Here is a shout out to Bob Oliphant whom I would write personally if he would send me his email. Thanks for the comment, Bobby. I doubt you could have sneaked up on me in Dallas without me catching you. I can’t wait to see you again. Mike Christian still owes me a couple of dollars from a poker dice game back stage at the Crystal Palace.

Another friend and ex-roommate David Wylie tried to sneak into the audience for my Broadway Opening night. He even called me on the phone a couple of days before to say how sorry he was that he wouldn’t be able to make it. I knew he was there long before he knew that I knew.

A film crew followed me around backstage when we did the show in Los Angeles. At one point they caught me sneaking a look at the audience before the show. It is an old ritual that I have observed since my Six Flags days. My first request to Beowolf Borit, my Broadway set designer, was “give me a place behind the set to see the audience without them being able to see me.”

I like to watch the audience come into the theater. I like to watch them sit down, are they talking to each other? Are they reading the program? I like to get to know them before I take over their lives for a couple of hours. I think of it like a wolf stalking sheep. (Comedy is always expressed in aggressive metaphors Like, “I Killed them” “The show was a knock out”.. etc.)

Most of the time the stage lights create a dark wall between the performer and the audience. By studying the audience with the house lights on, I have a better sense of who they are. Body language is really telling when people don’t know they are being studied. I used to be able to find potential hecklers in a comedy club audience before their first drink. The system is not perfect, but I have been right more times than wrong.

I remember a comic who “went after” an audience member who was hurling heckling noises at the stage during his performance. He was merciless toward the poor guy, and it would have been funny if he had really been heckling. It was a multiple sclerosis patient in a wheelchair who was enjoying the show in the only way he knew how to express himself. The comic barely got out of the club alive when the audience turned on him. He should have noticed the wheel chair before the show started.

So, sneak, hide, ambush or wear a disguise but please come and see my show in Dallas. I will be seeing you before you see me.
As you were,
Jay