Last Thursday we had the third Fools’ improv show of the year. I decided it was time to take a risk, and so I got permission to do the show in the chapel/auditorium. The chapel is a much bigger space that what I was used to in the library. The library can hold 80-90 people maximum, and we had been at that level for a few shows – I wanted to try a space that could hold more people. Another plus of the chapel is that it has a real stage. The Fools tend to hit the floor a fair amount in the course of shows, and having people on a stage means the audience can still see you even when you are on the ground. That was always a problem in the library. My biggest concern was sound – the Fools operate unmiked, and I was afraid that we would have trouble projecting in the bigger space.

Anyway, I was pleased with the results. After the show, I talked with about ten different people and they all said sound was no problem. The Fools did indeed hit the floor (in the very first scene, in fact), but everyone could still see them. The energy did not seem to suffer for being on a real stage either – I was afraid that being about 15 feet away from the audience and about 3 feet up on stage might make the audience-Fool connection be strained, but it seemed okay to me. Best of all, the place did not feel empty. The back wings of the chapel can be closed by retractable curtains, which makes a more intimate space that can still hold about 300 people. That could have felt very empty, but we had a new record attendance for a Fools’ show. One of my Fools counted the people while she was off stage, and she counted 102 people. That was very exciting.

Feedback from the show seemed largely positive. It was not just politeness – people told Meredith that it was a good show, and they volunteered the information the next day without being asked. I overheard a couple of people talking to each other about the show and they seemed to be happy with it. Mer thought it might have been our strongest show yet. I think it is safe to say we’ll be back in the chapel again for our last show of the year in May.

During the show, we had:

– A superhero called DanceMan who could not dance

– A man who had married a martian who used to have three heads and had been married to her cousin on Mars

– A dating game with Sean Connery, Jack Bauer from 24, and Jim Carrey

– An answering machine full of messages about all the leaves that were taking over the neighborhood

– A half-life game about learning to ski (including a very impressive 6-second version of the scene)

– A criminal who did not like the Godfather movies

– A taxi driver at Disneyworld who gets killed by a swordfish

– A scene about trying out different pick-up lines

– A musical chairs about a teen accidentally talking in code to a stranger, which led the FBI to investigate her home

– A genre rewind about breaking a vase that got rewound as a musical and a documentary

– A political debate about the merits of hiccups and of waffles

It was a very fun show. I’m looking forward to the next one!