Yesterday I passed an important milestone in my road to Edinburgh: I did my first public preview of the entire 30 minutes set. In the preparation to it, I felt it was an event as important as the premiere itself, since I knew I would perform in front of a probably bigger audience, many of which friends, and I knew that a failure would have taken the wind out of my sail. Fortunately it went very well, I got the laughs, I received compliments that sounded sincere and some very interesting criticism and suggestions too. Of course it wasn't perfect. This morning I realised with horror that I forgot to tell the strongest joke of my phrasal verbs routine, even if of course the audience couldn't know it. And in the second half some jokes were delivered in a less sharp way and got a smaller reception than expected. But I got the confirmation that the set holds well together and I can do half an hour without boring the audience to death, to the contrary they told me that it looked shorter... well, I recorded it and it was 25 minutes, so they had a point after all, but that isn't completely off the mark and I can add some topical material. And the ending, which I had tried only once in a "private" preview at a party and I was very worried about, seemed to work well. Now I'll listen to the recording and I'll try to fix the things that might work better, but generally speaking I feel confident. Sorry for blowing my own trumpet.
By the way, the really amazing thing of the evening was the turnout from my friends. I promised the promoter to bring at least 20 people and I was very worried, since most people don't like the idea of travelling to Stockwell, but at the end I contributed to the event with 23 guests and they were all very supportive. It really felt very nice.
Now I'll have a last, semi-private preview for a group called Italian Meetup, made of people who are studying Italian or who are Italian themeselves (even if the show will of course be in English), then up to Edinburgh. I'm really enjoying the road.
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