Sold Out.

Here we are enjoying another stint in the "dodgy alley" outside the backstage entrance to our theater:

Our alley bridges two very busy tourist streets in the heart of the Fringe. Tim and Rick stand at the mid-way point to beckon the actors back from their last-minute flyerying efforts on the High Street. So far, this last-minute push has netted us a handful of audience members, which is not too shabby!

The rest of us stick to the dodgiest part of the alley, out of the rain, warmed up and ready to go.

When tourists pass through the alley, they often stop and take our picture.

Adolphus likes to play with the tourists, and sometimes scares them:

Today we were dismayed to learn that our "assigned school" was one of the schools that dropped out of the program in July. AHSTF did not schedule anyone else to see our show. But lo and behold, the amazing kids of Ridgewood High School led by the incomperable Meg Schaeffer gave up their valuable time to come see our show! In addition to their huge group and Lydia's parents, we continue to pull in tourists and artists who are here for the Fringe. We were especially excited when Desiree Burch, the star of a one-woman show we saw earlier in the week, came to cheer on the kids. "These kids are absolutely amazing!" she concluded at the end of the show. "They've clearly got excellent training, and their humanity shines through their work. I loved the show!" As more and more people filed in, the good seats got filled. Then the mediocre seats. Then the worst seats in the house. We were Sold Out!

We had a great run of the show, although today's shuffle was not our favorite.

After the show, we got to meet the phneomenally talented Stan Cahill, who was in town to scout locations for his next professional production. He paused long enough in a busy schedule to see our show and pose for a selfie with the cast, which he sent to his nieces Sophie and Greta Holt. Our cast was very happy to say "hi" to EHS friends far away.

There really is nothing like the experience of communication between actors and an audience when everything is firing just right. This audience listened to everything, and laughed and reacted to the play in the way you sort of dream an audience will react, but rarely actually get. We later agreed with rue that it's a little sad this wasn't the final performance, since it will be harder to play for a smaller, more reseverved audience now that we've experienced this.

But actors don't choose our audiences; we work for them. I'll be interested to see how it all comes together for our show tomorrow. It's never the same thing twice, and it's never, ever, dull. That's one more thing I love about being an artist in the theater.