars as well as playwright/director Neil LaBute also share their thoughts about the production.

Jenna Fischer (The Office), Leslie Bibb (GCB), Josh Hamilton (Dead Accounts), Frederick Weller (Still Life), and playwright/director Neil LaBute met the press at a meet-and-greet event at the Reasons to Be Happy rehearsal studio on Tuesday, May 7. The cast and creatives of the MCC Theater production took time to speak to TheaterMania about creating a rare theatrical sequel (Reasons to Be Happy is a companion piece to LaBute’s Broadway hit Reasons to Be Pretty), directing one’s own play, and in the case of Fischer, playing a character who goes beyond the quiet reservedness and pastel cardigans of The Office’s Pam.

Here’s a video from Jenna’s appearance last night on Jimmy Fallon:

FREEZE FRAME: Meet The Cast of MCC Theater’s REASONS TO BE HAPPY – Jenna Fischer, Leslie Bibb and More!

MCC Theater’s Reasons to be Happy, starring Leslie Bibb (Iron Man, ABC’s “GCB”) and Jenna Fischer (NBC’s “The Office”) making their New York City stage debuts opposite Josh Hamilton (The Coast of Utopia) and Fred Weller (MCC’s Still Life and In a Dark Dark House), is Playwright-in-Residence Neil LaBute’s new play, which LaBute will also direct.

Meet the cast below and stay tuned for more photos!

Reasons to be Happy is a companion piece to LaBute’s critically-acclaimed award-winning play, Reasons to Be Pretty, first produced at MCC Theater in 2008 before moving to Broadway where it was nominated for three 2009 Tony Awards, including Best Play. Performances begin at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, NYC) on May 16, 2013 and continue through June 23, 2013. An official opening is set for June 11, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are now on sale.

Jenna is set to appear on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon on Monday, May 6th.

Late Night airs at 12:35/11:35 central. Check local listings for more details.