Blog: The Readthrough

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Mr S Hewitt and I gathered in a central London location last night for the first ever public showing of Total Hero Team. We had about 12 people coming who were going to listen to us and then, hopefully, tell us what they thought.

Steve and I went into the main PERFORMANCE ROOM shortly before our audience, in order to get the props out ... and also, MARVEL at them. Steve hadn't seen ANY of them really, so there was much JOY, especially at Fufu The Future Kitten: STAR!

Just after half past seven we sat down and DID IT. It seemed to go OK - some of the costumes (especially the BIG WIGS of Woman-Droid and Smart Alex) were a bit hard to work with, and I could FEEL some parts working better than others, and i DID spill Steve's pint at one point, but otherwise it worked out OK. We both needed a WEE after all that excitement, so I called an INTERVAL, after which I hoped people might be able to give us a few ideas.

I'd been a bit worried that everyone would sit quietly for five minutes, saying "Er... it was quite good?" and not much else. I WAS ENTIRELY WRONG. People got into GROUPS and started DEBATING it IMMEDIATELY, so by the time we were ready to start they were GAGGING to REMARK. This part of the evening went on for NINETY MINUTES as points were DEBATED, questions ASKED and ASPECTS were DISCUSSED - it was utterly brilliant!

Big things that came out of it all was the need to make the start clearer, to increase some of the EMOTIONAL LINKS between characters and the addition of various POINTERS to time periods. Actually, there were loads and loads of things people came up with - sometimes simple questions ("Is Cheedle Hume IN Lancashire?" Turns out is isn't!) and sometimes HUGE suggestions as to how to make things make sense.

It was all a bit EXHAUSTING but IMMENSELY enjoyable, especially as I got to check out Specific Issues e.g. whether everyone understood the TIME PARADOX bit, or liked certain GAGS. This morning I've typed it all out into a HUGE sheet of Things To Remedy, which I'll be toiling through over the coming week or two.

It's VERY exciting - and indeed WAS last night, to the extent that I ended up sitting in the pub until Quite Late BEING excited about it, with the lovely pals who had come along to help. It was GRATE!

posted 21/11/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

I'm sure the viewers will be AMAZED that you found 90 minutes of people talking about YOU to be utterly brilliant ;)
posted 21/11/2012 by Steve

Turns out it's spelt Cheadle Hulme an' all ;-) (sorry if I'm missing a joke...)
posted 21/11/2012 by John

GUTTED I missed this as I was an CRIPPLE. When's the next one?
posted 22/11/2012 by Charlie

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