Wow, what a week that was.

Other-newbie-David and I each did our first real show last night — I ended up in the first show (by pure chance) and David did the second. Everyone did the opening rock n’roll song, I introduced and handled the bell for Shoulda Said (aka Say Again), was one of the three experts in a Panel of Experts scene, and everyone did the closing blues number. It was an incredibly fast 40 minutes.

Everyone else in the cast was so supportive and nice! And the stage manager told me afterward that another manager from some other property came by to see my show — he hadn’t seen one of our shows for a while, so like three of us were unfamiliar to him. He asked my manager, “When are your new people performing?” When told that one of the newbies was in the show he just watched, the guy said, “Really? Which one were they?” So either everyone sucked, or I fit in well.

David’s show went very well too. We then put our street clothes back on and watched two of the later shows, complete with drunker audiences and their dirtier suggestions. Charming! We also got to sit in on notes, which were short and uneventful.

After this luxurious weekend, we have one more week of reherasals left. We’ll mostly recap the choreographed songs, as well as learn the rest of the scenes that get played. Most of them are familiar; it’s just a matter of finding out what they call the games here, or what subtle differences they use. We’ll also be doing live-audience shows all next week, starting with one show each on Monday, and ramping up to three or four by Friday. Then next week, we start our regular schedules.

Weirdest difference so far: in the warmup game “Zoom Schwartz Pafigliano”, the actions of Zoom and Pafigliano are reversed. Which really throws me off.