Late Night Heat Wave

We are now going into our 4th week in this incarnation of Furious' Late Night's imMEDIAte Theatre. For those of you that don't know, imMEDIAte Theatre is a totally improvised show based on audience suggestion and news of the day. Currently, it is running every Saturday night @10pm in rep with Back of the Throat until August 19th. We are continually learning how to fine tune the process of making this show be as entertaining and sharp as possible. Though each show has indeed been entertaining and dare I say, thought provoking (we hope), they each have their ups and downs. The second week proved to be thought of most consistently as the "best show" in this run. While this miffed me at first, I am now understanding why. #1 We were all confident. #2 We were all energetic. #3 We were on the same page and we basked in it.

Here are the things I constantly have to remind myself to make this show (not to mention the rehearsals ) great:

-If you are over-heated, so is your audience. Don't give them a chance to dwell on it. (This past Saturday it got up to 107 in Pasadena.)
-If you are tired, so is your audience. Suck it up! Fake it! Have some caffeine! Something.
-If it is a small crowd, force them to care even more. And don't drop anything, ever. If you don't hear a chortle on every damn funny thing you say don't give up on the scene, or your audience will too.
-Keep the energy up, always.
-And most important, never relax. If you expect somebody to go up, make yourself that person. You can be lazy when you're dead. But when you're on stage you are a servant of the piece. Serve it.

Rock on, ImMEDIAte. Rock. On.