Austin Improv

Question for everyone...
Would you want to know beforehand if your show was being reviewed?

Here's why I ask. I'd like for my troupe to be reviewed at some point and to that end I'd like to invite various media representative's to come see a show in which my troupe is in. However, since we don't really do a lot of single-troupe shows, doing so would mean having the media representative watch a 3fer or Double Barrel. This means other troupes would been seen and possibly reviewed themselves.

So, if a media representative said "yes, I'd love to come on this date," and you were in that show, would you want to know or would you be pissed to find the review later if you didn't?


(For the record, this hasn't happened yet. So if you're playing with us this week or soon, don't worry. But I do want to make it happen.)

Personally, I'd rather not know until afterwards - knowing beforehand won't do anything for me but get me nervous. We should be bringing our best shows out every night, regardless of who's watching.

I'm with Matt on this one. Knowing there is a reviewer in the audience turns the fun show into a fiery hoop and I'd probably fuck something up. So, don't tell me till after and I'll just hope that we had a kickass show that night.

yikes that's kinda scary. we're still the youngest troupe in the AIC. i dunno if i wanna be reviewed when we've been performing for only 4 months. we're still struggling with finding a style/identity for our troupe's improv.

I wouldn't want to know. Shame on us if we aren't sharp as fuck and look like we are going out to perform our last improv show ever.

At first my response to this was "meh, I wouldn't care either way." But I guess I'd actually not want to know because, like everyone's said, the presence of a reviewer isn't going to impact my show positively. "Oh, there's a reviewer. I better *actually* do a good show now." I'm always trying to do the best show I can do.