How to describe our weekend at the Chihuly festival on the 12th and 13th? Well, I can probably do it best justice by comparing it to a standard CWA afterschool production... at least I have some familiarity with that. The Challengers' first off-campus performance was indeed a pretty big production. You could argue that rehearsals started 3 or 4 weeks ago, or you could argue that we started preparing for this two years ago. I'll cut it in the middle somewhere and say that we really started working on this about the time I came back from Ashland the second week of July. Adam Utley, the catalyst for so much of what the Challengers have accomplished, had secured our participation in this inaugural festival through his friend Alexa who was essentially producing the thing. We waffled for the first two weeks at least, just trying to figure out who would be around to participate, then spent the next three and a half weeks frantically preparing. We upped our workshops to 3 a week; tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays, and got to work on all the little details that surrounded the gig. This is where comparisons to a standard show get tricky... We only "rehearsed" 3 times a week instead of 5 for a show, but the time and energy spent on the other things that had to get done was tremendous. We had to define who and what we were, and get that on paper. We had to develop and launch a website. We had to come up with various promotional items and informational goodies, and the booth to display everything. The booth alone took a couple days, and that was by far the easiest item on that to do list. The website took hours and hours and still is far from complete, but close enough to survive any scrutiny we may achieve through the weekend. The informational flyer with our statement of purpose was a source of constant second-guessing... what should the tone be? The look? The words? What the heck were we trying to do? We went back and forth quite a bit, and Adam and I really struggled with this one, agreeing to disagree on a few things, but ultimately settling on a revised earlier version... again, far from complete, but at least a start on our ultimate mission statement. The rehearsals, if you can call anything with Improv a "rehearsal" were inconsistent to say the least. Nerves were frayed. Confidence waned and broke at times. We played well. We played poorly. Even the day before the festival, we had little to no idea what kind of performance shape we were in. As far as comparisons to a show... The work was pretty much the same, but unlike any show, there was no way to gauge how ready the production was... no way to imagine what the show might even look like. That is the greatest beauty and the greatest frustration with Improv. We were jumping blind off a cliff. Fully prepared... and not prepared at all.
Then came the Weekend.
Right away, things started to gel in a way they hadn't in the previous weeks. Almost everyone was there on time or early. The booth and stage were assembled with eagerness and lots of smiles. Our space looked really cool and professional... it felt good.
Our first show was at 11:00 in the morning, and there was hardly anyone roaming the festival yet. Still, we performed well, a bit rushed, tipping the timer at just over seventeen minutes... okay, a lot rushed, but it was a darn good seventeen minutes. After the show there was a smidge of disappointment about our audience, but we tried very hard to keep the focus on our performance, and how to improve both the show and the audience for our next show at 1:00... we had six more performances in the next two days... lots of room and time to improve. The kids set out on audience attracting recon missions, which consisted of running around the festival in their jumpsuits doing silly stuff... remarkably effective. Our one o'clock show was light years better, with a standing room only crowd, lots of young kids, and nobody wandered away once they caught sight of us. I took on the MC duties to let Adam do more with the kids, and that seemed to make a big difference (I had made a last minute decision not to perform, which wasn't fully understood by me or the kids, but it felt right). MC-ing gave me an opportunity to get closer to the show and the kids, and it took some pressure off of Adam to handle everything on stage. I also, very selfishly, had a blast. I do love to perform, and this gave me that opportunity without any of the intimidation that had gone on in rehearsals. Besides, I was always much better behind a microphone than doing the actual improv, and, Lord knows, Adam and the kids had a lot more experience and were just plain better at the games. It seemed to be the right fit. The shows just got better and better after that, and we even tried... and suceeded with... a forty-five minute un-planned free-form scene that morphed almost seemlessly from one game to another. Very few even extremely experienced, professional groups would try a stunt like that in public. One of the reasons I love working with kids who just don't know any better. Day one was over, and we went out with a bang.
Sunday. No Erin today, so we started the day one huge smile short. Kids were not so ontime after 11 straight hours of improv related fun the day before(and several more hours after that at a local Stonecold Creamery... but I don't know anything about that... really), and Lindsay and I pretty much set everything up on our own. The kids slowly trickled in, looking a little worn, but ready for our final two shows of the gig. We had all received a lot of accolades from all sorts of sources, so the mood was high. The first Sunday show was light years better than our first show on Saturday, but not quite what the rest of the Saturday shows were. The kids were definitely tired, and I had almost completely lost my voice and was depending way too much on the mic. We gave ourselves a pep talk for the next show, and went our different directions for a long, two hour break before our final four o'clock show. Brooks did a fabulous job manning the booth in those hours, his natural magnanamous personality serving us all well. Some tried to sleep. Some wandered. The festival was definitely winding down, and fewer and fewer folks came by our little corner. There were a few concerns about our final audience, but we all remembered the night before when we seemed to gather in every single patron at the festival to our area despite most of the surrounding booths closing early. Four o'clock came near, and the crowds came. Throughout the weekend we had incredible support from the kid's families and friends, and this final show was no different. Every chair was filled ten minutes before we started, and they just kept coming. At four we had our biggest crowd of the weekend... family, friends, and lots and lots and lots of new faces, even though almost every other vendor and festival participant had closed up shop. We had a great show planned, and the energy was tremendous.
There is no way to describe how well that last show went... except possibly relating the moment that Adam shot his hands up in the air shouting "Yes!" after the Backwards/Forwards game like he was a crazed fan after the home team had scored a touchdown. I even got into the act, prolonging the kid's obligatory "Slow-motion, stylized fight-scene to the death" Ending by blocking all their attempts to kill me... until they rose en masse as zombies and dogpiled on till I could shut off the ending music with my final, dying breath. Even that dogpile was like an endzone celebration, and the applause from the audience when the music finally cut out was as satisfying as any I had ever heard.
The weekend was over. We had done good.
Back to that show comparison... When an afterschool production goes well, it looks pretty close to what I might have imagined and hoped it would look like from the very beginning. When Improv goes well... it defies anything you could ever have imagined. Comparison over... silly idea to begin with.
There is still much to do. Adam and I will have to continue shaping the direction of the group, especially with the departure of so many senior kids, and our roles and how school and the Challengers relate and so many other questions still remain unanswered. The roller coaster will continue... But... but... we done good. I have never been more proud of a bunch of kids, and a friend/colleague like Adam, and all the famlies and friends as I was after that weekend.
We done good.