Cheep Cheep Blog 7

Saturday night was our best performance.  It was our second night of being sold out, though this time there were actual bodies to filling seats to support the fact.  I felt grateful that my parents had bothered to come down to see it, and fortunate that they happened to come that night. Starved from Friday night, every show fed off this audience's energy.  Not only was the house full, but some of our actors (at least/especially Casey) had some friends or a fan club in the audience, which certainly helped give Cheep, Cheep! extra support.  I noticed it in the pacing and the volume, and the way they seemed to relish in what they were doing.  I could tell the actors were focused on giving back to the audience; they waited for laughs, tried new things, and were receptive to reactions to material they had never heard before.  We also had a great things-going-wrong-live moment when Jackson accidentally knocked over the cup with the ball in it from the booth.  There was an awkward pause. Rather than lose his composure, Alex Tauss, one of our novice actors, stayed focused in the moment and took advantage of the incident by simply pointing to the obvious answer and giving his line a whole new degree of bluntness, saying, "That one."  He then had the mindfulness to go pick up the fallen props for his fellow actors.  Another one of my favorite moments was a collective gasp when the audience realized Chester was going to give the bike to Margery instead of Maxwell, showing that the story was being told, stakes were raised, and people were invested in what was happening.