Your first show: a survival guide for new troupes

Our first show taught us more than ten rehearsals. Here's what I wish someone had told us.

Book a small room and pack it with friendly faces. Forty warm friends beat two hundred strangers. The audience's job on your first night is to love you, so cast the audience deliberately.

Pick games you can't lose: opener with the whole cast, one guessing game, one physical game, one audience game, big group closer. Save the clever verbal stuff for show three.

Give everyone a role beyond playing: MC, music, front door. Nerves shrink when hands are busy.

Keep it to sixty minutes. End while they still want more — that's not a rule of comedy, it's THE rule of comedy.

And afterwards: celebrate everything. What went 'wrong' becomes your best story by Monday. That's improv working as intended.