Funny Ha-Ha: The Cool Kids is this Friday. Rarely have I felt so relaxed about a show, because the lineup is all people who do and put on readings in Chicago so I know they're all pros. Even though I've been putting on the show for over ten years and I do it on my own schedule, I still get nervous before every show. Steve makes fun of me for it but in some ways I worry that if I don't worry, it will be a shitty show. IT NEVER IS AND IT NEVER WILL BE. But these are the things I have to worry about in order to make sure the show will not be shitty:
Nobody will come. This has happened a few times, usually due to weather (and it wasn't nobody, it was just a few people.) I feel embarrassed for the readers as well as for the audience for some reason but what are you going to do? We put on a show and make each other laugh and enjoy being out.Â
The audience will hate the show. This is out of my hands and as far as I know has never happened but I still worry about it anyway.
The audience only comes to be nice and they resent me for it. I'm not sure why this is; I know I don't go to anything just to be nice.
Readers will drop out and the audience will be furious. Readers have dropped out before, a few on the day of the show. It's a bummer because I spend time putting together the lineup and then teasing the show, but then I also worry that the audience will rise up and walk out when they hear their faves are not actually attending and that I lied to them.
Readers will get a tepid reaction and be mad about it. I don't know why I worry about this because I do not edit or revise the pieces so the work onstage has nothing to do with me. But I know what it's like to see somebody flop and I also know what it's like to flop and I worry about everybody's feelings then in this case.
Readers go extremely long and the audience gets fidgety and/or the Hideout cuts the show short. While we haven't gotten the cane yet from the Hideout, often we are on a pretty strict schedule and I'm pretty adamant that readers keep their stuff short, not just for the Hideout's sake but I don't think any reading should be more than ten minutes. But sometimes the readers have gone long and I feel the audience starting to get fidgety and it makes me fidgety and also annoyed with the reader. But it hasn't destroyed the show yet and it doesn't happen that often.
Somebody will think I was rude to them before or after the show. I am a social person but I get flustered sometimes when too many people I know are in a room at the same time because I don't know who to talk to and for how long. I'm getting better at this but sometimes I worry that on my way to do something else I'll blow somebody off and they'll think, what a bitch.
Anyway. I am pretty sure that none of this will happen on Friday, although it would be pretty funny if it all happened at the same time just the once.