Austin Improv

We were talking about this a few weeks back - there are some audience members that are often there and they generally raise their hands to be in a scene. And since the directors vary each performance, the different directors are not noticing this and will pick the same person, who has perhaps already done a Family Dinner scene more than once.

I was thinking that a good cool ol' remedy to this would be to take cast photos (if the Hideout has a camera in stock, or just anyone really with a camera or good camera phone on hand) each maestro with the audience participants. Then, post it on the forums under This way, everyone would have a commemorative photo of everyone they played with, and future directors would know of the different audience members who have participated.

I don't know... it kind of seems like those photos of bad check writers that retailers put up. It also seems a little disingenuous -- taking pictures with the audience members, they think it's to commemorate the show, but in reality it's so we know not to put them onstage again?

Not exactly, and.... I don't know how to get the picture to them though...

But, if nothing else, it would be nice to get a commemorative photo thing going on for the maestro casts just so they remember the day and who they played with and everything. If you put that as a top priority, the knowing who was picked the last few times would just be a side benefit if it happens.

Unrelated: we used to take Polaroids of every Maestro winner. There's still a few lingering around.

As for the directors, the best practice for picking an audience volunteer is to neither pick the person with their hand held high, nor the person who's looking away in terror, but the one who's looking at you inquisitively with an expression of timid interest. These are less likely to gag their way through the scene, thinking they're the funny ones when they're actually sending it off the rails. And it also fixes the problem of frequent volunteerism.

Kevin, I'm looking at you inquisitively with an expression of timid interest.

M.

"We'd like a volunteer who's never volunteered at a Maestro before" is a thing that is valid to say.

happywaffle wrote:Unrelated: we used to take Polaroids of every Maestro winner. There's still a few lingering around..

YES! Actually the first time I ever won Maestro was the first time I had ever played. This happens A LOT (first-timers winning maestro) but was very special to me. Madeline, who was house-manager at the time, took a photo of me with the five-dollar bill by the Maestro door. I have to say that it is always super nice to run across that photo on facebook.

Let's take photos of the Maestro winner again!

Ruby W. wrote:

happywaffle wrote:Unrelated: we used to take Polaroids of every Maestro winner. There's still a few lingering around..

YES! Actually the first time I ever won Maestro was the first time I had ever played. This happens A LOT (first-timers winning maestro) but was very special to me. Madeline, who was house-manager at the time, took a photo of me with the five-dollar bill by the Maestro door. I have to say that it is always super nice to run across that photo on facebook.

Let's take photos of the Maestro winner again!

yeah, this would be pretty awesome. it's not very feasible to do Polaroids anymore, but we could easily do digital/camera phone shots, maybe create an album on the Hideout page and upload the new winner every week. maybe archive them by year, once we get to that point?