Hello from the party suite of the Phoenix Improv Festival. One of the great things about this festival is the hotel arrangements -- we're all in the same hotel and the festival has a suite with drinks and this computer and a poker table and snacks. The hotel management, I understand, did screw up on the reserved block of rooms, so there are non-festivalians on each side of the suite, so we have to play the "shush" game, where every few minutes as the volume of the room escalates as everyone tries to talk over everyone else, someone will notice that the volume has gotten a little extreme and start a "shhhhhh" that lowers the volume for 10 or 15 seconds.

We did Neutrino AND Bare tonight. The Neutrino Video Project went well -- it was all Chicago shooters (me and Shaun and Starcevich) and a combo cast of Chicago and Seattle and Jose from Phoenix and special guest sit-in Ali "True Porn Clerk Stories" Davis. (And Greg Inda came out from Chicago too, which made me super happy that I could just trust that the in-theater tech would be taken care of and I could run around with my team worry-free.)

It was a little odd to do a Bare show so soon after the NVP -- despite what I just said, I do kind of ramp up the stress for a NVP, jumping around all jittery before the show (there's sooo much that can go wrong technically in this show, especially in a new venue) and then the show is so tight and frantic, so I was pretty wiped after the show. But we did have a full show between the NVP and Bare (Joe Bill's Scramble and Baby Wants Candy) so Shaun and I were able to run back to the hotel to drop off our gear and grab a burger at the BK next door and chill out a little. And then I chugged a Pepsi and a Reeses' Peanut Butter Cup (just one) in the dressing room to get my energy back up right before we went on stage.

We were trying something kinda new tonight -- I won't bore you with our long-form meanderings, but we wanted to focus on a longer scene and it did end up that almost the whole thing took place at a single church service (from the excellent suggestion "the woman at church who sings too loudly") with a cast of about 10 characters. And Shaun got to punch Jesus.

OK, I should get off. I have to teach a workshop or two tomorrow before I fly back to Chicago for 5 hours and then fly off to New York. Busy week.