People who do a lot of community theater and probably other theater too, even professional theater talk about post show blues, right?

The show ends and then you, you’ve got the blues.

I don’t think I have the blues from the end of Avenue Q, but um, it was a lot of fun.

I’ll miss doing it and I’m sad.

Oh wait, that is the blues.

Your daily Lex, but indeed, yeah, Avenue Q is over.

It was a ton of fun.

We had mostly sold out shows.

We had one show that was about 70% full, but really great audiences.

A lot of fun doing it.

Six shows and people really seem to like it.

We got great, great, great feedback over and over again, which obviously feels good.

But I wanted to talk about a moment in the show that I really enjoyed each time.

There’s a song near the end of the show called the money song.

That’s actually what it’s called.

And I think I’ve talked about this a bit before, but in the money song, um, the, uh, some of the actors on stage go out into the audience, uh, hat in hand, literally to collect money.

And boy, I have a lot of fun doing that.

And so in the past couple of shows, anytime there was an empty seat, I would always sit next to, um, you know, if there was an empty seat, I would always sit in that seat and hold my answer to the person, you know, sitting next to that seat and I, one night I got a $20 bill.

Uh, I got a couple of ones, uh, I would often get candy or other weird things.

It was, it was great.

I didn’t mind whatever people gave.

It was funny.

very annoying because then I had to transfer coins because I had to pour it from my hand to another person’s house.

It’s the whole thing.

But one night I saw an empty seat in an aisle and it was one of the only empty seats.

So I raced to that empty seat.

And as I’m turning to sit in it, I realized the woman who was sitting one seat in has put her purse in that seat.

So as I go to sit, I scoop up the purse and plop it in my lap and hold it open to her.

And it was very amusing because you know, you’ve got that one and be like, Oh my God, you have my purse.

And you have all the other people being like, ha ha, he took her purse and it was really funny.

Uh, the director of the show told me afterwards, I really wanted you to take her purse and shoving your hat and run, uh, um, which I did not do.

Uh, but I really do enjoy putting the audience, again, I think I spoke about this last week, but not, not on edge, but you know, getting the people who you’re interacting with, like, Oh, uh, I would often see friends in the audience when I was doing that too, but not recognize them until a moment later because my focus was, let me get this hat around.

Let me keep singing the song.

Let me be this character who I’m being.

Uh, and then only a moment later, my brain catch up, Hey, that person who’s looking at me is the person I know.

Uh, but man, that was a lot of fun.

Um, we got standing ovations every night.

Uh, once the standing ovation only came for the, you know, the final two actors, which is okay.

I mean, some people stood, but then everybody stood by the time the final two came out and they were great.

So it makes sense.

But every other time people very early started standing.

So that’s exciting.

Uh, what show will I do next?

Obviously, as you know, I do a lot of improv and I’m excited to get back into that because I barely saw anybody from the improv side, uh, in August cause I was busy working on Avenue Q.

Um, but you know, I, uh, I am also thinking about what my next show way, cause when we do improv, that theater holds comfortably, maybe 50, 60 people.

And sometimes we have, you know, 15 people there and Hey, we’ll do a kick ass show for 15 people.

But man, when you’ve got, I think I also, I think I’m just repeating all things I’ve talked about.

I mean, some of those stories we knew about going into the arts, but when you do a, uh, a big production for 500 people, it’s, it’s really exciting.

It’s fun.

So I am thinking about what my next show might be.

It’s also interesting because, you know, as I’ve referenced to Brian, who I played in Avenue Q is a, an aspiring comedian who eventually becomes a consultant.

So a lot of it hits close to home.

There’s a moment where he’s very excited and tells his friends that he’s a consultant, whatever.

But my struggle with this show at times was, you know, people kept telling me I did a great job, which I’m going to remind you over and over again for no reason.

Yeah.

But people kept saying how wonderful it was.

Just amazing.

Just truly compelling.

But, um, I couldn’t always, I didn’t know if I was good.

There’s some things I do where I’m like, man, I really did a good job.

And certainly sometimes with improv, I feel that with this, I wasn’t always sure if I was doing a great job because the character didn’t feel so close to myself.

Ani saw the very last show and Ani said, no, you definitely were different.

I saw this is Ani talking.

She’s like, I saw the moment in the curtain call when you turned from Brian to Lex.

And I saw that, but everything about you was different in the role.

So I don’t know.

It was, it was a good experience.

I’m really glad I did that show as, as regular listeners know, I wrestled with what I was going to do when I had decided I was going to do it no matter what, even if I, I weren’t a puppet and indeed I weren’t, but, uh, yeah, it was a great time.

I was certainly also jealous of the puppeteers.

There was one crazy night of the show when one of our performers was ill, uh, and she had recovered.

Um, and, but, you know, there was a moment where we’re figuring out how people were going to cover her parts cause she couldn’t go on and then, Nope, I can go on.

Great.

And that’s where we start the opening number.

And it’s two of us singing to each other.

And then these other two puppets come out, the Bert and Ernie S puppets come out.

And, um, Mickey is a two handed puppet and this woman is the second hand of that puppet, but she doesn’t come out.

The director comes out, uh, the director comes out doing the second hand of the puppet.

He’s in black t-shirt and black pants, whatever else.

And it was, it was shocking.

Um, that actress had apparently between when the call for places came and when the show started had thrown up and then she was fine after that, she was ready to go and she did all the other parts, but she did not do the opening number of the show and the director came out and man, where the other actress was on stage with me and I were, we absolutely startled.

And I, I definitely didn’t flub a line, but I, I malformed the line.

Um, I put all the words in that line out of order and it was maybe 40% gibberish and 60% English.

Uh, so I guess I flubbed a lot, but it was so startling to see the director come out when we had no expectation that was going to happen.

Good times.

Live theater.

Anyway, happy Monday folks.

Lex.

Lex.