Host For A Day

I've been doing improv for a while, and I've had a tolerable range of experiences within that. I've done a lot of formats and performed with a good number of people. Something I hadn't done was host a show. It was something I wanted to do, having done hosting-type stuff like that in Toastmasters for some time. I always thought it would be fun to host an improv show and that I could do some neat things, or at least do the same things in my own way.

I have hosted a burlesque show, but that calls for slightly different stuff from the host. I don't know that it went especially well. Certainly I wasn't asked to do it a second time. Anyway, I thought I could do an improv show well, and it finally came up recently. I jumped at the opportunity, although I already felt my hands were full with the musical improv performance I was to participate in during the same show. I just figured I'd deal with it.

Hosting is composed of two parts to me. You get to be an entertainer to the extent that it creates the right mood, primes the audience and makes things run smoothly, but you're like the cartilage and ligaments in a knee. Everything you do is in service of the real performers, and mostly that means doing things like handling timing, making sure people are ready and saying the right name at the right time. That part, so very important, is hard but rewarding for the selfless person. I'm not as selfless as I'd like.

Anyway, I think I mainly did all right. I said the right things at the right times, kept things more or less on time, created a decent atmosphere for the performers to be funny, and I even did an all right job performing a scene of my own (and singing a song)! This is my impression, anyway. Enough people echoed it that I feel at ease presenting it as the way things happened, and I do hope I get the chance to do it again.