As per usual for the first Thursday of the month, I was in The King & Queen last night, though NOT for a Totally Acoustic. When I booked the dates for the recently completed series I added an extra one on a the end so that we could do a Hey Hey 16K preview, and so THAT was the reason for the attendance.
It was an attendance LATE in beginning as we got WAYLAID beforehand, but I took it all Surprisingly Calmly. I usually get in a right old lather, as there's other acts arriving, but there WERE no other acts this time so it didn't matter so much. After a hefty STOMP across London Town The Steps In My Journey and I arrived to find Mr S Hewitt holding the fort by HOSTING our audience downstairs. I went upstairs to drop off GEAR and discovered a very odd sight - somebody had set the room up in THEATRE style. The Seats In My Auditorium and I looked at it ASKANCE - had Steve done this on purpose? Was it meant to be a practice for Edinburgh-style room set-ups? What was his plan? After WORRYING about it for AGES The Steps On My Stair suggested I could just ASK, so I did. Amazingly, this KRAZY PLAN worked - turns out that's how it had been left by the last lot, so we put it into OUR configuration and all was WELL.
All continued well as we guided a sizeable crowd of people upstairs and then Steve and I entered a DRAMA HUDDLE - we'd received NOTES when we'd played at Isabelle's house last week, so discussed what new sections we'd be doing to answer those suggestions. One of the new innovations was to have SONG SHEETS (suggested by my in-house dramaturge) for the chorus of Hey Hey 16K which we handed out beforehand. In addition, we agreed to try out The Bucket Speech (the bit you have to do for Free Fringe shows where you ask for CA$H!). How would it all go?
It went quite well! As usual there were heaps of wonky bits but we are SO USED to these that they bother us little. We did the usual speech about how it's a PREVIEW so bits going wrong is All Part Of The Fun which sets the tone nicely - INDEED I think we'll still do a version of it when we're NOT previewing - and the new adjustments fitted in nicely. We're very much in the TWEAKING section of the run, with notes afterwards providing MORE tweaks for next time, and it seems to be shaping up nicely... I think.
It's a bit odd with this show - maybe it's because I'm mostly just playing ME, and there's more LOOSENESS to it overall, but it all feels a lot more CASUAL. At the end when people SMILE at the OUTCOME I always think "Oh yes, there WAS a story wasn't there? I thought it was just us NATTERING." Or maybe it's the fact that it makes SENSE this time that makes it all feel easier?
Whatever it was, everyone seemed happy, and after tucking into a much needed PINT (it was HOT) afterwards so was I. Next stop: READING!
