I don’t know what it was – the sun, the crowds, or the fact that we have a day off tomorrow, but whatever it was, I wish we could bottle it and imbibe often.  The flyering was fun and almost effortless.

We had over 80 people in the audience and it was our best audience yet – they were wonderfully responsive and seemed to enjoy, well, everything.  They laughed so much, I was able to spend the performance back-stage, stapling blurbs from our 5-star review to our flyers without it being audible – I just timed the stapling to the jokes so that the laughter covered up the noise. We were nearly late getting out of the venue due to the fantastic audience response.

It was probably our best performance to date.  (And yes, Auntie Wilma made a triumphant return!)

Today’s performance was particularly exciting as we had a last-minute casting change.  Our own Claudia from the production team took over the role of Uncle William and transformed the character into Aunt Wilma.  A few lines had to be rethought at the last minute, but overall, the performance went well.  The audience (70-some people today) seemed receptive and there weren’t any major blunders.  Only once did Aunt Wilma get called Uncle William.

The sun was out today. All I can say is thank goodness. It’s amazing what a difference a bit of warmth and sunshine makes. The Mile was teaming with people, our energy was back and people were genuinely smiling – flyerers and flyerees alike.

We all felt back on top of things today – our performances were snappier, our audiences numbers were back up, and we remembered why it was we were here.

It’s amazing what a difference the weather makes….

It poured today.  Shedloads.  It is so hard to get out of a nice, warm bed and get into cold, wet shoes knowing that the next several hours out on The Mile are going to be cold and wet.

Still, we did it.  I’m not sure that we were able to convince the universe that we were actually having fun, but then, it was mostly other flyerers who were out and about today.

On previous rainy days, there was a slow but constant stream of people braving the weather, determined to see a show.  Not so, today.  Many of the people passing by seemed grouchy and didn’t really want to stop for a chat.  I can’t blame them.

Despite a monumental effort on everyone’s part, we had our smallest audience ever – only about a quarter of the house was full.  However, we did our best to give them a good show, and today’s performance felt like a great improvement on yesterday.  It was a quiet audience, but we felt like they came with us and we earned our laughs.

I do hope this is the worst of the weather, though; today was hard work.

It rained today.  A lot.  We were out there, on the mile, giving things our best, but it was too wet for the guitar and we lost a lot of flyers to raindrops and puddles.

We did make one amazing discovery: rain makes the most wonderful adhesive.  Around midday, we took our rain-damaged flyers that were too soaking to hand out and stuck them up on the posts where all the posters are hung.  They cling like anything else.

Despite the rain, we still managed to bring in about 70 people, including some friends and family.

We were all pretty exhausted at the end of the day – not to mention damp.  We’re going to have to up our game if we’re going to make it through the month!

We all felt a bit exhausted today. When we got out to the Mile, we just didn’t have as much energy as previous days. Our voices are going. We found ourselves so mesmerised by Hamlet House of Horror‘s singing we kept forgetting to talk to people….

Sure enough, this was reflected by a dip in the number of people in our audience. (Not that we’re complaining – we still had an amazing 70 seats filled! Thank you to each and every one of you!)

We still had a great crowd and we managed to pick up for the performance, but it’s becoming evident that we’re going to need to pace ourselves in order to keep up our momentum. There’s no point in exhausting ourselves whilst flyering and then giving bad performances, but equally, there’s no point in putting all our energy into flyering and then not having the energy to put on a great show.

The two lessons of the day are:

1. We have to pace ourselves and find that perfect balance between energy spent flyering and energy spent performning
2. There is a one-to-one correlation between the effort put in flyering and the number of people who turn up on the door wanting to see the show.

Oh well, if we were going to have an off day with flyering, at least it was on a two-for-one day.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.  Shame the forecast looks cold and rainy….

Today was the day of truth.  Would we actually be able to get an audience if people had to pay for tickets?

We put a handful of tickets up on Theatre Ninja for free and both today and tomorrow, we’re selling tickets at two for the price of one, but still.  It’s one thing to entice people into a theatre for a free show and quite another to ask them to pay for the experience.

Yet again, we were dumbfounded and delighted when we arrived at Paradise in Augustine’s and saw the queue in front of the box office.  Yet again, we actually ended up turning  people away in the end. Yet again, the audience was brilliant.  There’s nothing better than the feeling that an audience is having fun right along side you.

I can attribute today’s success to the pink guitar that we discovered this morning and took with us to the Royal Mile.  Not only did it mean we had some accompaniment to our flyering songs, but it goes so well with our beautiful pink dresses….