While I enjoyed tonight's show, it was marred slightly by irritating technical problems.
Well, this was how things felt from the inside looking out; my assistant Steve assured me it was good show and was well received, but it was frustrating to be constantly upstaged by electrical interference and dodgy mic connections getting in the way of the material - and all of this after being very thorough when setting up before to the show
Slideshow gags rely on precision timing (as poncy and self-serving as that sounds). You need to be able to trigger an audio-visual cue in an instant, without having to go off to adjust a level, or to take out a channel completely if it's interfering with everything else. I couldn't rely on this tonight; I had to keep dipping behind the curtain to the side of the stage to twiddle with knobs (*crass joke*) like a quasi-Wizard of Oz, to make things work. I also had to hold the mic with a specific unnatural grip to prevent it cutting out. This isn't what you want to be focusing on when you're performing, at the expense of everything else.
I'm being unnecessary negative, to be fair. I had a reasonable-sized house (who I think were mostly the cast of another show, though sadly I didn't get to find out what it was) who were friendly and pretty vocal. They got a little quieter towards the end, though it didn't help that the room was very hot. One guy was nice enough to come up to me afterwards to shake my hand and tell me how much he enjoyed it. It goes to show: a performer's perspective of how a show went isn't always wholly accurate; there endeth the Lesson For The Day.
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