Doing it up in the Heights

I was very worried about bringing in a decent house for our first performance, but at a real loss about what I could do to help put butts in seats from so far away.  Fortunately the gang at Metropolis took care of the marketing for us, and did an amazing bang-up job.  By the time we arrived at the theater, they had pre-sold 170 tickets, and our final headcount was right around 200 large.  The early show at the theater is High School Musical, and 25 members of that cast stuck around to catch our show.  They were a most appreciative and enthusiastic audience, and helped keep the energy up with plenty of hooting and hollering from the house.  It's always interesting to me to see how different audiences react to different comics.  Our best success on this first show came from our animal comics... Jumbles the Penguin, and Nicky Mouse.  The audience thought they were just adorable, and every single one of their moves was met with laughs.  Doing the opening monologue bit in front of 200 people felt just incredible, and gave me flashbacks to doing high school productions in front of a packed auditorium.  So overall, I'd say that first show was aces.  Not our best, but far from our worst, and we gathered enough data to adapt the show to this new crowd.  Or so we thought.

Our second show bombed.  We had a few core cast members missing or re-cast due to a wedding, and an audience full of drunk and antagonistic fraternity relics.  They were there to fight, and fight they did.  Our comics were booed, jeered, and hissed at.  The show left Metropolis wondering if our run was worth continuing, or if the plug should be pulled to cut their losses.  Apparently there are some humorous complaint letters that we'll eventually get our hands on.

We went into our third show (last night) prepared to fight for our lives.  I knew we'd be facing a jaded and small crowd due to the Cubs loss, but we had spent the previous week getting our ducks in a row to make sure we'd have a blockbuster performance.  We brought up three of our most successful comics, Jumbles the Penguin (Dan Telfer), Earl LaRue (Robert Buscemi), and Kelly Paynes (Jared Logan).  If we bombed, we knew that it would most likely be our last show at the Metropolis Arts Center, and our hiatus would begin much sooner than we had anticipated.

We ended up knocking it out of the park.  The show was fantastic.  Everyone was on their game, and the extra preparation helped everything to run very smoothly.  This was our first performance out there with our entire core cast, Sasha and The Noob, Timekeeper Willis, Big Dummy, and we'll all be there for every show for the rest of the run.

Still, though, these suburban crowds are a real enigma.  One week they're your buddies, another week they're incredibly antagonistic, and looking for a real fist fight.  Hopefully we'll crack the formula by our last performance.  We have five more left.  If you're out in the 'burbs, or feel like taking a ride down on the I-90, we'd love to see you at the show.