FROM WHAT I can tell, it seems like Big Show '09 was a success.

By the time the spring musical was over in early April, we originally had three weeks until opening night, May 1, to write and block our skits, learn lines, and run everything until it went smoothly.

After receiving a two-week extension to May 15, things looked a little less impossible.

Funny story: I've never done anything theater-related before. I mean I sort of knew what blocking was. But people would be talking about what color to paint the flats, and I would just be chilling in the corner like, "Hey, it's cool. By the way … what are flats?"

Anyway, I didn't have a ton of lines to memorize or anything, so I figured I didn't have a lot to worry about. Thursday night our dress rehearsal went pretty smoothly, or at least I can't remember any major errors. It seemed like everything would be fine.

And then, it was Friday. And I was surprisingly very nervous. In fact, I had to make myself stop thinking about the upcoming performance just to not completely space out in all of my classes.

To make things worse, things were not cooperating for me until the very last possible minute. When the bell rang at 3:50, my cell phone was missing. This wasn’t a huge deal, but looking for it was very distracting, and it was a prop in one of my skits. Embarrassingly enough, the phone was on my jacket, which was hanging on my locker, but I didn't realize that for about 40 minutes.

After finding my phone and looking incredibly foolish, I made my way to the South Attic. Here our cast was sitting around telling ridiculous jokes while senior Karen Han played piano, as everyone tried to kill some time.

Well, not everyone. Co-director Adam Tiouririne was trying to set up the projector so we could play our video skits during the show. The computer speakers I had brought, which seemed loud enough at home to warrant noise complaints from the neighbors if I wasn’t careful, turned out to be completely ineffectual. In other words, we didn’t have any sound. Adam and cast member Zack Goldberg took off to Best Buy to get a cable to connect the computer to speakers in the North Attic.

More time passed. Junior Ethan Schiller and I took my lame speakers and connected them to his iPod to play Lil Wayne. This calmed me down significantly, but probably annoyed some other people, as it clashed with Karen's piano and everyone else's jokes. But oh well.

Zack and Adam returned with the cable. Since we had one cable, we could only use one North Attic speaker. The sound was still not loud enough. It was around 6:30 at this point, and the house was supposed to be open. People were still being held outside.

This looked very bad. Miraculously, senior Natsuki Nakamura and our faculty sponsor, Chris Butler, managed to somehow procure the Student Council stereo at the last minute, and I think everything worked out OK, but it was a bit tense up until then.

The actual performance on Friday was all right. There were a few problems: I accidentally cut Ethan off at one point, and we started a skit on accident without one of the characters on stage, but I don’t think anyone really noticed.

What surprised me the most was the crowd's reaction. People were laughing at things I didn't even think were funny. The downside to this was that all the jokes that had taken me a couple times to get but that I now thought were hilarious got almost no laughs, but you can't have everything.

The feedback after Friday was all pretty positive. Well, one mom complimented me on the red sneakers I wear every day with, "My eyes were just so drawn to your shoes! Is that one of those things you did to enhance the dorky role in that one skit?"

But hey, who's bitter? Not me! Hmph …

I also learned on Friday that your eyes adjust to light really quickly. After looking out into the audience during "Facebook Me," a skit that went much better than I had expected, my eyes had adjusted to the bright lighting enough that when the lights went down at the end, I was stuck pawing on the flats like a zombie to be let backstage. I couldn't see anything so I had no clue where I was going. Luckily, our other co-director, Hannah Leskosky, and crew member Maddy Levin pulled me offstage.

Actually on Friday for some reason the lights kept me from seeing anyone in the audience except for freshman Jamie Blue, who was sitting on the floor. This substantially alleviated any nerves I might have had, because "talking to Jamie Blue" is much more fun than "saying embarrassing lines in front of various adult figures in your life."

Saturday we were all a lot more relaxed. After a cast dinner at The Courier in Urbana, and a rather late arrival at Uni around 6 p.m. (people were already lined up to reserve seats after some bad experiences not being let in during past years), we were ready to head out and do even better.

The audience on Saturday wasn't laughing nearly as hard. But everyone reassured us that it was fine, people were laughing, just quietly, and we shouldn't deviate from the way we'd been running the show too much.

Ben Daniels added a good closing line at the end of "Okwert Twoortel," and Nish Nookala referenced Soulja Boy in his old man voice. We made fewer mistakes. Things went pretty smoothly.

All in all, I heard pretty positive feedback regarding Big Show, especially from Assistant Director Sue Kovacs, who came and said very sweet things to us after our performance. Looking back, being in Big Show was certainly an interesting experience, and one I'd like to repeat for next year.

Big Show '09: Cast Members

• Hannah Leskosky (sr), co-director *
• Adam Tiouririne (sr), co-director *
• Ben Daniels (sr)
• Laura Dripps (jr)
• Will Erickson (fr) *
• Zack Goldberg (jr)
• Anna Gooler (jr) *
• Karen Han (sr)
• Deren Kudeki (sr)
• Alan Liang (sr) *
• Nish Nookala (sr)
• Ethan Schiller (jr)

* Performed in last year's Big Show

Big Show '09: Comedy Sketches and Video Skits

Part I

• Intro *
• Fourth Wall
• The Transmission
• Proper Citation
• Axe *
• Captain Planet
• Hog Wild
• Harold and Gertrude
• Test of Will *
• College Tour
• New Building
• Okwert Twoortel
• Saw I *
• Recess Session
• The Joke Explainer

Part II

• Facebook Me
• Saw II *
• The Magic Predator
• For Sale
• Prox Dance *
• Luggage Subbies
• Saw III *
• Lord of the Rings Condensed
• Prom (Notification) Date
• The Art of Diplomacy
• Children's Book Seminar
• Automatically in Love
• Duel of the Phones

* Video skit