The Great Sigh of Relief

We had our first live performance for Robot Vs. Dinosaur last night at sketchfest. We had a full house between our group and Johnny's Regret, who shared the bill with us, and the whole thing went surprisingly well, even given my inflated egotistical standards.

When we started the writing group that eventually created the show, we set a couple of goals for ourselves regarding what we were hoping to create. We felt that the majority of sketch shows feel rushed and underdeveloped (no disrespect to the sketch community but, with most everyone on fifteen improv teams and eight sketch groups, it's hard to focus), so we wanted to make sure that our work was developed properly and well thought out. We wanted to do something unusual with sketch, something that you don't normally see every day. We also wanted to make sure that we earned our laughs, that even our cruder jokes were at the least not come by cheaply.

I think the show that we performed last night was a reflection of those goals, and I'm really excited that the audience responded as well as it did.

I have to admit that I was worried, right up until that first laugh, that nobody would find the show funny or that they would get lost in the transitions, or that my performance was going to suck, etc. Most of that was irrational nervousness. Only most of it. But, I think when you spend so much time and energy getting a show together, particularly since we had been writing the show since May, you forget that what you are doing is funny.

So last night, as I was hanging out behind the curtain waiting for my first cue, I was able to breath that great sigh of relief when we got our first laugh a good fifteen seconds in. From then on out, the show was what we intended for it to be: it was a whole lot of fun.

We will be working on the show over the next month or so, expanding it so that we can do a longer run sometime in the spring. I'll keep everyone posted on that, but for the moment, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who came to see the show.