Regular listeners know I like to do improv.

Regular listeners and recent listeners know I also sometimes do theater.

I’ll be doing a production of Avenue Q in August.

What you may not know, unless you know me really well, is that sometimes I find a way to marry those two interests of being in a scripted play or musical or whatever and still finding reasonable and good and safe opportunities to include some improv.

Let’s get into it.

Your Daily Lex.

The worst part of doing theater.

Well, now I already feel bad about using the extreme because I’m sure there’s plenty of bad parts.

But one good part of doing theater is you have to learn lines.

Man, it’s the worst.

I used to be great at learning lines.

Then I started really doing a lot of improv and it got much harder for me to learn lines.

I think I’ve rebuilt that skill over time, but man, it’s annoying to learn lines.

But when you really do it, when you really nail learning lines, you don’t just learn your lines, you learn everybody else’s lines because you got to know when you talk and you got to know what the other person’s going to say so that you can know when it’s your cue and time to speak again.

And so that can be a whole thing.

So sometimes when you’re in a show and somebody forgets a line, I don’t like the moment where everybody just kind of awkwardly stands in each other.

I’m not going to let that happen because it looks bad and it makes the audience know something’s going wrong most of the time.

People get a little bit of fear in their eyeballs.

So if I can come up with something to say that will prompt your line or obviate the need for you to say your line, I’ll do that to keep it moving if I know enough.

But those are things that happen, right?

Sometimes if you see a lot of shows or if you know scripts decently well, you can catch what is happening in other shows.

Like I bet you’re wondering if I’m hungry.

Like if their line is, are you hungry?

Whatever.

You can catch it.

But if you can do it in more subtle ways or more organic ways, that can be fun.

But I’m thinking about more specific examples.

Last summer I was in a production of School of Rock, the musical.

And well, once Sierra was in that show and there was a time when I had to get an entire crowd to start chanting the words, the band name, School of Rock.

And I could look at Sierra and make her crack up every time, which I of course enjoyed doing.

Making her kid break on stage is a joy.

And so I eventually, before the actual show went up, I had a promise that I wasn’t going to look in Sierra’s eyes and try to get her to break, which I did not do.

I lived up to my promise.

I’m saying I didn’t do the breaking.

I followed our agreement.

But during rehearsals, I would always try to make her break.

But during the actual show itself, there’s supposed to be, you know, when we’re actually, you know, on stage doing the show for audiences, near the end, there’s the battle of the bands and an announcer voice comes on and says, and the winner is no vacancy, a different band, not the kids band.

And then everybody boos.

They get them all to chant and then they have School of Rock perform another song.

But so in that big moment, I don’t remember exactly how many times we did the show.

It might’ve been five performances.

It might’ve been, it’s probably seven performances.

It was some number of performances.

But in that moment, I think let’s say five of the seven shows, something went wrong with that audio cue because it wasn’t read live.

That line was recorded and then played back, except it was never played back properly.

Sometimes it just didn’t happen at all.

And so I would be like, I would just act like I had heard the announcer be like, what?

Did you hear that?

They just announced that no vacancy won the battle of the bands.

And I think even though that’s weird that I can hear it and nobody else in the stage or audience can, I still think that those are moments that are believable to an audience.

Like that’s just weird magic of theater thing.

And so I’ve heard it fine.

There was one night where they played the wrong sound cue.

Actually, they had more than once.

And so it was just like, it’s like totally bizarre getting played.

And I had to again be like, did you hear that?

It was a little bit garbled, but there was one night where they played like every sound cue at once.

It was just sort of like, have you ever seen a video when they accidentally set off all the fireworks at once?

It was just this crazy cacophony.

And I’m like, if I can hear that correctly, they just said that no vacancy won.

And all that’s, I mean, doing that in a way where you can, in those cases, the audience knows something is going wrong, but I’m trying to hold their hand and be like, let me guide you to where we’re supposed to be.

Here’s what’s actually happening.

And I like it and do that.

That’s fun.

And the audience loved that stuff.

The the other memory I have of this where in retrospect, in the retelling of the story, it doesn’t sound as good, but I got to tell you live, it really, it crushed it.

But I’m acknowledging to you that the story doesn’t tell as, as strong as the experience was.

I guess it’s the epitome of you had to be there, but I was in a production in college of Bye Bye Birdie.

And there’s a moment where a bunch of parents are rushing onto the stage.

And as we’re entering, one of the actresses playing one of the mom’s trips as she’s running onto the stage and face plants on the stage.

And then, you know, the scene keeps going.

We all brought up and we keep going.

Everybody sees it.

And like, there’s the second of, oh my God, was she supposed to fall down?

Very clearly no, because nobody’s acknowledging in any way.

And while all these parents are yelling at, you know, non-parent people, I just say, we’re falling all over ourselves here.

Which really in retrospect doesn’t mean anything.

Like it’s, it’s barely understandable.

But the audience was like, oh my God, he’s referencing that that girl just fell down on her face.

And they thought it was great.

Like it was, it was like mid show applause, which is always a joy.

You know, I saw a production of Hello Dolly that Lauren was in recently.

And that one was bizarre to me because like Dolly comes out and the audience starts applauding wildly.

Like we knew Dolly was going to come out.

That’s part of the show.

Or they start singing Hello Dolly, which happens in every production of Hello Dolly.

And the audience starts cheering wildly.

Oh, there’s the famous song from the show.

That’s odd.

But giving them a thing to latch on to where they feel like they’re kind of in on the joke with you.

That’s fun.

So anyway, that’s what I was thinking about today.

Happy Tuesday.

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