Open for Business!

We're open! We're open!

As I told someone earlier tonight: opening a show is like birthing a child. Or, birthing three children in three separate places at once. Stressful, confusing, a whole lot of pushing near the end. And then when you're done, you get to relax and enjoy the child you just birthed. Plus, this show neither cries nor poops as much as a real child. So that's something.

We had our first show tonight, which also happened to be the first time we ran through an entire show from start to finish. Yeeha! Well, it is improv. There's such a thing as overrehearsing. I am SO happy with how it went. The singing was super pretty. :) There are only fourteen more shows . . .

As is our tradition, after the first performance in the run we had a talkback with the audience, both to answer their questions, and to ask some of our own. It's like a preview performance, where audience input actually has the power to influence the development of the show. We ask people whether the show was how they expected it to be, whether they'd come back, what would have made the show more enjoyable for them, etc. Audiences are smart. It pays to listen to them. The talkback was very interesting, among other things because audience members confirmed some things I'd been suspecting, about the show. (Made me feel like I was being properly perceptive, as a director. Woo!)

For starters, it was pretty unanimous that a puppet can't be playing multiple characters--and not just that, but basically if it's been characterized in a scene, it also can't go back to being neutral. If Marcel gets endowed as the landlord, for example, and then he appears in a backup dance for another song and scene, people said they would wonder, "what's the landlord doing singing backup?" Unless, of course, there's a symbolic reason why he would. But the implication is, they'd still be thinking of him as the landlord, not as a random bystander. Hence, we need lots of extra puppets. As somewhat of a corollary, none of our people ended up playing multiple characters either; if they needed to be someone else, they grabbed a puppet. Maybe that should be a thing . . . is this a one-character show?

We still need to work on how to get the suggestion to start the show; I like the idea of a theme without a positive or negative spin on it, and I had been thinking we needed to ask for something else concrete as well, like find out about someone's job or something . . . someone in the audience independently echoed that statement. She felt we should pick one specific anecdote to tie down the theme. (We haven't really been focusing in rehearsal on using all the info in the suggestion, which maybe means we have to do that, or change the way we get information.)

While writing this, I had a thought. The last few times we've gotten stuff to do, we've had the characters working in an office that seems kinda generic. Tonight we also had an office, though it had more character and specific details than before. Yet, just now I realized why those generic offices might crop up in our stories: wait for it, are you ready?: almost none of us actually work in an office. Crazy theory, huh? I know we all work, and some of us work in offices, but not really in an "Office." As in, "The ___," or "___ Space." So I know I for one wouldn't really know what it's like. Huh. Interesting.

Welp, time to just keep bringin' it. We know we can do it, now that we've done it once. I can't wait for the rest of the shows! (And does this mean we get to make MORE puppets?!? Look out, living room. Here I come!)