Why so cold?
Because cold audiences laugh. Hot audiences don’t.
Cold audiences are more alert. Warm audiences are sluggish. If you’ve got a comedy on stage and see people in the audience fanning themselves with their programs just know you are dead.
Audiences for CHEERS filmings were almost always great. The 200 people in the bleachers were thrilled to be there. They were already fans of the show, it was so exciting to see everyone in person, they were primed to laugh. If I’m being honest, there were jokes that got way better response than they deserved. But one night the air conditioning went out.
And the laughs stopped.
Even for CHEERS.
Same with the dress rehearsal for my play GOING GOING GONE at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood. We had an invited audience and those poor souls were melting. The actors couldn’t see, there was so much sweat in their eyes. Needless to say I got no laughs. I’m just happy no one had a heat stroke. Every night during the run I made sure that the theatre was COLD. And the laughs thankfully returned.
Great attention is always paid to the lighting, set design, and sound of a production but often times the theatre temperature is taken as a given. It’s worth noting before a performance. I mean, when Sam & Diane can’t get a laugh…
from By Ken Levine
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