"Heaven help our hope."

Tonight's the night they tape us for posterity! Here's hoping for a reasonably full house of lively audience members. Last night the box office told us we'd sold 70 or 80-some seats, but only 30-some-odd people actually showed up. And it being a Friday night, when folks have worked all day and all week, they were relatively quiet, as I've come to expect from a Friday night audience. They obviously enjoyed the show - some of them gave us a standing ovation at the curtain calls! - just not numerous or noisy.

Perhaps because of that (or more likely, enhanced by that), we were a bit ragged last night. The timing was sometimes a little bit off, a few lines were misplaced or rewritten, a couple of choristers missed an entrance due to a "wardrobe malfunction" (the one's wig fell off and both were trying to get it back on in a more permanent fashion), the pianists made new mistakes - sigh. I'm glad we got that out of our system (I hope we got that out of our system!) last night; tonight's performance should be sharper. I know mine will, if only because I got to sleep in this morning.

And I'm on a roll. Out of 3 performances so far, I've known at least one person in the audience every time (just one last night, but out of a crowd of only 30-some, that's good). That's my best record ever; usually I only know someone for 1 or 2 performances of a run. If L is able to make good on her promise to attend tonight, and my neighbor to attend tomorrow's matinee, I'll know someone in the audience every performance for 2 full weekends, which could really spoil me if no one I know comes the last weekend. :) I can think of lots of reasons I haven't been much of a "box office draw":
- All my would-be supporters are on stage with me;
- All my would-be supporters are in shows that run concurrent with mine;
- It's too far (in this area, that usually means having to go through too many traffic choke points);
- Other scheduling conflicts
- They just aren't interested in theater. Strange as it sounds, I do have a few friends like that. And when it comes to shows w/ music, if it isn't Broadway, then it must be opera, and "I hate opera - all that shrieking, and I can never understand a word, even if it's in English."

I can't help but wonder about why I'm having so much better luck getting folks to come to this show - how much of it is because the timing or location just happens to work out for people, how much because they're being supportive of my first lead, and how much is because they're there to see someone else and I just happen to be in the same show. ;) Whatever the reason, I'm happy to see familiar faces in the audience.