Comedy Festival Day One
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
What an exhausting day it's been!
Up very early this morning (Sue-Anne was up at 3am preparing!) and into the Northcote Town Hall before 9am to set up for our two 'ILLUSIONARIUM' shows.
Normally, a show like this would have a lighting & audio tech plus a stage hand or two... but we're trying to do it all ourselves. Maybe too ambitious and the 11am show ran a little long (70 mins) and we decided to drop one sequence. Plus, the theatre was incredibly hot and we have a LOT of costume changes... at one stage I was wearing three costumes over each other!
In the end we decided to eliminate The Perdente's Sword Box - the costuming was very complicated and it left a huge mess on the stage.
We also decided to leave the audience lights on in the second show and the second show went 100% better than the first. It was tighter without the extra illusion, and we weren't as frantic backstage.
The theatre was still quite warm despite the fan they brought in, but tomorrow we move into the larger, and much cooler theatre, so we expect the show and the reactions to it will get even stronger.
We had about a half full house for Show 1, and 3/4 for Show 2. Lots of parents with young children, plus a few teens with an obvious love of magic which was great to see.
After the ILLUSIONARIUM shows, we prepared for the 9pm show SOMETHING ABOUT NEEDLES & RAZORBLADES. This show has been a very hard "sell" as a lot of people have worried it would be too "gross" for them. Honestly, I've been worried as I've had no idea as to how people would react.... but we were REALLY pleased with how the show went. (And a big WELL DONE to Sue-Anne for teching a show she'll never actually get to see performed... ever!)
The show itself is very different, with some very bloodthirsty effects linked with an odd storyline and weird multimedia character who got quite a few laughs.
The show does have it's fair share of tense moments, "Insanity" being one of the strongest, and at the end of the show, the audience didn't want to leave. (Though, the position I end up in, it's rather hard to do an encore).
We've got another good size house for tomorrow night's show, but we need you guys to SPREAD THE WORD about it for Thursday and later in the week.
Tell your friends, family and come along yourself! As it turns out, it's rather a good show and totally unlike ANYTHING you've ever experienced before!
And you've never seen the Linking Rings until you've seen 'Everybody Hurts' *g*.
Hope to see you at The Northcote Town Hall sometime this week!