The struggle of casting

[Spaztique]

Micetro : Maestro :: centre : center

Either way, Micetro or Maestro, they both beat Mystro with a nail-embedded baseball bat.

[sara farr]

should get back to vacationing. woooooooo spring break!!!!

Here, here!

[HERE... party-central (aka Houston!)]

[Wesley]

It's interesting how, over the past year, the enthusiasm for PLAYing in Maestro has dwindled. I blame it on overstructuring. You should not have to build a process around this show. It has a strong format that cannot be denied.

That was part of my drift away, for sure.

I mean, I LOVE structure behind the scenes: cast and directors set at least 3 days in advance, players that show up on time for call, actually warming-up for up to an hour right before the show, starting the show close to on time, directors with a list of potential games and player abilities already in mind, sound cued and ready, directors ready to just make a decisive choice instead of having a revote every other scene or spending time trying to figure out who should or shouldn't go or what tie-breaker to use, etc...

But I think for the audience (and players), the forward facing aspect of the show became over structured to the point of tedium. Hosts are pointless, time-consuming, and make directors faceless and anonymous and probably confusing to the audience. Scorekeepers often take longer and make more mistakes than players scoring themselves. And decrease the casts' ability to break free of the stage and engage the audience once in a while. (I exchanged comments, high-fives, bows, etc with the audience all the time going to the scorebaord, but a scorekeeper just meant I meandered back into the wings).

There was also a spate of themed and costume-based shows and slowly but surely what Maestro was just became obscured.
It used to be "Hey, Wes, want to play Maestro tonight?" and I'd say "sure!" But over the past year it became "Want to play Maestro tonight?" "I don't know. Who's directing and what's the gimmick?"

I think 2 directors with differing styles is ideal, though one solid director is fine. 10 or 11 players is ideal, more than 12 is too many. Keep it simple, playful, avoid going base or blue every time, mix games and scenework (and encourage players to put their own scenework into a game and vice-versa, neither a game or a scene ever has to be merely a game or a scene), hold occasional workshops, give beer, build to exciting play-off endings, keeps the scores mixed, and just have fun.

[TexasImprovMassacre]

Where do I sign up to direct the next future maestro?

[kaci_beeler]

Where do I sign up to direct the next future maestro?

[bradisntclever]

Where do I sign up to direct the next future maestro?

This needs to happen.

[Justin D.]

It's interesting how, over the past year, the enthusiasm for PLAYing in Maestro has dwindled. I blame it on overstructuring. You should not have to build a process around this show. It has a strong format that cannot be denied.

That was part of my drift away, for sure.

I mean, I LOVE structure behind the scenes: cast and directors set at least 3 days in advance, players that show up on time for call, actually warming-up for up to an hour right before the show, starting the show close to on time, directors with a list of potential games and player abilities already in mind, sound cued and ready, directors ready to just make a decisive choice instead of having a revote every other scene or spending time trying to figure out who should or shouldn't go or what tie-breaker to use, etc...

But I think for the audience (and players), the forward facing aspect of the show became over structured to the point of tedium. Hosts are pointless, time-consuming, and make directors faceless and anonymous and probably confusing to the audience. Scorekeepers often take longer and make more mistakes than players scoring themselves. And decrease the casts' ability to break free of the stage and engage the audience once in a while. (I exchanged comments, high-fives, bows, etc with the audience all the time going to the scorebaord, but a scorekeeper just meant I meandered back into the wings).

There was also a spate of themed and costume-based shows and slowly but surely what Maestro was just became obscured.
It used to be "Hey, Wes, want to play Maestro tonight?" and I'd say "sure!" But over the past year it became "Want to play Maestro tonight?" "I don't know. Who's directing and what's the gimmick?"

I think 2 directors with differing styles is ideal, though one solid director is fine. 10 or 11 players is ideal, more than 12 is too many. Keep it simple, playful, avoid going base or blue every time, mix games and scenework (and encourage players to put their own scenework into a game and vice-versa, neither a game or a scene ever has to be merely a game or a scene), hold occasional workshops, give beer, build to exciting play-off endings, keeps the scores mixed, and just have fun.

I bolded the parts I want to echo the most. I also like interacting with the crowd when putting up scores. Adding a score keeper and sometimes a host loses that bit of connection the players can have with the audience.

I was talking to Aden about this last night before our show and it's mentioned somewhere else in this thread, but what about the idea of a regular cast run of Maestro? The idea would be to set a cast of six to eight people to play Maestro for four to six weeks, and then have a rotating cast to fill in the rest of the slots during that time. For one month or whatever the timeframe is, six to eight people are guaranteed to play Maestro and then the call list only needs to fill out that last four to six people.

[acrouch]

Thanks for all the feedback in this section, guys. After much consideration, this is what I've come up with:

http://forum.austinimprov.com/viewtopic ... 6631#56631

And the class isn't just for newbies, either. Anyone who posted on this thread about Maestro would be a perfect candidate for helping make this happen.