This is perhaps the most responsive Friday night audience I can remember in this run. It was a wonderful experience to be on stage tonight with the energy of this audience and a great way to begin the grind of a four-show weekend.

Being a one man show I have to wear several hats over the course of a performance, actor, comedian, storyteller, teacher, host and, of course, ventriloquist. Over the several hundred performances of this show I have adjusted to quick “head gear” changes. Tonight was a performance when one genre overlapped with another. I will try to give you a sense of the experience, mainly to clarify it in my own analysis.

Most of the time, especially while performing with my wooden partners, I have to be intently aware of the audience. If something happens in the audience, one of my characters will jump on that moment immediately with an adlib. For example there was a very deep resonating and unusual laughter coming from the balcony during Darwin’s routine tonight. With out even a thought from me personally, Darwin said, “It sounds like a Moose in heat up there.” It is a phenomenon I have gotten used to over the years of being a ventriloquist. The character’s reality often supersedes my own at times like this. It is the art of the craft. It might seem schizophrenic to some, to me it is just another day at the office.

At the end of the show I have to do an emotionally taxing acting scene. No puppet characters, just me. The actor/Jay has to find a place far from what is happening in the audience and guide them to another experience that happened long ago. It was during that scene tonight when someone made a loud noise. I am still not sure what it was, a groan, a sigh, a yawn, an emotional outburst, I will never really know. It did, however, break my concentration in a weird way; the actor for a moment became the ventriloquist.

Immediately after registering the sound in my brain and unknown to the audience, I hear five different voices, from five different characters begging for expression, each with an adlib to rebuff the noise. There was no puppet with me or one of the voices would have found an outlet. It would have been a mental knee jerk reaction. It was only moment on stage, but an eternity in my inter-dialogue when I finally realized there would be no adlib in this situation. I had to get on with the scene. It took a few more seconds to become the actor again; I stumbled on a word or two. Perhaps the audience was not aware. But I was aware and know I muffed an important scene, and this terrific audience deserved better.

If this were film or television there would be an immediate retake. It would need to be fixed. Not here and not tonight, this is live theater. That is what we love isn’t it? It has never happened before and it may never happen again. We play the cards that are dealt with no control over all situations. Every show will be different from all others as long as we do it live. I guess I just love the challenge, and tomorrow we face the unknown again.
As you were,
Jay